James Chisholm, Priest

Fr. Chisholm departed this life on September 15, 1855 and is commemorated today on the current Episcopal Calendar. Until this morning, he was unknown to me, just a name on the calendar.

You may read about him here. Or (mostly) in his own words at considerably more length (200-plus pages) here, in his memoirs.

Chisholm was from Old Virginia, where he served St. John’s Episcopal Church in Portsmouth, down in the flat Tidewater region of the state, a graduate of the Virginia Theological Seminary. By the accounts that we have, he was not an impressive person: bashful, delicate of constitution, weak.

When the yellow fever came to that part of Virginia in the summer of 1855, most of the clergy and physicians fled, along with the rich planters. But Fr. Chisholm stayed, alongside the Roman Catholic priest, Francis Devlin. The two of them did their best to care for the sick people, all of them poor, many of them Irish immigrants and black slaves, finding food for them, even digging their graves at times. About a quarter of the original population of Portsmouth died by the time it was over, above three thousand persons. That number included Fr. Chisholm, worn out from his work and not quite forty years old.

I have spent a while skimming parts of his daily journal during the fever; near the beginning, as it became clear what was happening and everyone who could fled the town, he wrote “Such a day of mortal panic and flight as today has been, I desire never to see again” (p. 100). It proved to be the last day that anyone was allowed in or out of the town. About this point he abandoned the journal; what remains after that is personal letters. In one of them, he writes:

My present condition surprises myself. I trust that I more than ever realize that ‘Eternal God is my refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.’ I am in His hands, to do with me what seemeth Him good. (p. 133)

What is most striking to me is that his work is not that of general benevolence, of the somewhat anonymous care for the sick and needy one finds after natural disasters, as important as that is. It is the care of people he knows well by name, children whom he baptized as infants, members of his parish, with “parish” defined in its proper state-church sense to include everyone living in the community, churchgoers or not, including the Roman Catholics. It is especially the suffering and death of the children than is grievous to him, as it would be to any pastor.

It is also striking that it never seems to have occurred to him that leaving his parish was a possibility. Never mind the other clergy doing exactly that; the idea of walking away from his people when they were in need was unthinkable. There is no hint that he felt at all courageous or special for staying in place.

The condition of our town is awful beyond conception. The eye must see; the ear must hear; the fancy can not furnish the deep, dark shadows of the picture. On Sunday, thirty-two deaths in Portsmouth; on Monday, twenty-one; yesterday, thirteen; today, by eleven o’clock, seventeen. The heartless language of the undertaker from whom I obtained this morning’s report, was, almost in a tone of exultation: “Oh! We’ll get it up to twenty before sunset!” (p. 132)

In February of that year, his wife had died, leaving him with two young boys. At the beginning of the pestilence, he had sent them away to stay with his brother, hoping for their safety. It was not to be: September 5 was the darkest of days for Chisholm. In short order that morning he received a letter from his brother with the news that one of the boys was dead. He began writing a letter in response, called away before he could finish to officiate at the burial of a young girl from his parish. While pronouncing the Committal by the open grave of the little girl, he was seized with the sudden chill that was the first sign of the disease. For some people, it proves to be a minor infection, over within a few days. For others, it enters a toxic phase as it did for Chisholm and so many of his parishioners; high fever, bleeding from mouth, eyes and nose, black vomit, severe dehydration, liver failure and jaundice (thus the “yellow” – the Spanish name is Vómito negro, “black vomit.")

In a final letter to his brother, he wrote (p. 145):

I look back upon my past life with sorrow and shame, when I remember how unworthily and unfaithfully it has been spent… my convictions, and emotions, and hopes, in approaching Him, as my refuge against the accusations of conscience, and the fear of death and judgement, find expression in the words of that hymn whose first and final stanzas are these:

‘Just as I am! Without one plea,
Save that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou biddst me come to thee,
O Lamb of God! I come.

Just as I am! Thy love unknown,
Has broken every barrier down:
Now to be thine, and thine alone,
O Lamb of God! I come.’

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Collect from the Common of Saints: Of a Pastor

O heavenly Father, Shepherd of thy people, we give thee thanks for thy servant James Chisholm, who was faithful in the care and nurture of thy flock, even unto death; and we pray that, following his example and the teaching of his holy life, we may by thy grace grow into the stature of the fullness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (BCP p. 196)

I have long revered Constance and her Companions, whose feast day was this past Saturday, September 9. Like Chisholm, they cared for the victims of a yellow fever epidemic, theirs in Memphis, Tennessee (1878). And like Chisholm, they died from the disease.

