RSCM Report: an End and a Beginning

Wa wa wa Emimimo,
Emiloye.
Wa wa wa Alagbara,
Alagbarameta.
Wao wao, wao.
Emimimo.

(Traditional hymn in the Yoruba language, which is spoken by some thirty million people mostly in Nigeria and Benin. We sang this at the Course. Rough translation: Come, Holy Spirit. Come, almighty Spirit.)

The Lord's Day

Today's service was better. It was the Mass in the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis, with the Archbishop as celebrant. From our position, crowded on risers behind the High Altar and reredos, near the organ console, some of us could see the procession coming down the long aisle, and the clouds of incense as the Archbishop censed the Altar. It was definitely my kind of church service.

I love the elegance of the liturgical texts in English which the Roman Catholics use nowadays, much improved from the former versions and better than anything the Episcopalians have produced since 1928. I love the clarity of liturgical action – everyone knows when to kneel and stand and cross themselves and how to take communion, which they seem to manage without the multiple options and long explanations that we appear to need in our parish.

But I did not love the music, beyond what we sang. In the time of Pope Benedict, the door was open (at least slightly) for us to sing the choral settings of the Ordinary that are the crown jewels of the Catholic musical tradition, alongside the Gregorian Propers. Both were entirely absent today; I gather that in this place, choral settings of the Ordinary are now forbidden. Instead, the people get woefully pedestrian stuff to sing.

Still, it was Church, and a symbol of the unity that is ours in the Spirit, though not yet fully visible. This year for what I think was the first time, provision was made for the Catholics among us to have the Blessed Sacrament; servers came back to the choir, and the most emotional part of the whole service for me was watching one of the young choirmen take communion. I used to think badly of the Romans for closing communion to Anglicans and Protestants; I have come around to the opinion that they are right.

We sang well, with most of our music during Communion, and we said our farewells. It is always hard; we hope to see one another again next year (July 18-24, already inscribed on my calendar), but some will be absent and we know that as we part; it may be a long time before we meet again.

I will miss these people.

Afterword: July 29

What if, in the high, restful sanctuary
That keeps the memory of Paradise,
We're followed by the drone of history
And greed's poisonous fumes still burn our eyes?
Disharmony recalls us to our work.

(Wendell Berry, “This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems” Counterpoint Press, 2014. Copyright 2014.)


Liberation from the dominant technocratic paradigm does in fact happen sometimes, for example.... when the desire to create and contemplate beauty manages to overcome reductionism through a kind of salvation that occurs in beauty and in those who behold it. An authentic humanity... seems to dwell in the midst of our technological culture, almost unnoticed, like a mist seeping gently beneath a closed door. Will the promise last, in spite of everything, with all that is authentic rising up in stubborn rebellion? (Francis I, “Laudato si,” paragraph 112)

In parallel with my travels Eastward and the Course, I have been reading these two documents: the poems by Wendell Berry and the encyclical letter of the Holy Father. The cross-currents between them, and between them and my surroundings, have been fascinating.

Among other gifts, they have helped me return to my Real World, of 6:13 am bus rides crowded and uncomfortable, of chores at home and work, of staff meeting and responsibilities and e-mails (which I entirely avoided while on the road and at the Course). And the news of the world, and the political candidates, and the continuing oppression of the poor and extravagance of the rich.

“Disharmony recalls us to our work.”

On Sunday afternoon, I was the last person from our Course to leave the Basilica. I was not leaving until Jeffery and Diana's group from the Choir School and others sharing their chartered bus were safely on their way; I remembered last year's scramble and was not about to leave them alone in a strange city without at least a friend on hand with a car.

I was in no hurry, so I had notions of going back in to look around and pray. But by now, the next Mass was underway so I could not get into the church. I walked around the outside and conversed with a poor man, who seemed deranged. “They threw me out of that place,” he told me, pointing to the church. “I'm just a poor homeless guy. And I am a Catholic, have been all my life.” Rudy (for that was his name) told me about going to Catholic school and much more.

I have no doubt whatsoever that the ushers at the Basilica asked him to leave for very good reason; we have people who show up in our parish on Sunday mornings that we likewise must ask to leave our property. If they are going to panhandle, they must remain on the public sidewalk. And at bottom, panhandling was what Rudy was doing. I gave him $10 and prayed with him, which is much easier than it would have been back home – where, if you give someone $10, they are back tomorrow wanting $20. I have learned this by experience.

He is a child of God, and I am determined to treat him and people like him that way. I cannot often help financially because I am not rich. But I know someone who has no lack of resources and I can ask Him to help people.

He has a lot of work to do, and not just with poor people. There are people who are sick, or frightened, or filled with hatred, or lonely, or overworked and desperate... and He has time for them all, and loves them all, every one.

But some of that must happen through us. As the Holy Father wrote, part of what is going on is our struggle against the “dominant technocratic paradigm” which kills and destroys. And part of that struggle involves what we have done this week. We have engaged in a thoroughly counter-cultural act: we have sung together, which is an un-technological and authentic activity. We have “sung like human beings” and thus created Beauty – there were moments during the rehearsals when the trebles were singing the Hänsel and Gretel that it was almost more beautiful and good and holy than I could bear.

