an interview with Wendell Berry

I commend to you this week's Bill Moyers webcast: an interview with Wendell Berry.

He speaks to many things that are important to me. Much of what he says has to do with the most important work a human can do: farming. That is not my task, so what am I to do?

It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old, for hope must not depend on feeling good and there’s the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight. You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality of the future, which surely will surprise us, and hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction anymore than by wishing. But stop dithering. The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them? Tell them at least what you say to yourself. Because we have not made our lives to fit our places, the forests are ruined, the fields, eroded, the streams polluted, the mountains, overturned. Hope then to belong to your place by your own knowledge of what it is that no other place is, and by your caring for it, as you care for no other place… This knowledge cannot be taken from you by power or by wealth. It will stop your ears to the powerful when they ask for your faith, and to the wealthy when they ask for your land and your work. … Be still and listen to the voices that belong to the stream banks and the trees and the open fields. … Find your hope, then, on the ground under your feet. Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground underfoot…. The world is no better than its places. Its places at last are no better than their people while their people continue in them. When the people make dark the light within them, the world darkens.

"Hope then to belong to your place by your own knowledge of what it is that no other place is, and by your caring for it, as you care for no other place…"

For me, a church musician, it means to play our little old Pilcher organ in this parish, and to really listen to what it has to say, and to not care about the fine new instruments that might be in other places. It means to welcome university students when they come here to play their degree recitals. It means to pray Matins in our courtyard, or in the church, or in my office. It means to know the children and adults in our choirs and care about them, and to figure out how to help them grow. It means to listen to the congregation when they sing, and to do what I can to help them do it better.

Perhaps this is not as good as being attached to a piece of land, but it does, I think, mean belonging to my place, and knowing what there is about it that is true of no other place. And that is enough.

the Giving of Almes

Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth.... (St. Matthew 6:19-21)

You can't take it with you. (proverbial saying: c.f. I Timothy 6:7)

But perhaps you can: I sometimes fancy that the treasures we will have in heaven are those things that we have given to the poor in this life. I think that C.S. Lewis said something similar about books: the only books in heaven are the ones that we loaned or gave away.

One of my regulars is the one-legged Marine that stakes out a busy intersection on my bicycle route to church. Yesterday was a home football game, and he was hard at work before dawn in order to catch the incoming fans, with his wheelchair decked with two American flags and a pennant for the local college team, and his artificial leg with the seal of the U.S. Marine Corps painted on the front of it. I always give him a little something.

We have become friends over the years from our brief encounters. I see him sometimes walking his dog in front of the cheap motel where he and his wife live, and visit with him for a few minutes. "I hate asking for money," he once told me. "And if it was just me, I wouldn't. But my wife needs her heart medicines."

We said our good-byes for the season yesterday, for my bicycle is going into winter storage this week and our paths do not cross when I ride the city bus. He told me that he and his wife have started going to church - not ours, but a storefront church closer where they live - and he wished God's blessings on me. I wish the same for him and his wife.

Then there is E., who caught me after church today at the Chinese restaurant. He came right in and sat across the table from me. "God sent me here," he told me, asking for $20 for a bus ticket. "I didn't know it for sure until I saw you through the window." Now, E. has been caught stealing from purses at the church. So I am not enthusiastic about helping him. And that $20 is more likely to go to drink than a bus ticket. But then again: "It's getting cold. And I can't get in the shelter here. If I go [sixty miles east, to the next town that has a homeless shelter], I think I can get in there." So maybe he will get on that bus. And how was I going to sit there, dressed in my fine white shirt, suit and tie, eating my fine dinner, with a man across the table from me telling me he was cold and hungry, and all this just seven days after hearing about Dives and Lazarus in last Sunday's Gospel?

