I was playing the organ fairly well in May and June by necessity, for there was a lot of playing to be done and I spent more than twice my usual amount of time on the bench. But then came a span of almost a month, from July 15 until August 5, when my services at the organ were not required, so I did no practicing whatsoever until August 3.
The Observation: I expected my improvisation skills to decline and they did, but what suffered the most was the playing of hymns. With three weeks off, I got sloppy. My sense of pulse, the keeping of a steady rhythmic flow, and the breathing space between phrases and especially stanzas, all needed attention. I worked carefully on them this week, running my tape recorder, and played more accurately today.
Robin Denney is a former agricultural missionary to what is now the nation of South Sudan. Her website has not been active since she left South Sudan about a year ago, but she posted a video seminar recently which I commend to you.
While in Africa, she worked as an Episcopal missionary with the Anglican Church of the Sudan, travelling through the bush, teaching sustainable agricultural methods to subsistence farmers. As she describes in the video and the written curriculum, the secular NGOs have difficulty convincing the farmers to try something different, and rightly so: bringing in a crop is life-or-death for them. "But when the local church, of which subsistence farmers are members, presents them with a new teaching (their calling to be caretakers of creation, and God's faithfulness in increasing their yield), their response is shocking!"
The video records how she has adapted her teaching to a different (and in many ways less capable) audience – Americans. It runs about an hour, with the first half indoors and the second half outside in the field. For a short summary, one can view her curriculum, which I believe she has prepared so that other people can teach this workshop in their parishes, or their communities, here and elsewhere in the world:
God is calling YOU to the work of tending and taking care of creation. To:[In the curriculum, she is being modest about one thing: she mentions an introductory handbook to tropical agriculture, but neglects to mention that she wrote it.]
-- Pray while you work and for the work of your hands
-- Look for solutions to the problems you face by praying and observing creation
-- Try techniques on a small portion of your crop, and compare it to the rest
-- Give out of your harvest to God and to those in need
I often despair of the Episcopal Church in the United States. But Robin, and others like her – including some whom I know personally from this parish – make me proud of it. I believe that the strength of the church has nothing to do with the ranting and posturing of General Conventions, and little to do with clergy or church programming or buildings or even church music; the strength is the unique and irreplaceable work that many Episcopalians do “out in the world.”
Just this afternoon I spoke with a young woman who, because of her faith and the situation in which she finds herself, has become an activist against “fracking.” It has isolated her from most of the community in which she lives, and perhaps placed her and her family in physical danger. But she is doing what she has to, and part of me does not think she would be able to do so without the Episcopal Church somewhere in the background.
She is, in short, a Heroine.
And that brings me to my second link: Bill Moyers maintains a presence on the Web these days which is, again, an irreplaceable and unique Christian answer to the situation in which he (and in many respects all of us) finds himself. I commend his weekly webcasts to you.
This week, his audio podcast is a revisiting of his interview with Joseph Campbell in 1987, twenty-five years ago. Campbell's views are probably well-known to most of my readers. The “Hero's Adventure” is a focus of his work, and of this interview.
My largest disagreement with Campbell has to do with his failure to recognize that the mythos recounted in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, especially in relation to Jesus of Nazareth, is, as C. S. Lewis often said, the fulfillment of all the myths, not least because it is True, in sober historical fact. There was a day, a day just as real as this day in August 2012, when the children of Israel stood on the far shore of the Sea of Reeds and saw the dead bodies of the Egyptians wash ashore. There was a night when angels sang in the sky over Bethlehem, and the shepherds gazed upon a virgin mother and her Child. And there was a day when the women brought spices to the tomb and found it empty, and later saw one whom they knew beyond any doubt had been dead.
Still, one should listen to Campbell, for he has much to say. Certainly, the myth of the Hero is in every culture, as Lewis also describes. I especially commend the segment beginning about 43 minutes into the podcast: “What the myths are for is to bring us into a level of consciousness that is spiritual.” He describes walking from the streets of New York City into St. Patrick's Cathedral – “and everything around me speaks of spiritual mystery.” And then he walks back out. Can he hold something of the mystery out on the street? The answer is “Yes,” but you must listen to Campbell for that.
Campbell is also right that each of us is on a Hero's Journey. But I would add that we cannot be “mavericks,” as he described himself; we cannot be our own master. Rather, our Journey makes sense only when viewed as a part of the larger Journey that includes Adam and Enoch and Abraham and Sarah and Moses and Deborah and Samuel and David and Hezekiah and Jeremiah and the Maccabees and Mary and Jesus (most of all) and Paul of Tarsus and Timothy and Clement of Rome and Augustine and all the rest.
“Everything around me speaks of spiritual mystery...” As Campbell says, we can eventually realize that the sidewalks and traffic and concrete outside the doors of St. Patrick's are part of the same mystery. I said this too, in another way:
The Qodesh, the holy place, is not limited to the Temple. It is, as the Sages wrote, a state of mind and spirit. Were a person sufficiently advanced, he would dwell in that place day and night, as did Joshua the son of Nun (Exodus 33:11). Most of us need help to perceive the Qodesh. Even Moses needed admonition from the LORD at the burning bush (Exodus 3:5). Sacred Music is one point of entry; the holy Icons are another, as is the acoustic of a place such as the Basilica, where the Song lingers in the air.
It is all true, all of the time. But it is more true in some times and places: thus my third link. We will sing this piece in the Choral Evensong for the commemoration of All Saints, Sunday November 4 at 5 pm. As is our practice when we have something especially beautiful, I seek to involve the children and youth as well as the adults, so we will combine the choirs for this service.
We will not sound as good as the choir on this YouTube link (King's College, Cambridge), and our little parish church is a far cry from that glorious space – especially glorious at Evensong in candlelight, as in the video – but the difference between us and them is of degree, not of kind. For one of the mysteries is that the Qodesh is not limited by time or space.
And I saw a new heaven (Edgar Bainton)
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