"Will the promise last, in spite of everything, with all that is authentic rising up in stubborn rebellion?"

------------

So far, I have continued the Little Offices. During the Course, I carried my little green Gideon's New Testament with Psalms (KJV) which was given to me outside my school when I was perhaps ten years old. I have only now learned the true value of it, for with the Psalter, one is fully equipped for the Office at any time and place, if the Collects are not needed; what I did was free prayer instead of the Collect. Whenever we had a break, or a transition with a little bit of time, I prayed an Office.

The real challenge is now, back at home and work. I did say the Office after staff meeting, and as expected it put my work into an entirely different frame. And I have said the Offices at other times, aiming particularly for the transitions between one task or group of tasks and the next. It is a start.

And now, I must step away from the Music Box for a time. Today's realization of how much I must do before First Rehearsals, four weeks from today, was sobering.

May the blessings of God be with you all, and keep on singing.

RSCM Report: Love one another

Love one another with a pure heart fervently: see that ye love one another. (I Peter 1:22, from the Wesley anthem)

Thursday and Friday
By this time, we have established a routine: Matins, Breakfast, Rehearsals, More Rehearsals, Dinner, Rest Period, Yet More Rehearsal, Activities, Supper, One Last Rehearsal, Vespers. It is exhilarating to sing this much, and to frame the day with the major Offices prayed in community.

But it comes to an end at Friday noon. After dinner, we car-pooled to the two churches for onsite rehearsals, and a relaxed evening: pizza and a movie for the choristers, a dinner for the adults.

The Thursday evening choristers' activity is the event formerly known as the Gentlemen's Game, now the Game of Champions. On this night, to my complete surprise and delight, they named the playing area for the Game after me.

Saturday: The Feast of St. James, Apostle and Martyr

Almighty God, who after the creation of the world didst rest from all thy works and sanctify a day of rest for all thy creatures: Grant that we, putting away all earthly anxieties, may be duly prepared for the service of thy sanctuary, and that our rest here upon earth may be a preparation for the eternal rest promised to thy people in heaven; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (A Collect for Saturday: BCP p. 56)

After the work of the week, we had a Sabbath of rest. Breakfast was an hour later than usual, the morning's rehearsal was relaxed and less than an hour, and the afternoon was largely free until the evening choral service.

For the first time at any RSCM Course of my thirty-odd years' experience, the service was not Choral Evensong or Choral Vespers (following Roman Catholic or Lutheran usage). The majority of our choristers are not Episcopalians, and there has been a desire for the course repertoire to be more practical, instead of spending much of our rehearsal time on Preces and Responses, Psalmody, and the Evening Canticles.

Thus, we sang a service of Lessons and Carols, working through the liturgical year. For the continuing prosperity of this Course and the RSCM in America more generally, this might be for the best. But for me, it felt like a concert. Yes, there were readings; yes, there was spiritual content, and our choral music was related to the readings and the liturgical seasons. But I found my heart pretty well detached from it.

Still, there were three things that for me made it worthwhile, and taught me some lessons:

1. The Basics – Posture, Space, Breath, Attitude or Connection. It was a forceful lesson to me; when my heart is not in it, I can at least maintain technique and seek to do the best I can for the sake of God's glory, the music, and my fellow choristers. I did not want to let them down. That leads to:

2. The People – I have sought to describe my feelings about this in the sidebar to the left of this Music Box:

I look “for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). I hope to follow him as long as this life lasts, and be granted mercy when I see him face to face. I hope to sing his praises forever, alongside the choristers I have worked with in this life and alongside every creature in heaven and on earth.

On this day, I was surrounded by choirmen, some of them (such as Weezer and Michael) whom have been my friends over the years, others whom I have watched and heard mature in my own choir (Mike, Tom, Max), or the Course (Eddie, Manuel, Spencer), others who are newer to me (Andrew and Thomas, who were next to me).

I could look further to the right and see Alice, and two rows up from me, YiYing and Greta, all of them at their first Course from our parish. Across the way were Caleigh on the end of the row and Lucy a few seats in, the two of them flawless in their focused attention and musicianship all week, so much so that I am a little bit in awe of them. And in the back row, Jenna, whom I have watched grow from a small girl to an adult, and beside her three of my best friends: Nora, Judith, Debbie.

Singing together in the divine Presence is one of the chief activities of Heaven. When we rehearse intensively and sing as we have done this week, with the context of relationships built from this work binding us into one, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. I did not on this day sense it in the choral music (excepting the two trebles-only pieces and the duet by Natalie and Bryn in the Wesley anthem), but I could see it in the faces of my friends and choristers, and hear it in the voices of the choirmen around me. There have been times when I hope that I have been able to assist and carry some of these men; now, they carried me.

3. The Postlude – I have always been emotional at the RSCM Choral Evensongs. Not this year – until Doug O'Neill, the course Organist, launched into the Final from the Symphonie Romane of Charles Marie Widor.

