And did those feet in ancient times...

One of the functions of an Episcopal Parish is to be the ethnic home for a certain minority group, one that is often overlooked in modern American life.

This afternoon, we conducted the Burial Office for a daughter of the Church of England. She has lived most of her long adult life in a small Midwestern farming town with no Episcopal Parish in town, or in any of the neighboring towns. She made it clear to her children that when the time came, she wanted to be buried with the ceremonies proper to the Episcopal Church, and the Book of Common Prayer.

So, she was. The family, none of them Episcopalians, came to us and asked if we might do the service; of course we agreed. This being a holiday and neither of our regular clergy being available, one of our retired associate priests was Officiant.

About forty people gathered; children, grandchildren, friends, most of them still living in that Midwestern farming town. The liturgy was the Burial Office, Rite One; we sang “Abide with me” and “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.” As requested, I played the tune Jerusalem (“And did those feet in ancient times”), on full organ, before the Commendation. The children had noted that she and her husband (dead these seventeen years) ensured that they knew all the British songs, and sang them regularly at home. She thrilled to the events of the Royal Family, most recently the birth and christening of Prince George; she adored the Queen (as do I).

And every afternoon, without fail, she and her husband would have Tea. They were doubtless the only family in the town, perhaps the county, to observe this custom.

At the end, after most of the people had gone out, I played one last song for this Daughter of England: “God save the Queen,” on eight foot flutes. All of the children came back in to listen, tears in their eyes.

Your Majesty, you will never know it (not, at least, in this life), but you have lost a loyal subject. You have many others, some of them in the most unlikely places.

St. Andrew's Day

I have little time today, but I wish to commend to you a little-known hymn by Fred Pratt Green, titled "In honour of St. Andrew."

It does not appear at Hymnary.org, which implies that it has not been published in a U.S. or Canadian hymnal, and it is a copyrighted text, so I cannot give more than a snippet. But it is number 149 in the volume "The Hymns and Ballads of Fred Pratt Green" (Hope Publishing Company). From the middle stanzas:

Though some were favoured more than he,
And he was fourth, and they 'the three',
Yet Andrew was content.
Would I were such a saint!

Of him they said, both Jew and Greek:
'Ask Andrew, if it's Christ you seek'.
He knew why they were sent.
Would I were such a saint!

(copyright © 1969 by Hope Publishing Co., All rights reserved)

I am a member of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, and look to Andrew for encouragement, especially in the work of rolling up one's sleeves and being a hard-working "fisher of men" (c.f. Matthew 4:19), without regard for what people might think.

"Would I were such a saint!"

Thanksgiving Day

I do here both acknowledge and declare that the LORD God, of his tender loving-kindness, hath granted us a bountiful harvest in this good land which he hath given us. And, in the company of the faithful, I worship him: for he is good, for his mercy endureth forever. (see Deuteronomy 25:1-11)

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Our parish is in the midst of what is probably the most agricultural state of the Union. When it goes badly here, food prices rise and those on the margins go hungry. It was that way last year in the Midwest. But this year, the season has been as nearly perfect as could be, and the harvest is bountiful. Thanks be to God.

We children of the Age of Science do not often give God sufficient credit for good weather, for healthy crops and livestock. We have outgrown such superstitions. Weather is essentially random, we claim (though affected for the worse by global warming). We depend more on the laboratories of Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland than we do on the vagaries of prayer and faith. [A large percentage of the crops grown in this state are genetically modified. I have heard numbers of over ninety percent, basically everything except the crops raised by organic farmers.]

There is, therefore, no reason for thanksgiving, and no one to thank. Or so they would have us think. Instead, this is a day to eat too much and gear up for tomorrow's shopping. Or to go ahead and get started; many of the big retailers are open today.

But hidden from the scientists (so-called) and the Big Ag people is the Hand of God.

We plow the fields and scatter
the good seed on the land,
but it is fed and watered
by God's almighty hand;
he sends the snow in winter,
the warmth to swell the grain,
the breezes and the sunshine,
and soft refreshing rain.

