…Pentecost.  Yes, this is an official church-nerd-out-of-control post.

Well, maybe not.  Maybe it is just me being sentimental.  You see, this Pentecost Sunday (May 27, 2012) will be the second anniversary of my licensing by the Calvary Baptist Church (you can read about it here).  That day was the beginning of many wonderful changes for me.  And as I embrace the remembrance of that first Pentecost again this year, I am about to step off on yet another adventurous  path along the way.  I have been accepted to the program in Christian Formation at the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, VA.

I have no idea where I am going, but I must say that I don’t seem to worry about it as much as I did.  That is probably because  I have such amazing role models and also because of the support of those around me, like my small group, and my friends, and the amazing people in our congregation.

I am blessed with so much.  I am so lucky.

On that day, two years ago, a most beloved person spoke these words to me as she hugged me after the laying on of hands that is a part of that blessing:  “Do you feel the weight of it all yet?”.  And the answer, dear friends, is yes.  I think I have always felt the weight of it.  The difference is that now, I feel that weight as yet another blessing; I understand just a little bit more about what that weight is calling me to do and who it is calling me to be.

So come this Pentecost, I’ll stand again and join with my community as we tell the story of the birth of the church. I may even sing a song or two.  And I will remember what has come before, both in my life and in the story of faith that preceeded me…and I will open my arms again to what is to come.

I will admit that when I began the committment to read from Orbis Books Bread and Wine (2003), I skipped ahead a bit and read all the poetry.  At the beginning of Lent, the poem I’ve quoted here really didn’t make much sense to me.  I’m not a person who is often moved by poetry (which you might find strange since I spend a good deal of my life singing various forms of poetry), but this morning in the early hours as I sat with me tea, relaxing that last few precious minutes before the rush of Easter Sunday was upon me, this poem meant a great deal to me.  I therefore, share it with you, and say to you, “Christ is Risen!”.  I can wait to hear the answer to that time worn greeting later today.

Seven Stanzas at Easter (John Updike)

Make no mistake:  if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh:  ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of the earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of matierality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awaked in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance. (pg. 261-262)

Blessed Easter to you all….

The last thing that I should be doing is sitting at the computer writing, but I have to eat my sandwich and drink my last cup of tea before tonight’s performance anyway, so here it goes.

I have written before that Lent as a season has been a very different experience for me than in past years.  And, as I approach our remembrance of Good Friday this difference continues.  For the five years before tonight, each Good Friday, we have offered a Good Friday concert…sacred music meant to guide worship or to simply inspire, depending on your beliefs.  Most of the pieces have been Baroque or Classical in compositional style, and tonight is no different.

What is different, then?  Tonight, for the first time, I am really clear on what I am doing.  The first year, it was a way to remember Good Friday, yes, but also an act of gratitude to my new friends at Calvary and my teacher who was no longer with me.  And over these past years, my own motivation and orientation has transformed from that of musician-who-is-moved-by-sacred-music to that of worshipper-who-speaks-through-the-language-of-music.

In short, tonight I know that I am here to testify.

If you join us tonight, listen for the story.  Listen for the faith of those declaiming that story.  Having met most of the musicians, I’m guessing you will hear it as much in the work of the organist as in the words of the singers.

Listen.  We are going to tell you a story, a very important one.  And we believe what we are saying.

Yes, it is Holy Week.  Yes, it is a week of rehearsing and praying and worshipping and making a lot of music for me. And yes, since it is Holy Week, it is time for our 6th (can you believe it), Music for Good Friday program.  This year, we are performing Carl Heinrich Graun’s Der Tod Jesu (The Death of Jesus), premiered in 1755.  If you are interested, below are the program notes for this Friday’s performance.

The Music for Good Friday program, which has been so gratefully housed and supported by my beloved Calvary Baptist Church, has been a workshop for me in so many ways — a chance to learn and grow both theologically and musically.  Finally, this year, I must have been ready to confront ideas about atonement, so we are presenting a sung Passion Cantata.  It is a challenge both musically and spiritually, but I hope will be a meaningful experience for everyone in the room.