I play this piece. That gives me the credentials to state that Doug's performance was extraordinary. I was, at last, overwhelmed – which was perilous, for I was the page turner. But that allowed me to be at his side as he played – and, I suspect, played beyond himself as we all hope to do and rarely achieve.

RSCM Report: The grass withereth...

Wednesday: The Feast of St. Mary Magdalene

For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away. But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. (I Peter 1:24-25, from the anthem “Blessed be the God and Father” by Samuel Sebastian Wesley, sung at the Course)

Overnight, several adults and choristers were taken ill with a stomach bug, eliciting heightened attention to hand washing and sanitation. I hope that it spreads no further. It added focus to my prayers through the day for those that are missing at least one day of the Course, possibly more.

Mary Magdalene knew a lot about sickness of body and mind, and she cleaved to the One who cast out her demons. All four Gospels affirm that she was the first to know of the Resurrection, and the first to bear the news to others, and through them to the world. It was not the angels, pure and unspotted by the ailments of flesh; it was not any of the Apostles. It was Mary, who was like us – imperfect, broken in body and spirit, but saved by grace. It is still in this manner that the power of God comes into the world. He told St. Paul and the rest of us: “My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” (II Corinthians 12:9)

Mr. Walker's watchword for the day was “Sing like a human being.” By that, he meant to shape phrases and individual notes with intelligence and heart; I use the word “Shape” to indicate the same. But it also means singing not from perfection but from weakness. It is hard to understand this, especially when it is one's own weakness, bodily and otherwise. How can this manifest the power of God?

Upon reflection, I could sense it in the singing of some of the choristers whom I know well, young and old. For a variety of reasons, it does not come easily to them, yet they persevere. And by so doing, by singing like the human beings that they are and struggling to get it right, the Song is all the more beautiful and precious in the ears of God, who listens to the thoughts and groanings of the heart.

It is well for adults to remember what it was like to be, say, thirteen years old. For most of us, it was a miserable time that we would not care to repeat. And it is well to consider that some children bear burdens that would flatten any of us without the grace and mercy of God – illnesses with interminable visits to doctor after doctor, perhaps strife between parents, bullying at school from more powerful students or even teachers, possibly abuse from adults whom the child sees no way to escape.

In a choir we bring all of these things together, and we sing.

The ultimate example is of course the One who fell three times under His burden and was then nailed to it and left to die. How could this manifest the power of God?

But it does.

RSCM Report: Followers of the Lamb

Tuesday, July 21

O brethren, ain't you happy,
O brethren, ain't you happy,
O brethren, ain't you happy,
Ye followers of the Lamb
(from a Shaker song, which we sang at the Course)

For years, I have attempted to teach choirs the Three Basics, a concept which I learned at an RSCM Course years ago:

Posture
Space (or "Inside Smile" as Mr. Walker puts it)
Breath (Mr. Walker's short-hand reminder: "Ribs")

Mr. Walker teaches this, using the slightly different terms noted above. Posture is obvious, and essential for a singer (and, like the others, beneficial to health more generally). Space is primarily space for the sound to develop, mostly by means of proper alignment of the larynx and soft palate; said alignment is easily created by the Yawn-Sigh (which places the larynx) and the sensation of an "inward smile," which raises the soft palate. Mr. Walker's method of teaching good breathing was new to me; by the image of hands on the lower ribs and spreading the fingers with inhalation -- then keeping the "spread" ribs as one exhales and sings -- the singer gains a sense of erect ribcage during exhalation and no involvement of the shoulders whatsoever in breathing. For a quick reminder he would often say "Ribs" as we inhaled just before starting a phrase.

He adds a fourth Basic, which I intend to use: Attitude.

Back at the Choir College, Dr. Flummerfelt described it as Connection, and I will probably use that word, though Attitude needs less explanation. When singing, are you connected to the text and musical line with all of your being? Or are you going through the motions? It might be possible for instrumentalists to sometimes get away with the latter, but the voice is so thoroughly a window into the soul that it is immediately obvious if the singers are not Connected -- and, if the other basics are in place and the group has done its homework, Connection makes it possible for the song to touch the hearts of the listeners. This will never happen if the hearts of the singers are not likewise touched by the Song and absolutely committed to it.

Following the afternoon rehearsal, the choristers played kickball and the adult directors gathered to share ideas. These sessions are part of every Course and I always learn from them. From today's work (and from Mr. Walker's work throughout the week) I carry a renewed determination to teach the choirs to Read Music, which is mostly sight-singing (or at least singing correctly at "second sight" as some of the old Chorister Training materials put it, a phrase that I think came from Martin How). Mr. Walker described the reading of vocal music as "reading two languages at once" -- the musical notation, and the words, with the eyes going up and down between the two even as they go left to right across the page. It is very difficult for some, and it is not easy for anyone. He did not take it this far, but the up-and-down and sideways motion is a part of the challenge of score reading. For something written for large orchestra with chorus, the whole page might be one system, with winds on top, brass, strings, voices, perhaps a continuo line under that. The conductor must scan up and down while her eyes go across the page -- which might be at high speed in an allegro or presto -- and account for transposing instruments and C-clefs. It is not a skill which I possess to any high degree, and not something that is learned overnight.