About twenty of us gathered this morning for the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. We sang hymns – songs such as the above, “Come, ye thankful people come,” and “Now thank we all our God.” We heard the words of Holy Scripture. We prayed, and gave thanks. After that, we had Thanksgiving Dinner in the parish hall, a potluck with lots of good food. Better still, good people.

It sometimes bothers me that I cannot be like normal people, who have Thanksgiving with their family. For thirteen years, every Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day have been at the church, on duty. But when I consider it more closely, I am grateful that I can help give voice to the praises of Holy Mother Church on these days on behalf of the larger community of this parish, this city, this state, this nation and world. The people who gathered today, many of them the same ones who come to this service and dinner every Thanksgiving, are my family.

I believe that the dark days will come, days of gnawing hunger, when fossil-fuel based Industrial Agriculture has been swept away and our grandchildren are sharecroppers or peasants working the land in the way that it has been worked for thousands of years – hand tools, hard labor, and most of its fruits going to the wealthy few in faraway cities.

But for this day, we are well-fed. The grain elevators are full. And we rejoice in the one who has made it so.

And thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which the LORD thy God hath given unto thee, and unto thine house, thou, and the Levite, and the stranger that is among you. (Deuteronomy 25:11)

more on Evangelii Gaudium

Some quotes:

“There are Christians whose lives seem like Lent without Easter.” (paragraph 6)

“... even if the Christian message has known periods of darkness and ecclesial weakness, it will never grow old. Jesus can … break through the dull categories with which we would enclose him and he constantly amazes us by his divine creativity.” (paragraph 11)

“The apostles never forgot the moment when Jesus touched their hearts... Together with Jesus, this remembrance makes present to us 'a great cloud of witnesses' (Heb. 12:1), some of whom, as believers, we recall with great joy.... The believer is essentially 'one who remembers.'” (paragraph 13)

“An evangelizing community gets involved by word and deed in people's daily lives; it bridges distances, it is willing to abase itself if necessary, and it embraces human life, touching the suffering flesh of Christ in others.” (paragraph 24)

“Evangelization consists mostly of patience and disregard for constraints of time.... It cares for the grain and does not grow impatient at the weeds.” (paragraph 24)

“[the Christian as Evangelist] finds a way to let the word take flesh in a particular situation and bear fruits of new life, however imperfect or incomplete these may appear.” (paragraph 24)

"Patience and disregard for constraints of time..." That struck home. I consider some of the men of the community whom I have tried to help; I described them in a previous essay. I often resent how much time they take -- one of them, R., comes by every Wednesday after the free breakfast and talks. He can chew up an hour very easily. But he amazed me a couple of weeks ago; one of the other street guys has bad feet (I'm guessing he is a poorly-managed diabetic) and was in an especially bad way. R. took him into his own home, such as it is (a room at the cheapest flophouse motel in town), to soak his feet in epsom salts, which I helped him buy, and let him "take a load off his feet" for a day or two. If that isn't "bearing fruits of new life," I don't know what is.

In yesterday's post I linked to a newspaper account that emphasized the social justice aspects of the Pope's exhortation; I soon found that Francis himself gave an outline of the document at the end of the introduction (paragraph 17). I added it to yesterday's post, and will repeat it here:

I have decided, among other themes, to discuss at length the following questions:
(a) the reform of the Church in her missionary outreach;
(b) the temptations faced by pastoral workers;
(c) the Church, understood as the entire People of God which evangelizes;
(d) the homily and its preparation;
(e) the inclusion of the poor in society;
(f) peace and dialogue within society;
(g) the spiritual motivations for mission.

I have dealt extensively with these topics, with a detail that some may find excessive...

Pope Francis: The joy of the Gospel

I am pleased to offer a link to the Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium ("the joy of the Gospel"): here it is in PDF form.

"... I invite all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ... The Lord does not disappoint those who take this risk; whenever we take a step toward Jesus, we come to realize that he is already there, waiting for us with open arms."

Here is a newspaper account, for those desiring a summary.

The 84-page document, known as an apostolic exhortation, amounted to an official platform for his papacy, building on views he has aired in sermons and remarks since he became the first non-European pontiff in 1,300 years in March.