I do not know it as a fact, but I would suspect that Constance knew of Chisholm’s example. It may be that it strengthened her.

It may be that their examples may strengthen us.

Finish then thy new creation

“Play softly,” they told me. “Quiet background music,” while people prayed. Some for healing, back in the side chapel where a line of people formed; a dozen or so at the baptismal font with the priest, renewing their commitment to Christ. Some, sitting in the church, listening, praying. Many in other parts of the building and outdoors; one-on-one prayer with the bishop, walking a labyrinth, mindful coloring, writing of prayers.

For twenty minutes I was to play. Or twenty-five. Or more. However long it took. I was terrified. I could easily play random soft chords in a new-ageish manner and fill the time. But could I do better than that?

I came to view it as an examination. I have improvised preludes and postludes all summer and devoted all of my practice, such as it was, to this skill; have I made any progress? Sometimes it has gone well this summer; sometimes not so much. Could I now attempt a long-form improvisation in the manner of Mr. Jarrett? Obviously I will never have his virtuosity, but could I do something that would be worthy of the occasion, perhaps a channel of healing and prayer?

Well, I gave it a try. I played variations on Hyfrydol, which was to be the closing hymn a bit later in the service. With that much time, I could go pretty far afield. I consciously tried to avoid any clear statement of the tune, and kept it in minor for much of the piece. I sought to extract motives and work with them.

Always, there was the liturgical constraint: “Quiet background music.” That removed dynamics as a possibility for contrast and development and I had to rein in the ideas several times when they wanted to grow larger than would have been appropriate. The constraint mostly ruled out “fast” as well as “loud.”

I made a recording, but I am not going to post all of it; there is too much noise. That was a clue that I got it right; for most of the first fifteen minutes, the priest speaking quietly with people at the other end of the room from the microphone is louder than my playing. This is a good sign.

There was some good playing in it, and some that was not so good; if it were indeed an examination, I would give myself a C-plus and be content that it was not an F. [Edited 9/13 to add: I listened to the recording two more times; it was not so bad as I thought as I played, nor on first listening. Maybe a B instead of C plus.] (I am grateful to one of the jazzmen who used to work in our choir room, a saxophonist. He told a student: “Any improvisation where you don’t feel like you need to put a bag over your head and sneak out the back door is a success.” He is right about that.) The best part was not me: one of my tasks was to set up the key for the Skipperlings to sing “Long time traveler” after me. That is worth hearing, so I am posting the last eight minutes or so of the improvisation followed by their song. The selection starts softly, just before my return to the improvisation’s tonic of C after a long excursion to G flat and B, but it builds up (finally!) after the bishop returns, my cue that it is time to wrap things up.

And here is the closing hymn, on which the improvisation was based. My intent was for the violinist to play on the final stanza, doubling the descant; instead, he played for all three stanzas. That made the middle stanza, unaccompanied except for the violin, much better than what I had anticipated.

Lessons:
- The summer’s work was not entirely wasted, but there is much still to do. I am unable to convincingly organize twenty-five minutes of improvisation so that it sounds like a unified musical composition. Not for the first time, I am filled with admiration for how Mr. Jarrett can do this so well. The way to get there would be to do many more “practice runs,” with close attention to form. This is not directly useful for my proper duties, so it is unlikely to happen. I am still listening to his four-CD recording “A multitude of angels” and seeking to internalize it.
- There were a few weeks this summer where my organ improvisation was better than my work at the piano; I have posted a couple of these on SoundCloud. This was a goal, and I am happy to have reached it, even if the way I did so was with lame piano playing on said Sundays.
- I survived despair. There was a week when I became convinced that my improvisations were driving people away, keeping them from entering the church from the narthex until my noise-making was done. By “what some would call chance,” that very week I happened on one of Pressfield’s books: “Do the Work,” the sequel to his important book “The War of Art.” I must say that “Do the Work” is not as good of a book, and something of a waste of money – it is short, and mostly repeats material from “War of Art.” But some of the material unique to this book was exactly what I needed to drag me out of the Slough of Despond.
- Possibly the chief benefit of the summer’s work was to my accompaniment of congregational song. Devoting more of my practice time to what I call the “Thelonious Monk method” (play the tune at the organ continuously for an extended period, forty-five minutes or an hour) made me more adventuresome when it came time to sing the hymn on Sunday, and in some cases perhaps more effective.