From the week, I hope to carry home a commitment to a higher standard of work. But I know that I come home every year from RSCM with such ideas, and the choir ultimately beats me down, especially the adults. I can tell them to sit tall, and some of them will look at me and not move a muscle. And eventually I give up and accept their standard. The best I can hope is that over a lifetime of work, I might move them along a little bit, and if I consider my fifteen years in my current position, I think that there has possibly been some slight progress. Maybe.

And for the young people, I can bring some of them here.

Years ago, a young husband and wife sang in our adult choir back in the parish. Their two preschool children -- one of them hardly past infancy -- would sit in the rehearsals or play in the back of the choir room. One of them would sometimes sit on the floor at the tail of the rehearsal (grand) piano where I was directing from the keyboard; she would "direct" the choir to the delight of all present. At least sometimes, they would process with us into evensong, the younger in her father's arms, the older holding her mother's hand.

But they moved to another state. One of the things that distressed me, and continued to grieve me in the succeeding years, was that these girls -- the two sisters joined by a third, for whom I stood as a godparent -- would never sing in our Youth Choir, or come to an RSCM Course.

And now, they are here. The three girls and their mother are at this year's Course. Tonight at Vespers, I was able to watch the eldest, who is singing beside one of the strongest high school trebles. She and her sister have been in our Youth Choir this year. The youngest, still too young to participate officially in the Course or even our Youth Choir (she joins this fall), was on this night with the trebles, out on the far end of the Cantoris front row beside C., singing her first RSCM evening service.

I did not think that I would ever see this.

RSCM Report: When at night I go to sleep

Monday, July 20
I drove three junior-high-age choristers to St. Louis, Todd Hall, and the Course; M. beside me in the passenger seat, C. and L. in the back. For much of the five-hour trip, M. quietly played games on his phone. The girls in the back talked almost the entire time and regaled us with a CD recording by Taylor Swift, of whom I had read but whose music I had not encountered. (Yes, I am pretty thoroughly detached from popular culture.) They knew all of the words to all of the songs and sang along with the best parts, adding harmony lines above the recorded vocals that were better than the original.

I found myself recalling Jennifer and Meredith at that age, happily chattering with one another in the back seat. And Mark and Mike, again at that age, talking and playing games the whole way down. As I get older, the years increasingly run together.

With some, we sing for a week; with some, for years,
but the beauty of the song is not measured by duration...

The Course is full to capacity this year, some seventy persons, and the first rehearsal is terrific. At this first rehearsal, we learn some warmups from Andrew Walker, our director for the week, and an African song that would quickly become a favorite, all before opening our folders. For the short Vespers service, the trebles sing the Prayer from Hänsel and Gretel:

When at night I go to sleep,
Fourteen angels watch do keep:
Two my head are guarding,
Two my feet are guiding,
Two are on my right hand,
Two are on my left hand,
Two who warmly cover,
Two who o'er me hover,
Two to whom 'tis given
To guide my steps to heaven.

I watch the treble choristers as they sing: the ones from our parish, several of them at their first Course, the many others. They are engaged, focused – and the sound is beautiful: strong, already confident after just one evening's rehearsal.

Afterwards, I stand in the parking lot outside Blackburn Lodge watching the sun set, the air heavy with cicadas.

It is a good beginning.

(To be continued)

the Road goes ever on

July 12: The Lord's Day

I head into the District, with hopes of attending the 8:00 Mass at Ascension and St. Agnes on New York Avenue. It is a fine Anglo-Catholic parish which I know from a previous visit, easily recognizable by its Episcopal Red door. But today, I can find no place to park.

I move on, aiming to follow US 50 downtown by the monuments to Lincoln and Washington, and across the Potomac into Virginia, but I soon find myself on Massachusetts Ave. NW instead, in the embassy district. Approaching Wisconsin Avenue, I see an imposing pseudo-Gothic building on the right; it proves to be the National Cathedral. “This will do,” I tell myself, and I easily find a parking space on Wisconsin near St. Alban's Church, the parish church that was there long before the Cathedral. I check the sign for service times at St. Alban's and note that I am late for one, early for the next, so I wander over to the Cathedral, intending to look around for a half-hour or so and go back to St. Alban's. I am put off by the notice of a $10 admission fee and almost turn back, but I also see that I could make it to their early service without being impossibly late, and I find upon entry that the $10 fee does not apply to Sunday worshippers.

The service is downstairs in the Bethlehem Chapel, a crypt-like room that seats about two hundred and is on this day about half full. To my delight, it is Rite One, with Eastward celebration (that is, the Celebrant joins the people in facing east, toward Jerusalem that is and that shall be). It is a solid and dignified Low Church liturgy with no bells, no kneeling or crossing of oneself. I am glad that I am here, rather than upstairs in the main church for the 10:00 service. As I depart (going through the upstairs nave) I listen briefly to the visiting choir and organist who are completing their preparations.