In it, Francis went further than previous comments criticising the global economic system, attacking the "idolatry of money" and beseeching politicians to guarantee all citizens "dignified work, education and healthcare".

I have just learned of this document and have read only the first few pages. But that was enough to fill me with delight.

[Edited to add: Francis himself gives a good outline of the document at the end of the introduction (paragraph 17):

I have decided, among other themes, to discuss at length the following questions:
(a) the reform of the Church in her missionary outreach;
(b) the temptations faced by pastoral workers;
(c) the Church, understood as the entire People of God which evangelizes;
(d) the homily and its preparation;
(e) the inclusion of the poor in society;
(f) peace and dialogue within society;
(g) the spiritual motivations for mission.

I have dealt extensively with these topics, with a detail that some may find excessive...]

Some other time, I must write of the Two Popes. I love Benedict XVI. I have learned much from him, and continue to learn from his writings. And I have grown to love Francis I. Benedict was more scholarly, and I think that this was needed. Francis is more of a preacher, very plain-spoken.

Much of what he has said to date was also said by Benedict, for example in his encyclical letter Caritas in veritate, written in the aftermath of the 2008-09 economic crash. I think it would be fair to say that in some respects Francis is building on Benedict's work. And it is also fair to say that Francis is taking it to the wider public in a manner that Benedict could not have done. And he is doing it with an infectious spirit of joy, a spirit that brims from this document, a joy which comes from the Gospel and which is the essence of our witness to the world.

I fear for Francis, because the plain-spoken proclamation of the Gospel most often leads to a martyr's death, and there are powerful forces that stand against him. So far, they do not take him seriously, but they will, and I believe that eventually they will destroy him. Or try to.

But that is a path that Another has trod, and if Francis -- if we -- walk in those footsteps, we need fear no evil -- "for Thou are with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me."

Two Hymns to St. Cecilia, and a Sermon

I have good memories of singing the Howells Hymn to St. Cecilia at RSCM Courses: for example, this. Also this.

Here is a recording from the cathedral choir of Haderslev, a city of some 21,000 in southern Denmark., by a fine large choir of men and boys. This is a better performance than the ones by English-speaking choirs.

It is for the likes of this that I have grown to love YouTube: there are magnificent performances of choral and organ music that one would never otherwise encounter. They are almost never the YouTube items with hundreds of thousands of views. A few hundred is more likely.

But here is one that does indeed have over sixty thousand views: the Benjamin Britten Hymn to St. Cecilia, on a poem by W. H. Auden, performed by the Cambridge Singers and John Rutter.

Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions
To all musicians, appear and inspire:
Translated Daughter, come down and startle
Composing mortals with immortal fire.

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As for C.S.L.: Seeking to read something by this gentleman who shares November 22, I settled on "Prince Caspian." The Narnia books were not part of my childhood, and I have not read any more than "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," which was the topic of a Vacation Bible School in our parish some years ago. I started "Prince Caspian" on the bus this morning, and it is a delight.

Here is the "sermon" that I delivered at the end of that Bible School:

"This has been a special week for me. I hope it has been equally special for you. But now, it is time to let our experiences of Narnia blend into the experiences of our daily lives. This morning, I saw a young deer run across a field, and I thought of our friend Mr. Tumnus. I have never met anyone quite like Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, but the next time I see a beaver, or a beaver's house, I will not see it as I did before. Thank goodness, I have never seen the White Witch, but I have felt her spell at times.

"You see, we cannot stay in Narnia. Our journeys into Narnia and other places of the imagination such as Hogwarts, the Hundred Acre Wood, the Shire of the Hobbits -- are meant to strengthen us for our lives here. We must return to plain old [name of our city], and the rest of this mundane world -- a world that is sometimes perplexing and dangerous, but also full of beauty and grace, for its Creator lavished much care on its making and gave his life to redeem it.

"There will be times when we realize that we are Lucy and we are Edmund, and perhaps Peter and Susan. Or there may be times when we are the White Witch, or the evil creatures who followed her. There is no doubt in my mind that Aslan is with us here just as much as he was in Narnia. We know him here by another name.