And there is R., who went through a long struggle to get his SSI psychiatric disability - well-deserved in my opinion, for he is not remotely close to sanity. This week he lost his wallet, with his SSI card and all his cash, including his rent money. He has been by the church every day looking for me, and I have given him odds and ends - a partially-used transit bus pass, little bits of money. He wants five people who will each "loan" him $100; otherwise, they will evict him on Monday. I am not one of those people. But I gave him a little bit.

And there is D., another veteran, a drug addict. We helped him some; he tried to steal one of our chorister's leather jacket, and I suspect he stole another chorister's coat on another occasion, with wallet in the pocket (neither jacket nor thief were ever found). After talking with the VA people, I no longer give him cash. But when he comes by on a Sunday evening [not that often nowadays, but occasionally] and says he is hungry, I walk him across the street for a couple slices of pizza, and sit with him for a little. And pray with him. When I forget this last, he reminds me: "Aren't you going to say a prayer?"

And walking back to the church from the restaurant today, I saw a woman whom I had helped once this summer; she is mostly disabled (mentally as well as physically), and that day her motorized wheelchair ran out of juice, right in the middle of a busy intersection downtown. I was getting on the bus to go home, but no one was going to help her (the cars were blowing their horns at her, and driving around on both sides. None of the hundreds of university students who were busily going to their classes offered to help). So the two of us pushed her dead chair to her assisted living facility, going at the extremely slow pace at which she is able to walk. Today, I do not think that she recognized me, and I hurried across the street to avoid dealing with her.

For that is what happens. I want to lock the doors, go down in my basement office, and hide from these people.

The hard part about giving alms is that it is not just a one-time thing. If you give money to someone, most often they come back and ask for more. Again and again. For years. And you have to relate to these people as Children of God on an ongoing basis, even when you very much would rather not. It is easier to just write a check to Church World Service for people on the other side of the world, whom you will never encounter.

Some years ago, the parish had a system of "caregivers" who would interview the people who asked for help, connect them with social service agencies in the community, and screen out the drunkards and drug addicts, thus freeing the clergy from any direct interaction with the poor. [To be fair, one of our priests has always been involved with a weekly free breakfast for the poor, and rightly considers it central to her ministry. Blessings be upon her.] The "caregiver" program worked for a while, but all of the volunteers eventually burned out. After that, the policy was that our parish would no longer help anyone. If they came and asked for help, the staff was instructed to say (in essence): "Too bad. Go try the Crisis Center."

This was, in my view, a scandalous offense. How can we claim to be Christians and act this way?

As it happened, I had stopped donating to the parish around 2002, for reasons I would prefer not to describe. But "the tithe is the Lord's." Thus, I had a lot of money available. I gave most of it to places such as the Heifer Project, the Carter Center, Church World Service, the American Indian College Fund, and a couple of the local aid agencies. But I also had a fair amount of cash which I was willing to give to the poor, so I resolved to try and pick up the slack, so that the Name of Christ would not be blasphemed on account of our parish.

My situation is now different; I made a pledge to the parish for 2013, the first time in ten years, and thus I no longer have a lot of extra money for the poor. It is not yet a tithe, not even close, but it feels like a lot because there had been none, and I hope to increase it for 2014. And the parish does now help people as we are able.

But I still have these hangers-on. And I believe that I am at the least doing no harm in helping some of them in small ways; a few dollars here, a few there. I can now do no more without slighting the parish - on which I depend for my livelihood.

It is hard to set limits. The church staff helps, especially our office manager and the secretary, both of whom are also heavily involved in helping those who walk through our door.


I say all this not in any way to justify myself. I do not know if I have done any good for anyone. Maybe I am simply enabling their dependency, as the Republicans would say, and keeping them from taking responsibility for their lives. And very probably, my direct gifts do less good than would be done by donations to the local agencies, all of them starving for money and overflowing with people they cannot afford to help.

But we place ourselves in spiritual peril every time we harden our hearts and turn away from the poor man who seeks our assistance. Worse, we dishonor our Lord.

The only real answer is that of St. Francis: Give it ALL away, and yourself live as the poorest of the poor.