If you are in town, please come (the details are here).  If not, maybe after you read my notes below, you will listen to the music (which can be purchased on ITunes).  In either case, may you have a blessed Holy Week and may Easter come to your life again very, very soon.

About Tonight’s Program

The great Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross, once wrote: “It is not the act of a good disciple to flee from the Cross in order to enjoy the sweetness of easy piety.” Tonight, we do not flee.

We’ve called our program The Promise of the Passion, because, if we are Christian, we gather tonight to remember Jesus at his most human, at that time in the liturgical calendar set aside to remember his physical death. We weep for his humanity and for our own, as we wonder what is next. But even in our sorrow and our fear, we know that there is a promise in his suffering, a promise of hope and light for us. And if we are not practicing Christians, we gather simply because we are human ourselves and experience in that humanness the same trials and challenges that are part of Jesus’ story on this day.

What Do We Mean by Passion?

The Passion is theological term used for the events and suffering – physical, spiritual, and mental – of Jesus in the hours before and including his trial and execution by crucifixion. The Crucifixion of Jesus is an event central to Christian beliefs.

The origin of the word is Greek, from the verb paschō, to suffer.  Those parts of the four Gospels that describe these events are known as the “Passion narratives”.  In the liturgical calendar, Holy Week, beginning on Palm Sunday and ending on Easter Saturday, commemorates the events of the Passion narrative.

Why Do We Sing the Passion Story

If we are lovers of classical vocal music, when we hear the word “Passion” in relationship to music, we first think of the Passion settings by J. S. Bach.  While his great works, the St. Matthew Passion and the Passion of St. John, may be the most often performed and the most familiar to us, they are just two works among a large liturgical genre that reached its zenith in the first half of the 18th century in Germany.

The reading of the Passion from one of the Gospels during Holy Week dates back at least to the 4th century. In the 5th century Pope Leo the ordered the gospel of Matthew to be read on Palm Sunday and the following Wednesday and that of John on Good Friday. The practice of singing the Passion began in the Middle Ages, possibly as early as the 8th century. By the 13th century different singers were used for different characters in the narrative.  The 15th century polyphonic settings began to add turba passages (turba, while literally meaning “crowd,” is used in this case to mean any passage in which more than one speaker speaks simultaneously).

In the later 15th century a number of new styles began to emerge, that led us to the type of Passion setting we will hear tonight:  the Summa Passionis, a poetic text that draws on the events of all four Gospel narratives.  Familiar works in this genre include The Seven Last Words of Christ by Franz Joseph Haydn and the version by Theodore Dubois, as well as The Crucifixion by John Stainer.

The work we hear tonight, like the Passions of J.S. Bach, is a creation of the Protestant Reformation in Germany.  Martin Luther believed that the suffering of Christ must be experienced by all who believe and not through words alone.  And so, the sung Passion, the Passion Cantata and the Passion Oratorio became important sacred music genres in the German states of the day.

Church Music in 18th Century Germany

In our present day, Passion music such as we hear tonight rarely appears in a liturgical setting.  Even if the performance we attend is set in a church, as it is tonight, we generally will experience this music in a concert setting.  But in the composer’s day, the crowds arriving at church to experience this music would come not just for the music but for the worship:  a Passion setting would be part of a larger service, often 4 or 5 hours long, including other music before or after, one or more sermons, and multiple prayers.  The music took the place of the readings – it told the story of Good Friday in the form of music.   The singing of the Passion would also be the first concerted music (music with instruments) that was offered in church during the entire season of Lent, a time of austerity and reflection, during which instrumental music was banned from service.

And, most likely, the performing forces would have been similar to what you see and hear tonight.  We know from the performing parts that remain to us from the 18th century that singing forces were organized in a similar fashion to that of the instrumental performers:  there were concerti singers (soloists, who sang all parts in the choruses and chorales as well) and ripieni singers (who were applied to specific movements to broaden the fullness and the impact of the sound). 