"We should return from Narnia with new insight into what it means to be a Christian in this world. We are called to proclaim a new kingdom, to live as Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve, all of us children of a heavenly Father, because this story, the one WE live in, is real. The Professor's friend Mr. Tolkien wrote about the sort of story that we have heard this week and compared it to the Christian story: Here is a paraphrase of some of what he wrote:

The Birth of Christ is the 'happy ending' of Man's history. The Resurrection is the 'happy ending' of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy.... There is no tale ever told that we would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.

But in God's kingdom the presence of the greatest does not depress the small. Redeemed Man is still man. Story, fantasy, still go on, and should go on. The Gospel, the Evangelium, has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the 'happy ending.' The Christian has still to work, with mind as well as body, to suffer, hope, and die; but he may now perceive that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed... All tales may come true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and as unlike the forms that we give them as Man, finally redeemed, will be like and unlike the fallen creature that we know.

"Here we are, back on this side of the wardrobe door. We are fed now at this Table with the food that will sustain us on a new adventure. We move on toward a meeting with the Lord of all kingdoms. Though it is tempting at times to look back and long for the good times of the past rather than facing the unknown road ahead, we should recall the words of the Professor to the children at the end of the book, after their return from Narnia when they came to him to apologize for losing the four coats from the wardrobe:

"Yes, of course you'll get back to Narnia again someday.... But don't go trying to use the same route twice. Indeed, don't try to get there at all. It'll happen when you are not looking for it."

Office 2013

Our parish recently updated our copies of Microsoft Office to the new 2013 version. In the new version of Word, I could not at first so much as cut-and-paste into our church bulletin, and ran aground on this fact as I was trying to fix something for the secretary, with five minutes before I had to run to catch the transit bus. Even opening a document was counter-intuitive.

I was not happy.

I have ill will toward Microsoft, for I remember Netscape, which was illegally destroyed by Microsoft and their Internet Explorer, with a slap-on-the-wrist legal settlement all that Microsoft had to pay for their misdeeds. I remember also the Lotus SmartSuite office package, at one time second in market share to Microsoft Office, and ruthlessly crushed sometime around 2000 or 2001 – until then, the spreadsheet part of SmartSuite, Lotus 1-2-3, had been the industry standard,and the rest of the suite was superior to the Microsoft equivalents. For my personal work, I continue to use Lotus Word Pro, Approach, and Organizer by preference to any newer alternatives. In both cases (Netscape and Lotus), Microsoft won in spite of inferior software. It was all marketing and legal shenanigans. This has been their standard operating procedure from the outset, and it has made Bill Gates a billionaire.

But I have to use Microsoft Word in the church office to be compatible with the others, especially on the church bulletin, where my work is a significant factor.

This afternoon's work on the bulletins, just completed, was a breakthrough. Finally, I was able to do it efficiently, in about an hour's time as opposed to the half-day or more that it had taken me the first couple of weeks. And I must grudgingly admit that it is Good Software.

M.W., on whom all of us in the office rely as our Resident Computer Geek (and I mean that as a compliment), commented the other day that Office 2013 is “like Apple.” That fills me with warmth and cheer; it is not that Microsoft finally had a good idea; instead, they realize that Apple is better and are shamelessly copying them.

I believe that Microsoft is on the decline. They missed on tablet computing, where the dominant operating system is Android; they missed on cell phones. All they have left is their stranglehold on the office workplace, and they have powerful competition there from OpenOffice, which is free and open-source. If the office computer does not have to run Microsoft Office, there is no reason for it to run a Microsoft operating system and to pay the “Windows tax” on every computer. And if Microsoft loses the office market, they are dead.

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A Netscape footnote: My first internet web browser was Netscape Navigator, and I loved it. They had an outstanding e-mail interface, which I also loved. Both are gone. But Netscape was instrumental in the founding of Mozilla, and Firefox is still very much on the scene, s their influence has not disappeared.