The authorities have supplanted the handsome high altar, barely visible in the distance, with a nondescript (but large) table on what looks to be a platform extending out into the crossing. Behind the table (which I prefer not to dignify by calling it an altar), the choir is seated on risers which run horizontally in front of the choir screen, mostly obscuring what is beyond. The real Altar and divided Choir are blocked off. Perhaps they open it up during the week for the tourists.

July 13-14: Monday and Tuesday

Having prayed at the graves of my father and mother on Sunday late and Monday early, I head westward for Iowa and what is now my home. It is a road I have often travelled and described on other occasions, a final opportunity for solitude and prayer.

One of my goals for the Camino was to form the habit of praying the Little Offices. I have come to where I do reasonably well with Matins and Evensong and Compline. I silently pray a Little Office upon first waking, before rising from bed; I described it towards the end of this essay.

But I have never managed to say the Noontime office regularly, nor the other Little Hours of the day, Terce and None. I am most often “too busy,” rushing from one task to the next. What a miserable excuse! These offices take five minutes or less, and I easily waste that much time every day. More: I suspect that were I to interpose them between tasks, I would no longer find myself to be rushing.

As a beginning, I determined to make them a part of my routine for the Camino. Whenever I stopped the car for a break, which was every hour or two, I stretched, said the Office with an eight-verse section of Psalm 119, a New Testament verse chosen pretty much at random, and a Collect, then did other things. If it was a fuel stop, I attended to that, moved the car, then stretched and prayed. After a while it did become habit, and I worked all the way through Psalm 119.

Afterword: July 15 and following

I arrived home Tuesday evening. Wednesday was a busy day of grocery shopping, errands, sorting ten days of mail and paying bills, washing the Toyota. And Thursday found me back at the church. I had come home early to begin work on a Beethoven transcription for Saturday's funeral, and it proved that I needed every bit of these three days to prepare it, along with the other music for Saturday and Sunday. But I did not feel like work, nor did I work efficiently – and that dratted time log will indicate it, with too many and too lengthy breaks.

Still, I have managed to continue with the Little Offices on Wednesday and the days back at the church. Every practice break this week, I stretch, use the bathroom, say the Office. Then back to the organ. If I can continue with this, it will be well, even if I do not succeed in carrying the pattern forward into office work (of which I have done little this week). Here too it would do me good to take better breaks – stretch, say the Office – instead of the pattern I fall into when I am stressed, which tends to involve more chocolate than is good for me.

The test will come when I have my next normal Tuesday, with its staff meeting and most often a list of Must Do Right Now tasks coming out of it, tasks that typically take the rest of the day. Can I insert a Little Office between the staff meeting and the first of these tasks? Can they not wait even five minutes?

For the Camino continues. The Toyota has done its part, taking me some 2500 miles, but the Road still lies ahead, its End glimpsed rarely and then only through the mists, dimly. And the Offices are one of the ways in which we catch these glimpses.

Although my time log is ugly, I have on the whole worked the balance of this week and the weekend with a better spirit and a greater awareness of the One who walks with us, telling us of Himself in the Scriptures and the faces of the people we meet. That is not something that can be measured on a sheet of fifteen-minute intervals.


Next up: the RSCM Course. I go to it this year with more worries than usual, or perhaps hopes more than worries, that our new choristers coming to their first Course will prosper, and that my friends back home will find rest from their labors and stresses.

I am grateful that I can entrust these young people, so precious to me, to the likes of Weezer and Michael and Eddie and Caitlin and Jennifer – and now Mike and Jenna. And Debra and Debbie and Kristin. And I am glad that, Lord willing, I will see these my friends tomorrow and sing with them.

the Great Roads, and a Sunken Lane

US 30 is one of the Great Roads, stretching from the boardwalk of Atlantic City to to the mouth of the Columbia River in the west. I drive eastward, the towns ever closer together, the buildings now often in the old Federal style of the early 1800's.

Mansfield, Ohio, about halfway across the state: the first Hill. But I am too busy to admire it, for the road has of a sudden become urban, crowded, and under construction. To my mind, this town of Mansfield marks the uttermost edge of the Midwest; I am entering the Rust Belt, the old industrial heartland centered on Cleveland and Pittsburgh. At Wooster, I leave US 30, dropping south on US 250 through Amish country, and on down a bit of Interstate 79 to the Ohio River, Parkersburg, and US 50. This is another of the Great Roads, from Ocean City and Assateague Island on the Maryland coast through the District of Columbia and westwards, eventually reaching Sacramento, California. I drive it through the forest-clad mountains of West Virginia as far as Clarksburg. Discouraged by traffic and construction (much of it truck traffic obviously related to the fracking industry, about which I will not here write), I turn north again, to Morgantown and Interstate 68.