Carl Heinrich Graun (1703 or 1704-1759)

Carl Heinrich Graun was a very famous man in his day, even though he is virtually unknown to any but the most serious Baroque music specialist today. A contemporary Johann Adolf Hasse, George Phillip Telemann, and of J. S. Bach, he was well-known and celebrated composer of his time, and a tenor, Kapellmeister to the court of Frederick the Great of Prussia, and founder of the Italian Opera in Berlin. With all that accomplishment, even in his day, Graun was most famous for his religious music, and in particular, for the work that we perform this night, Der Tod Jesu (The Death of Jesus).

Der Tod Jesu (The Death of Jesus)

Tonight, the work we perform is made of music by Graun set to a text by the poet Carl Wilhem Ramler (1725-1798), a very popular devotional text, set to music by Graun, and Telemann  and J C F Bach (son of J.S.), among others.  Graun’s setting of Der Tod Jesu received its first performance on the Wednesday of Holy Week in 1755  in Berlin’s Domkirche (Cathedral), “in the presence of an uncommonly large crowd,” according to contemporary sources.  Telemann’s version premiered a week earlier in Hamburg.
Der Tod Jesu, often called a Passion Cantata (as compared to a Passion Oratorio such as those written by Bach and Telemann, that assign arias to specific characters in the drama) continued its popularity in Berlin through the 19th century, with its last Holy Week performance in 1894 before its revival as a concert work in the late 20th century. 

The text was published in 1760 as part of a trilogy:  Geistliche Kantaten:  Der Tod Jesus (1754), Die Hirten bei der Krippe Zu Bethlehem (1757) and Die Auferstehung und Himmelfart Jesu (1760)[i].  These libretti are the most frequently set texts for German cantatas and oratorios in the second half of the 18th century. Ramler’s text does not attempt to recount, step by step, the events of the narrative, but instead focuses on gift of redemption offered to Christians in the moment of sacrifice.  The result is a meditation on the Passion story, including familiar hymns, poetry and parallel Biblical texts designed to expand the listener’s experience of the event.

While the argument about whether or not the passions are “dramatic” works or not continues to rage in the musical world, we can see from the structure that Graun’s Der Tod Jesu is a purely sacred work.  No Evangelist, no direct representation of Jesus or Peter or any other character graces the pages.  In fact, you will hear the women sing some of the most famous of the seven last words of Christ.   

The structure is quite simple:  each recitative describes an important event in the story and the following aria comments on the event.  For example, in the recitative No. 6, “Ach, mein Immanuel”, the mezzo-soprano describes the events in the Garden of Gethsemane, when the Apostles sleep rather than watch as asked.  The last line is:  “O wake and pray, Brothers!”. The following aria, “Ein Gebet um neue Stärke”, comments on the importance of prayer.

The work also includes both Chorales (originally hymn tunes sung by the congregation) and choruses.  The chorales provide a moment of rest and reflection for the listener: familiar tunes, set with text that underscores the meaning of what they have just hear or are about to hear.  The chorale was a central feature of the Lutheran liturgy of the day. The choruses provide the commentary of the crowd (the turba) on the segment of the story in the following section.

As is often the case with Baroque music, our modern ears may experience this work as well, inappropriately cheerful for the subject matter. However, the tone is completely appropriate to the theological vision of the Enlightenment in which it was written.  Jesus was worshipped primarly as a hero (a theory of atonement that theologians label as “Christus Victor”, and the Passion story was set to music that reflected the great joy brought to humankind through the efforts of his suffering and death.

Tonight, we will be performing from the Carus Verlag edition 10.379, edited by Herbert Lölkes.

About the Concert Series

Calvary Presents… is a performance series created to showcase the work of local artists and arts organizations, residing at and supported by the ministry of the Calvary Baptist Church of Washington, D.C. For more information, visit our website, www.calvarydc.org.

Six Years Ago…

Six years ago, before I was a member of this community, when hardly anyone knew anything about me, the wonderful, loving and faith-filled members of this church welcomed my proposal for the first Music for Good Friday concert.  That night, we performed music by Pergolesi and Donizetti, and we remembered:  we remembered the events of Good Friday, and the man who brought music into my life again, my first teacher, Michael Patterson.