Chewing on the Psalms

Here is an essay on Psalmody by Graham Kendrick, a British songwriter/worship leader whom I highly respect – and all the more after reading this.

Some quotes from the essay:

One of the strongest arguments for using the Psalms is both simple and profound – it was what Jesus did. The Psalms were Jesus' prayer book, songbook and meditation manual, and if he needed them how much more do we? The Christian community was early convinced that he continues praying them through us as we pray them: "we recite this prayer of the Psalm in Him, and He recites it in us." [Augustine].

"The Psalter knows that life is dislocated. No cover-up is necessary. The Psalter is a collection over a long period of time of the eloquent, passionate songs and prayers of people who are at the desperate edge of their lives" [Praying the Psalms, Walter Bruggemann, p10, Authentic media.]

How do we pray the psalms? One of the best ways is simply to read them out loud, but not in a detached, cerebral way. The book of Psalms begins with a promise that the person who meditates in the law of the Lord is like 'a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.' That is quite a promise. Meditation sounds like a purely mental activity, but according to Eugene Peterson:
"Meditate [hagah] is a bodily action; it involves murmuring and mumbling words, taking a kind of physical pleasure in making the sounds of the words, getting the feel of the meaning as the syllables are shaped by larynx and tongue and lips. Isaiah uses this word 'meditate' for the sounds that a lion makes over its prey [Isaiah 31:4]." [Eugene Peterson, Answering God]
The Psalms spring to life when we engage with them physically – try it!

This last is important: “taking a kind of physical pleasure in making the sounds of the words.” I submit that this is what we are doing in choral rehearsal when we work on the Psalms, and that the addition of music (and physical pleasure in making it) is a significant part of the spiritual benefit. The Psalms have always been primarily music to be sung, not just texts on a page.

Rehearsal of Psalmody is difficult. I normally put it at the beginning of the choral rehearsal while we are fresh, but even so it can be a challenge. Can we bring ourselves to the level of discipline – communal listening, care for intonation in the plainsong tones, shaping phrases, careful diction – that the Psalms demand of us? If we can, we are better prepared to rehearse the anthems on our list. And over time, we are perhaps better people from doing this work with diligence.

As long-time readers will know, I have been reading the Psalms in Hebrew for about three years when I pray the Office at home. Not singing them; I do not know how. Even more than in English, it seems impossible to read the texts without doing it aloud, or at least moving lips and tongue and whispering to make the beautiful strong consonants of the Language of God. At church, I mostly sing the Psalms from the Plainsong Psalter (Church Publishing, edited by James Litton), which follows the text of the 1979 American BCP. And of course we sing them as a choir at the Sunday Eucharist, and (to Anglican Chant) at our First Sunday Choral Evensongs. I would account the two methods of reading in Hebrew, or singing in English, to be equal in benefit for me, with reading in English a distant third.

I believe that the physicality of meditating on God's Word applies also to the rest of the Old and New Testaments. We would do well to read the Scriptures aloud whenever possible, and to do so from a translation that “reads well.” Not all of them do.

My favorite, which I never fail to mention given opportunity, is the Authorized/King James Version. But there may be others that would be suitable.

[Thanks to Fr. Tim who, if I remember rightly, linked to this essay in his blog a couple of years ago. I saw it in my list of bookmarks and re-read it today.]

election results: friendship trumps money

Despite all the money the Koch brothers and their “Americans for Prosperity” poured into our city council election, their four candidates were trounced. Their candidate for mayor got only 27% of the vote; none of their three council candidates got any more than 25%.

In my previous posting, I expressed surprise that the AFP had not resorted to personal attacks: as it transpired, they saved that for Monday, the day before the election. Their mailing-of-the-day featured photos of the incumbent council members and proclamation of the tax breaks they had given themselves as council members. True, in a way: their taxes were reduced. But so were everyone else's, by exactly the same rate; it was an across-the-board reduction in property taxes, normally the sort of measure beloved of “fiscally conservative” groups such as AFP.

But the direct mailings, the painting of our town as a little Detroit, the half-truths, the robocalls, the blizzard of advertising – all of it was to no avail.