Few people know the western part of Maryland, tucked between the Potomac River and the Mason-Dixon Line, a land of mountains and long fertile valleys. After two hours of white-knuckle high speed traffic on the Interstates, I look forward to the Maryland Welcome Center, just across the state line from West Virginia. It is early, still two hours until sunset, but seeing that the center is permanently closed due to state budget cuts, I worry about finding a place to lay my head further east. There have been other rest area closings on my journey, all of them appearing to be for lack of money, and the areas that are open have deferred a lot of maintenance.

Here, the rest area remains open; it is just the welcome center building that is boarded up. I stop for the day, claiming a picnic table up the hill behind the parking lot, looking out over the lake and river far below, the mountain ridges hazy and blue, three of them visible from here, one behind the other, all covered with forest. The hot afternoon settles into evening, the storm clouds that have trailed me for two days piling high in the west. I write, and eat a picnic supper. I begin Evensong, watching a curtain of rain approach in the valley. The rain comes while I am saying the Collects, driving me undercover into the Toyota. It proves to be a brief, intense squall; behind it, the clouds scatter, with the promise of a clear evening and a fine cool breeze.

I settle in for the night, listening to a CD of some of my own work, piano improvisations, and looking out over the mountains until they disappear in the darkness. A few stars appear in the sky.

July 8 - Wednesday

The rain returned after midnight, this time steady, settling in for a long stay. At dawn, the valley was entirely shrouded in mist, invisible.

Today is a short travel day, less than two hundred miles. But the temptation to Not Pray is present, as ever: Get Going!!!! Don't waste time here; you have miles to go. Matins is long enough, but the Litany as well?

Yes, the Litany; it is Wednesday.

As always, once I begin the Office, sitting in the Toyota with the rain drumming on the roof, it proves worthwhile. I find this to be more generally true, applying to any endeavor that takes a bit of effort – practicing, exercise, household chores. Starting is often the hardest part.

Matins and Litany completed, breakfast eaten, shaved and cleaned up in the rest area bathroom, I roll out, ending a fifteen-hour stay in this place.

No wonder my wife refuses to travel with me.

10:30 am – Sideling Hill, Maryland, on I-68.
This parallels US 40, the old National Road. It was a child of that most visionary of presidents, Mr. Jefferson. He obtained Congressional authorization for this road, which runs from Baltimore and points east across the Alleghenies to Indianapolis and St. Louis, fulfilling Jefferson's vision of a link between the Thirteen States and the new Louisiana Purchase.

The interstate climbs through an impressive man-made gap in the hill (there is a good photograph in the Wikipedia link), with a rest area near the top. Again, the exhibit center is permanently closed due to a “$280 million budget reduction package.” But the pedestrian bridge across the highway remains. I hike across to the westbound side, where the empty exhibit center remains, gradually crumbling from neglect, for there is something which I must revisit. There it is, down at the end of the parking lot, entirely ignored by the other travellers: the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial for the State of Maryland. It is a large native stone with a plaque, under some shade trees with a black POW/MIA flag and a magnificent view of the valley eastward, noting that this highway, Interstate 68, is dedicated to these Veterans.

It was here, in Vietnam, that we got seriously off-track. Our role in the Second World War, in which both of my parents served, was just, insofar as we can judge such things, and more just perhaps than we knew at the time, for the immensity of what the Nazis were up to did not become clear until the end. And Korea – it seemed equally just, for we were standing alongside a small country struggling to be free and find its own way in the world (as South Korea has in the years since). At first, Vietnam appeared to be another Korea. But it proved more complicated than that.

The Vietnam War ended with the fall of Saigon in 1975, forty years ago. The remaining veterans are old now, and will soon be gone (and I with them, for I am at the very tail end of that generation, the last birth-year of the draft lottery). But so long as I live, I will not forget.


I cannot pass so near without a stop at another place of memory: the Antietam Battlefield. I wrote of it here, on the anniversary of that fearsome day.

Today, I walk the Sunken Road, which was the center of the Confederate line. For a place that is so large in its significance to American history, its small size was surprising. It is an old farm lane sunk down under years of wagon traffic about six or seven feet below the neighboring fields, with a rail fence at the top, similar to an old county road on my farm, and hardly more than one or two hundred yards long. On September 17, 1862, the division of D. H. Hill, between 2000 and 2500 men, many of whom had already suffered from heavy fighting on the left flank of the army that morning, faced a frontal assault by some ten to twelve thousand Federals, all of them fresh and ready for battle.

After a terrible three-hour struggle, the Federals managed to gain a foothold at one end of the lane. From there they poured fire down the lane, breaking the Confederate position. Photographs such as this one, a few days later, showed the bodies of the Confederate soldiers “stacked like cordwood” in the lane. “We were shooting them like sheep in a pen,” one of the New York soldiers later wrote.

On this one day, more American soldiers fell than in the Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Mexican War combined.

A middle-aged woman who had been working as a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office, Clara Barton, had just the previous month gained permission to serve as a nurse on the front lines, where women had previously not been allowed. She was there at Antietam that day, and the events and suffering of that time started her on a path that led to the founding of the American Red Cross in 1881. That struggle involved her in arguments against those who maintained that such an organization was not needed because the United States “would never again face a calamity like the Civil War.” She knew better.