Now it is back to repertoire and anthem accompaniments. There is much to be done there, too. In fact, this very day I received what I view as a word from the Lord: a trustworthy friend told me that during the service I have been describing, she heard it as a voice: “(my name) has more work to do here.”

I wrote that down and attached it to my door, alongside the pictures of Bach, Bruckner, and Keith Jarrett.

Finish then thy new creation;
Pure and spotless let us be;
Let us see thy great salvation
Perfectly restored in thee;
Changed from glory into glory,
Till in heaven we take our place,
Till we cast our crowns before thee,
Lost in wonder, love, and praise.
(Charles Wesley)

Windows Movie Maker: a Rant

I have a more useful essay to post (perhaps tonight, or in the next few days), but first a Rant.

Not so long ago, Microsoft had a useful program called Windows Movie Maker. I used it for all of my YouTube uploads; so did hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of other people. It was easy to use, and worked fine.

Microsoft has pulled the plug on it. Their current operating system, Windows 10 (which I am using, unwillingly) does not include it, or any equivalent. Win10 has their version of a digital assistant, Cortana, and supposedly you can say “Hey, Cortana!” and get answers to any question. I have found “her” not so useful in general (Wikipedia is a much better starting place), but often fairly useful for specific Windows-related questions.

But not this one. Many people have asked what to do for a Movie Maker equivalent, and the official Microsoft forums carefully dodge the question. There are a number of “apps” available, but a search for one today led me down a two-hour rathole. I installed EZVid, which some sources consider the top choice. But it will not accept audio in WAV form; it accepts only MP3. All of my tracks are WAV. That led to a search for a WAV to MP3 converter. There are many of those; the free ones all seem to install helpful little toolbars and advertisements. Charming.

I gave up. For the tracks that I wanted to upload to support my essay-in-progress, I will use SoundCloud, which does support WAV files. But I am soon going to bump into their size limit for free accounts, and I do not want to commit to a monthly subscription for the rest of my life.

Clearly, the Powers That Be at Microsoft do not want people to do what I do: create music – mind you, not pirated tracks by others; my own creative work – and post it on the Internet to share freely with others.

I gather that this task would be simple and free on Apple products.

O day full of grace (and a recipe)

I have not posted a Recipe for a long while, and this is not really one, just a variation. One of our family favorites is the Middle-Eastern salad called Tabbouleh, made with bulgur wheat, large amounts of fresh parsley and mint, black olives, cucumber, tomato, olive oil and lemon juice, plus other additions ad libitum.

Yesterday when I made our weekly batch, I used Kasha (toasted buckwheat) in place of the bulgur. It adds its own distinctive flavor (sort of nuttish, perhaps a bit like walnuts?) and I think that I prefer it. There is the added advantage that the dish now becomes gluten-free; here is a link discussing that aspect, and noting other nutritional advantages, particularly buckwheat’s high levels of fiber and protein. [Edited to add: My wife does not like this at all. I do. Your experience may vary.]

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On the current Episcopal calendar, this day (Sept. 8) is the feast of two nineteenth century Danish Christians: S. Kirkegaard and N. F. S. Gruntvig. The former is more generally known; the latter is more important to me because of his hymns. Our choir is working on an arrangement of one: “Built on a Rock the Church must stand/even when steeples are falling.” Here is another, which I love even better, as much for its tune Den Signede Dag as for the text: “O Day full of grace, which we behold.”

Most of all, I love the arrangement of this by F. Melius Christiansen for his St. Olaf Choir, especially the way it begins. It is a grand undertaking to sing this, which I once did at a music workshop (Presbyterian Conference on Worship and Music at Montreat, NC – that year, Anton Armstrong, one of Christiansen’s successors at St. Olaf, was the adult choir director and clinician). Here is a recording of the hymn by another fine choir, the Nordic Choir of Luther College.

I recall Mike Wagner’s sermon at the RSCM course this summer, wherein he spoke of the Collegiate Choir at Luther College (in which he sang) and “taking it home,” with “it” being what I call Connection. If one doubts what “it” or “connection” might be, this recording is a fine demonstration. May these young people take “it” with them wherever they go.