Six years later, we are here again, singing, playing and remembering, remembering the ever-present sacrifice of this day, remembering 150 years of worship and faith that have lived on this corner in Washington, DC; remembering that we are a community formed to live out the mission of the Gospel about which we sing, whatever that may mean.

I am most personally grateful for the chance to make wonderful, meaningful music here, with all that has meant to my own life and my own spiritual journey.  The fact that this program exists is a testament to the amazing openness and faith of this congregation, its inspiring pastor the Rev. Dr. Amy Butler, its lay leadership, the hard work of our Mission Board, our music staff and our guest performers, and most especially, our talented and energetic music director, Dr. Cheryl Branham. 

As performers, we feel blessed by the opportunity to speak through music, especially the opportunity to speak for those whose voices are muted and ignored.  We hope that if some part of this evening’s music moves or inspires you, you will consider helping these students who thirst for education, who thirst to honor the sacrifice about which we sing tonight.                                                                                              (Susan Sevier)

There is nothing to bring on a little journey of introspection like being trapped in the house while a new roof is installed, particularly if you live in a flat roof row house like ours (where the last four attempts at fixing the roof were installed one on top of the other).  Real work is pretty much impossible with the tap-tap-pound-pound-rip sounds that have been over my head all day.

But I did have a few minutes (between ka-thumps) to put a few pieces of a puzzle together, a puzzle that has been increasingly worrisome to me for the past couple of months.  Most of what I figured out I’ll keep to myself (or at least not put out here on the Internet), but the most intriguing thing that became crystal clear to me in my mental wanderings was this:  I’m still so very like I was when I was a child.

Not in every way, but in some interesting ways that I wouldn’t have expected.  The truly interesting characteristic that has remained, suprisingly, is what I might call my precocious nature…and what others might call my irritating penchant for projects, or even perhaps, my continual striving to know everything and experience everything.

Let me explain.  One of the many rituals of fall that I remember, every school year, was my mother’s pilgrimage to meet my teacher.  Now, I think most parents make an effort to meet their child’s teacher each year, but after I became an adult myself my mother shared with me her real purpose each year.  She went to these educational summit meetings with a message:  keep my daughter mentally and creatively stimulated, or beware.

It wasn’t that I would act out or disrupt class if I got bored, I was far too well-behaved for that.  But my mother was repeating a lesson that she had learned the hard way.  It seems, and I do remember this, that my third grade teacher, Mrs. Schalker (whom I adored), didn’t challenge me enough.  After about two months of school I was totally bored and I began the process of developing a mysterious fever right after lunch.  Two, sometimes three days a week, the ritual would be the same — I would develop a fever, I would go to the teacher who would then send me to the nurse, who would then call my mother and send me home.  This mysterious fever, I might add, was never identified by any doctor, and in most cases, disappeared magically by the time dinner rolled around.

All of my wonderful teachers after Mrs. Schalker got the “talk” at the beginning of the year, and did their best to keep me completely challenged…I was the queen of the special project.  My sixth grade teacher may have been the most creative — I remember delivering my first “extra credit” class paper on the process of making wine in France, complete with pencil sketches of the equipment needed and extensive maps of the regions that grew the best grapes.  My second project was my favorite — my first lecture on the evils of dialectical materialism, presented in front of a life-size diagram of Karl Marx that I had made with one of those old machines that allowed you to enlarge a small picture and trace it onto paper.

Needless to say, all of this was in the stone age, before computers.  I had to use pencils.

You may wonder why these stories are what came to me when I was waiting for the dust to clear from the roofing project.  But the reason is simple — I’ve begun to see that, well, I haven’t changed all that much.  I have probably found more acceptable ways to satisfy my performing self than boring my classmates with bad pencil drawings of a wine press, but I’m still always on the hunt for the next project, the next piece of interesting information that I can share, the next new thing that I can learn.  Yes, that’s me…synapses firing as fast as possible, filling my plate too full (both literally and figuratively) and doing the best I can to get the most out of every minute.