July 9-11

My mission for the week is a visit with my sister and her husband in suburban Maryland. I will say little of these days; they were quiet, and a renewal of such family ties as I have.

I had intended a visit to my cousins. All but one of them live within a ten-mile radius in southern West Virginia, an area that also includes my farm. A funeral scheduled for July 18 has lopped two days from the vacation, so I will see neither farm nor cousins.

But there is one other visit in West Virginia that I am not going to cancel.
(to be continued)

mi Camino (part one)

July 6: Jan Hus, Martyr

2:45 pm – Chenea, Illinois. I am in the town park, which shares its twelve-space parking lot with the Chenea Public Library, a cute little white frame building with black trim which might have been a two-room school or small church back in the day, now well-kept and neat – and on this day, busy. A steady traffic of teenagers and children come and go as I write, all of them on foot in this small town where one can easily walk from one end to the other.

Around here it it flat as far as the eye can see. I am headed due east on US 24, which makes a straight line from the Mississippi River at Burlington, Iowa across Illinois and most of Indiana, almost all the way to Fort Wayne. Often, the two-lane road stretches to the horizon with its utility poles alongside. Straight ahead.

On this, the first day of my vacation, I must let go.

Too much lies on my desk back in Iowa, where I “have left undone those things which [I] ought to have done” (BCP p. 41). “And there is no health in us,” as the old Prayerbook continues. I feel that, for sure.

Through May and June, I worked hard, alongside my dear fellow-laborers in Christ – choristers, staff colleagues. Student recitals, the chamber music festival, Vacation Bible School, to say nothing of the ongoing round of Sunday music, including three Principal Feasts. And now, a governing committee wants a daily accounting of our work for July, itemized in fifteen-minute segments and pigeonholed into assigned categories. Not May, not June. July – when I am taking my first extended vacation in two years, when there are no choral rehearsals (other than RSCM, where I am a chorister and not a director) – and most of all, when I am so worn out that I am not working efficiently. I do not know what the Powers that Be intend with this, but I am certain it is Not Good. I do not fear for myself: I am old, and they are welcome to fire me and see how things go in the aftermath. I do worry about the others, my friends who pour themselves out as an oblation to the LORD and are underpaid for their work as it is.

But I must let go.

One of my friends walked the Camino pilgrimage in France and Spain a few months ago; this is my Camino, this drive through the tidy little Midwestern towns and the vast fields of corn and beans. I breathe my prayer: “Deo... gratias...” mile after mile, the windows of the Toyota rolled down, watching the thunderclouds build in the hot afternoon.

9:15 (now Eastern Time, having left the Central Time Zone a while back). I sing Evensong in the parking lot of a Marathon gas station and truck stop, still on US 24, outside of Wabash, Indiana, standing by the Toyota and watching the sun set into the towering dark clouds to the west.

As the road crosses the Hoosier State, the terrain begins to be not so flat. At least in places, it is now rolling countryside. No genuine hills yet; they are still several hundred miles to the east. But there are now Trees, many more of them, green and beautiful. There are stretches of the road where it is entirely among them, no corn or beans in sight. The towns are closer together, too.

I had thought to stay the night here, but as darkness falls, the lot fills with pickup trucks, most of them old and rusty and all carrying tough-looking young men in their teens and twenties, gathering to hang out and drink.

One of them notices me quietly singing my prayers and reading Scripture, and comes over, asking about my Iowa plates. He proves to be a fine young man, and tells me about places to fish in the area, especially the local state park with its reservoir. Later, I recall camping there, perhaps ten or twelve years ago. I remember the sun rising in a clear sky over the lake, the birds singing.

But I move on.


July 7 – Tuesday

I landed at another Marathon station, this one in Markle, Indiana on US 224. I parked in the back corner of the lot and rested well.

Time was when I carried my tent and camping supplies. But I have learned that I am equally comfortable sleeping in the car, and it is much easier. No campground to find (often well off from the highway, and sometimes with excessive fees), no tent to set up and strike the next day – and carry in the car, often wet and dirty. Just park the car, move to the passenger seat, lean it back all the way, and sleep. There have been two occasions where I felt unsafe and moved on – but there have been campgrounds where I have felt equally unsafe.

At first light, I pray the little Office, get out of the car, and stretch. Behind the lot is a residential neighborhood, so I walk, needing the exercise. In a few blocks I am in the two-block downtown. The old buildings are still mostly well-kept, but many of the storefronts are vacant. A church, a post office, the library tucked into one of the storefronts, a couple of restaurants, a few shops.

At one end of town is the Veteran's Park, on a quarter-acre lot. I salute the flag and say a prayer, thinking of the Indiana farm boys from this and the neighboring township who died far from home, fighting foreign wars that were not of their making.

I honor the Stars and Stripes for the same reason that I honor the Stars and Bars of the Confederate States of America – I remember the men and women who fought under these banners.