I spent the day as election chair for the smallest of the six city precincts, sworn to “prevent fraud, deceit and abuse in the conduct of this election” along with my two co-workers at the polling place. It quickly became clear that the turnout would be heavy, and that we would run out of ballots. I called this in to the county auditor's office, with increasing desperation as we dwindled to less than a score of ballots by midday. Just in time, a delivery of forty-eight more ballots arrived, followed by a second delivery in the late afternoon, after the auditor's office had printed another 1800 ballots to be divided among the six precincts. They were needed: it was a record turnout, higher than either of the last two presidential elections.

One other thing became clear: one of the non-AFP candidates lived in our precinct, and it seemed like every voter on her street and the neighboring streets were coming out to vote, a steady stream of them all day long. In the end, she gained the last of the three open council seats by a margin of about 150 votes. This lady was a traditional candidate: a thirty-year resident of the town, a “soccer mom” who put all her children through the local schools and was active in parent-teacher organizations and civic activities. Every time in the last twenty years or more that there has been a community drive or festival or event or need for volunteers, she has been there, working alongside others to do the grinding (and often unappreciated) hard work that undergirds such activities.

And in this election, that trumped the outside money. Her neighbors and friends came out and voted for her. It was as simple as that.

Sunday night and the footsteps of Advent

(2 am) This day has been long; youth choir sang at the 8:45 service, with the adults at the 11:00 Choral Eucharist. Then, choral evensong at 5 pm.

The problem was that with evensong done, we must begin work on Advent music this Wednesday, and I had not selected much of it. The Lessons and Carols service is planned (though it needs a bit of adjustment; one of our anthems has proven to be too difficult for us), but not the Sunday morning music, nor the First Sunday Evensong.

So, I started next Sunday's bulletins, part of my normal Sunday evening work. That took me to about 10 pm. After that, the anthems for the morning Eucharists came easily enough, and there are, after tonight, some nice things on the schedule, some that will likely surprise everyone (such as a Jeremiah Ingalls fuging tune for Advent I).

The Advent Evensong on December 1? Not so much. With at least two of our key singers gone (it is Thanksgiving weekend), whatever we sing must be easy. There will be just one tenor. I pencilled in the Vaughan Williams Mag and Nunc, which works well as an SAB piece, or even unison in a pinch -- bless you, RVW, for your kindness to practical musicians! The Ayleward Responses will be a stretch, but about as suitable as anything in our repertoire other than the basic plainsong version in the hymnal. Psalms for the first evening are 6, 7, and 8. But what about an anthem? I puzzled over this for quite a while. The lessons are dark, as befits Advent I: the first chapter of Amos, where the poor are sold for a pair of shoes, and I Thessalonians 5 - "when they shall say, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape."

I had decided to simply do a hymn, and was looking through some of my books... and (by this time, about 12:30 am) happened on a text by Shirley Erena Murray, one of the great hymn authors of our time: "There is no child so small," found in her book "Touch the earth lightly." But the tune will not do. It is a nice tune by Amanda Husberg, whom I have met at Hymn Society conferences and greatly respect -- but it is sweet and Christmasy. There is nothing sweet about this text:

There is no child so lost,
no refugee so nameless
that God will leave us blameless,
who share no care or cost.
(copyright 2008, Hope Publishing Company)

A tune came to me, just like that. I had it written down within about two minutes. I am tired, barely able to stay awake. But I know better than to walk away from something like this. And it seemed to want more than just a hymn setting, so I sketched out an anthem setting (two-part, remembering our lone tenor), in the process entirely discarding the first harmonization I had done, but finding nothing that I wanted to modify about the tune itself. To my delight and surprise, it even works as a canon, which will be one of the stanzas.

That took me to about 1:45. And it was clear what needed to happen for the other music: as prelude, the strange Bach setting of Nun komm der Heiden Heiland "a due bassi" (for two basses), and as closing hymn, "Creator of the stars of night."
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I have fallen into the trap of writing about politics and not about music. That is because I have been thinking too much about these things. It is pointless, and I repent.