Tree of life and love

July 15-17: The Church in the World

For the mystery of iniquity doth already work... (II Thessalonians 2:7)

It is at work in the gap between rich and poor, in Wall Street's control of the U. S. government, in the wars we have started, in the rape of the earth for the short-term benefit of a few.

But it shall not prevail for ever.



This year's conference of the Hymn Society considered the flowering of congregational song in the fifty years since the Second Vatican Council, under the title "Tree of life and love." I believe that the songs have been given to us as seed that may grow. They may lie dormant for a time, perhaps a long time. But the songs cannot be entirely silenced, and they will in due season fulfill their role in the healing of the nations.

I know that some of the changes wrought in these fifty years are necessary. But that does not make it easy. My discomfort with some of the songs and the theology of worship behind them arose almost at the outset: Monday's Morning Prayer, a service whose readings were mostly from Rumi (a 13th century Sufi mystic) and several modern poets, but no Scripture other than Psalm 29, no canticles, no creed, no Lord's Prayer, no collects. I wondered whether I would be better off skipping the services for the rest of the week.

But halfway through Monday's service, I realized that it was working its intended effect; I was joining in worship, and seeing for a moment in a new way. Musically, it was close to the manner in which our 8:45 service at home has developed, and through the week I was to sing many songs at Morning Prayer that would work in that context.

Still, I wish that it were more grounded in Scripture. We heard very little from that Book all week, and that is a grave danger.

The principal issue, we were told by the Jesuit scholar John Baldovin in the plenary address that followed, is the dichotomy between "moderate" and "conservative." The first is informed by the Enlightenment and historical method; the second rejects some or all of these influences. The documents of Vatican II can be read in both directions, and what he called an "epic struggle" for the soul of the church continues, fifty years later.

It is good for me to hear these things, though I remain firmly in the conservative camp, and hold to the liturgical and theological positions articulated by Benedict XVI among others.

I must respect the other side of the debate, musically, liturgically, and theologically. I must listen to the truth of its songs, its prayers. And I must be wholehearted in my work as a Musician in that context.

Among other virtues, the conference traced the development of three streams of congregational song since 1963: Roman Catholic, mainstream Protestant, Evangelical-Pentecostal. In all three areas, there is hope, and much better work is being done that there was ten or fifteen years ago.

The surprise for me came from the evangelicals, with a workshop and hymn festival on the "re-tuned movement." By the 1980's and 90's, the praise and worship songs of the evangelicals had become slick, formulaic, commercial, and virtually devoid of content. This was the music of the Boomers, grown middle-aged and comfortable. They hated the traditions of church and society, they discarded all that had happened or had been thought before 1960, they lived in a shallow world of pop culture, and that was what they made of the church.

But their children, who (in the evangelical churches) have grown up entirely without hymns, were looking for something more. Some of them are finding the old hymn texts and "re-tuning" them in their musical style, and, we were told, this is part of the music of the "emerging church." This gives me hope. We will all need songs with meaningful context in the coming years, and we will need new songs from a new generation.

I remain uncomfortable with the performance practice, for the congregation has no responsibility for the song. If they choose to sing, great. If not, it is the amplified sound of the band that matters, not the natural un-amplified voice of the people. But these "re-tuned" songs are a large improvement.

Here is an example of this music, a YouTube about a concert of "re-tuned" music at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The organizer of this concert was our leader at the hymn festival, along with a couple of the songwriters, and we sang many of these songs.


As the week continued, the morning prayer services became increasingly important to me, thanks in part to the leadership of the Mennonite musician and pastor Ken Nafzinger, and others whom he incorporated, most of them young, in their twenties.

There was much to remember about the week: daily hymn festivals, one of them led in part by an old friend from graduate school, now a pastor in the Reformed Church; another festival involving Carol Doran (of whom more in a moment); another evening which was a Taizé service, and a final hymn festival (again, more in a moment).

Carol Doran collaborated as a musician with the author Thomas Troeger on several volumes of hymns in the 1980's and 90's; she was the organist for the first night's hymn festival. I learned in conversing with her over lunch that her path moved on from seminary teaching to now, in her old age, teaching music in a ghetto middle school. It is a task of little account to the powerful, this teaching of children whom they have already written off as losers, part of Mitt Romney's 47 percent. It is a thing no larger than a mustard seed.

Taizé and its music well belonged in this context of developments since Vatican II. I attended the workshop on Taizé as well as the festival, and in my mental context (still lodged in the Hunger Games) was reminded of the patient witness of that community in the darkness of war-torn Europe. Should we return to such days, there is more to Taizé than I had thought -- more seeds cast abroad upon the earth.

We have a weekly Taizé service in our community, and the few times I attended it, I did not like it at all. This was different; there was less singing and much more silence (including one stretch of about fifteen minutes, which is a long time). This was the only service that had significant chunks of Scripture. The acoustic and visual setting were terrific; a large Roman Catholic parish church in semidarkness, lots of candles and icons.

I normally do not get anything other than boredom from singing "Ubi caritas" forty-six times in a row, and I think that has turned me against this repertoire. But in our parish, where we regularly sing Taizé songs at communion during the 8:45 service, there have been some moments where a Taizé song has become something remarkable.


The final hymn festival, the closing event of the conference, was titled "New shoots and buds: new directions in congregational song," led (mostly) by Tony Alonso and Hilary Seraph Donaldson with lots of other musicians -- almost all of them under the age of thirty (Hilary's father Andrew, a long-time Hymn Society leader, was one of the exceptions; it was great to see father and daughter together among the musicians.)

I learned that the organizers had not met in person before the conference. The planning, extending over a year, was done entirely through meetings on Skype and through other forms of electronic communication.

And they see what I see in the world. The penultimate hymn was a call to eschatological hope, which is central to the witness of the Church -- a hymn that they said was hard for them to find. It was sung to the strong shape-note tune "Morning Trumpet," with lines like this:

Let the banker and the president beware the trumpet's call,
And beat swords of greed and commerce into equal shares for all.
Let the teachers speak in wisdom, let the music-makers play,
Let the weavers weave the tent where we shall gather on that day.

Lowly eyes shall be lifted, while the tyrants taste their fear,
For that sound is both a gospel and a warning...
("The trumpet in the morning," by Rory Cooney)

I sang, we all sang, with tears in our eyes, longing for that day when all shall be made right.

Later that day as I drove west through the Alleghenies into one last mist-shrouded mountain sunset, I thought of these brave words and those who sang them. Will they -- will we -- have the strength to stand when the drone attacks and "peacekeepers" kill our friends, spies and informers are everywhere, and all is darkness -- as it already is in parts of the world?