By the time I return to the Marathon station, the lot is filling, and I am not a paying customer. I want to sing Matins, but it is clear that I should move on.

Through most of Ohio, US 30 is a fine four-lane divided highway, much less travelled than the busy I-70 which parallels it some ways further south. About 9 am, I stop at one of the full-scale rest areas on this road, near Lima. It proves to be a much better place to wash up and pray Matins, which I do in the back of the little park under a grove of buckeye trees, mixed with oaks. Buckeyes grow in West Virginia – there are some of them on my farm – but I don't recall seeing them further South or West. I am glad to be in their company, and that of an eagle who floats overhead for much of the time, riding the gusty winds of what looks to be an unsettled and possibly stormy day.

I am here for an hour and a half. This is why I travel – the long silences, the wind blowing in my ears, the wide flat fields in the early morning wet with dew, the Offices prayed outdoors for the most part, the times when I sit at a picnic table and write, as I am doing now.

There is a wholesome strength to these farm states of the upper Midwest that has not altogether disappeared. Compared to the South, the farmsteads are tidier, the houses and small towns are not so run down, the people seem to take pride in their communities and their work in a different way than what one sees in the South, or the cities of the Atlantic seaboard. When the United States falls apart someday, this region might be the seed for a new beginning.

It is time to move on.

Deep in my heart I do believe...

On this day, our parish had a service of readings and songs related to U.S. history, starting with part of the Declaration of Independence, including the Gettysburg Address, part of the letter written by Chief Seattle to the U.S. President, Dr. Martin Luther King's “I have a dream” speech, and concluding (this time) with part of the U.S. Supreme Court majority opinion, upholding the principle of same-sex marriage as a constitutional right. The Collect and Gospel for Independence Day then followed, and the Eucharist.

It is an interesting time to consider such things.

How does one begin such a service? I committed myself to an improvisation, and found it unusually difficult to even begin my work on it. With the patriotic music and themes that we were to hear, it would be all too easy to indulge in musical flag-waving.

That was easier in another time, and some have done it well:

The Star-Spangled Banner, as performed by Virgil Fox

Or this, a splendid and virtuosic piece by one the leading American composers of his generation:
Concert Variations on The Star-Spangled Banner (Dudley Buck, 1839-1909)
Performance: Adam Brakel, at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine in the City of St. Augustine, Florida.

Today was not the time, and I am certainly not the organist for such an approach. Truth be told, I am not especially proud of my country right now. The despicable shootings in a Charleston church and a series of church burnings across the South that have ensued have awakened old demons. And there are other old scars. I determined to begin with one of them, a reminder of the status of Native Americans. We were to sing the Dakota hymn “Many and great” after the Chief Seattle lesson, so I began with it, after an introduction that I hope suggested where I would eventually end up. That led to the tune Materna (“America the Beautiful,” which would shortly be the opening hymn), in minor, with “Many and great” continuing. Then, some development based on the Negro National Anthem, “Lift every voice and sing,” with the previous two tunes mixed in.

Finally, I got to what I wanted to say:

We shall overcome.
We shall overcome.
We shall overcome someday.
Deep in my heart,
I do believe
That we shall overcome someday.

I dropped a hint at about the 6:25 mark, as I had in the introduction. At about the 7:58 mark I began the great hymn of the Civil Rights movement. In my practice I had noticed that it could combine with Materna, so I put the latter in the pedals.

And that is what I think was needed as a beginning to this service, on this day.

Improvisation (organ): July 5, 2015
Photos: of Native American subjects (the old man is Chief Seattle), from the Civil Rights Movement, and from the Great Smokies National Park, a place I used to frequent.

------------
Footnote:
I am a Son of the South, and that has made the racial hatred of recent weeks all the more painful. The Christians who were martyred in Charleston were sons and daughters of the South, just as I am; the people whose churches have been burned are my brothers and sisters.

It has been discouraging to see the symbols of the Old South appropriated by some to represent their racism, their hatred of black people. And that is the worst of the old demons, now raging across our country as it did in the bad old days of Jim Crow and the Klan.

I revere the flag of the Confederate States of America because I remember the men who fought under it, from Lee and Jackson right on down to the handful of old men and boys who died in the defense of my home town. They were Americans too, but they believed that their duty was to defend their homes.

With all my devotion to the Union and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. I have therefore resigned my commission in the Army, and save in defense of my native State, with the sincere hope that my poor services may never be needed, I hope I may never be called on to draw my sword... (R. E. Lee, after having been offered the command of the Union armies, with promotion from colonel to major general. After considering the matter overnight, he declined the offer.)

The war is over. It has been over for one hundred and fifty years. We must continue to “bind up the wounds” of our country, as Lincoln phrased it near the end of his life.

So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that Slavery is abolished. I believe it will be greatly for the interest of the South. So fully am I satisfied of this that I would have cheerfully lost all that I have lost by the war, and have suffered all that I have suffered to have this object attained. (R. E. Lee)

There is still work to be done.