If I’m not doing that, I’m depressed and bored, and well, as my mother used to tell my teachers, I might just cause some trouble. I have a suspicion that those close to me know this secret already, even though I’ve never heard them say it.  But I’m really busy right now, so I guess we are all safe for the moment.

I think, eventually, we all really do have the desire to grow up.  And we may even think that will mean that we change.  But right now, I’m pretty happy to know that the inquisitive child who asked way too many questions and who needed a lot of stimulation and challenge still lives in my considerably older self.  I’m going to continue to need her over the next few years….

Today, I’m branching out a little bit…I’ve had the opportunity to read Dr. David G. Benner’s book, Spirituality and the Awakening Self (2012) as a participant in the Patheos Book Club.  In return for receiving a copy of the book, I’ve agreed to share my impressions of the work and to let Patheos include a link to my thoughts.   To those who have not found my blog before, welcome.  And now, my humble thoughts on Dr. Benner’s latest volume.

For most of my life, I have struggled with the ideas of spiritual formation, change, transformation, awakening, and mysticism – I struggled with these concepts and their place in my life and  in any life lived in human society, long before I understood the words and their many and varied meanings, long before I understood their implications for my life and the lives of those around me.  I’ve bounced from the mystical life to the intellectual to the secular and back to the mystical again in my search, always dissatisfied…always looking for the via media, the middle way, the connection between the extremes, the place where we humans, even we consciously-questing humans, toil and fail and change and…well, I think you get the picture. 

One thing we all know:  change is hard.  It doesn’t matter what kind of change…learning to live without that afternoon cupcake, adding a morning walk to our routine, or learning to faithfully commit to a spiritual practice or a spiritual community…or all of the above.  Change is hard.  And, as Dr. Brenner points out, true transformation is even harder.

But not impossible. Not if you release the dichotomy between the secular and the sacred and embrace the whole…

Dr. Brenner never really says that, but that is my summary of his book:  To be a fully-integrated human being is to be a person who embraces the adaptations and changes that are life, the growth and cycles of body, mind and spirit.  A fully-integrated person welcomes the changing relationship among self (in both the psychological and the spiritual definitions of that word) and the world and the spirit.  Then, and only then, is lasting transformation possible.  And, only by embracing transformation can we truly give life to the journey that is before us (our return to God that is the human journey through incarnation).

Transformation is not simply change.  Nor is it reducible to maturation or self-improvement toward wholeness.  It is an unfolding of the self that moves us toward being at one within our self and with God.

Christians affirm that everything that exists is being held this very moment in Christ, and that everything that exists is being made new in Christ.  These mystical truths may be beyond our comprehension, but they are not beyond our potential experience. (xiv)

The point is to listen, because life gets in the way.  Listening can be supported by learning from the mystics.  No, not by going to live in a cave, but by incorporating the lessons of mysticism with the secular disciplines of psychology and philosophy and what they have to teach us about our own humanity.  This is the task Dr. Benner tackles in this book, and I believe he does a good job…combining his vast experience as a clinical psychologist with the experience of his own intense life of faith.  The book contains a variety of very engaging academic studies about faith practice and the relationship of spirituality to our more human parts. 

Yet, if we focus on transformation, unfolding, change…what about the ultimate goal of a life of faith?  What about being?  If we talk about the role of mysticism in transformation, what about the ultimate quest of the mystic — being one with the One?   A focus on transformation itself is, as is so typically Western European, a focus on movement instead of being.

I must confess, however, that I am most likely the wrong audience for this book.  While I agree with the premise, I am not a person to be approached through the left side of my brain, with facts and charts and studies.  But as I approach a more serious, academic study of spiritual formation and its dynamics myself, I do understand that this is useful and important information when you are offering spiritual direction and support to another who most likely will not have the same experience of the mystical that you, the director, might have.

I am always grateful for someone who can bring a level of verbal description to something that is for me completely experiential and instinctive.  But, my true evaluation of  a book when all is said and done is…did it inspire me and move me along my own journey of transformation?  I would have to say that Spirituality and the Awakining Self did not.  But even for the more mystical among us, it does provide some good tools and some well-crafted language we can use to speak to the rest of the world.