And I am not ready to do that.

----

Today was Evensong Sunday, the first Sunday of the month. In the month's rehearsals, the one Evensong amounts to as much choral rehearsal time as the four or five Sunday morning Eucharists all put together. It is similar for my organ playing; I try to play a larger work from the organ literature for the Evensong prelude, and it is about as much work as the voluntaries for the rest of the month's services.

The organ piece was the Priére by Cèsar Franck, an intense work of about thirteen or fourteen minutes' duration.

I played it seven years ago - badly, in spite of much work on it. This time, with my revised approach to organ practice, it went very well. I consider the improvement a validation of my practice method. I spent about eight hours over the course of about a week revising the fingerings, then did my careful work-throughs with slow repetitions of short passages, modified rhythms, and final review of each day's work by means of a slow play-through. All told, I was able to work through the piece at the organ only four times, over the space of about nine days -- and that was sufficient, even with almost no pre-service warmup on it this afternoon. I hope that this gives me more confidence in future work.

Obamacare and Me

Before Matins this morning, I turned on the computer and went to the official site for the Affordable Care Act.

When I saw their splashpage with the big title: "The Health Insurance Marketplace is Open!" I shed some tears. It has been a long time coming.

Many presidents, going back at least to Harry Truman, have sought affordable healthcare for Americans. Lyndon Johnson was the first to win a partial victory, by pushing Medicare through Congress. Harry Truman and his wife Bess were there when Johnson signed it into law in 1965, and were the first persons enrolled in the program.

That took care of the largest part of the issue: health care for persons over age 65. The rest should have been straightforward. It has not, however, proven easy. The debate over what became the Affordable Care Act (immediately labeled "Obamacare" by its detractors) is widely known, and I will not say more about it.

But it is perhaps worth a few minutes to relate how it affects me, a married person in his late fifties.

For a long time, I was a participant in the pension and healthcare plan of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Under their system (at least as it was in those days), the local church paid a fixed percentage of each employee's salary, which provided for a defined benefit pension and medical insurance. As they often said, it was a "community-based approach." Those who were well-paid (typically clergy) paid more, those who made less (typically lay employees, also clergy in smaller churches) paid less. All paid the same percentage, or rather the congregation paid on their behalf. It was (and remains) a thoroughly sensible approach.

Then I became an employee of the Episcopal Church.

Our diocese offers three medical insurance plans, and it is mandated by canon law that the local parish must pay the full cost of participation in these plans for the clergy. As it currently stands (2013), I may enroll in the insurance plan should I wish to do so. The cost for single-person coverage is about $9,000 a year; should I wish for my wife to also have insurance, the total cost would be slightly north of $20,000. The congregation would pay zero; it would all come out of my pocket -- which is not sufficiently deep for numbers like this.

Thus, my wife and I purchased individual coverage from the state Blue Cross/Blue Shield affiliate. We are on the cheapest plan they offer, which has such a limited list of coverages that it does not cover what the ACA calls "essential health services." We are both in excellent health, but have had "pre-existing conditions" ruled out -- for me, there was no coverage for anything related to the eyes, because I am sufficiently nearsighted to be at high risk for retinal detachment. The deductible for this policy is $11,000 a year -- that much has to be spent in medical bills before the plan pays so much as a penny. The premium is about $500 a month, covering the two of us; this premium has approximately tripled during the twelve years that we have had the policy. This is a "high deductible health savings plan" and is accompanied by a Health Savings Account, to which we can make tax-free contributions, and we have done so every year, right up to the maximum allowed. This money sits in a HSA earning about 0.5% interest with a $25 annual fee eating away at it.

In my opinion, this is not a satisfactory arrangement. But it is the best we can do, balancing affordability with at least a minimum of insurance -- for, if you are uninsured in America, you are one accident or illness away from bankruptcy.

Correction: you WERE one accident away from bankruptcy. Today, that all changed.


I spent only a few minutes on the HealthCare.gov website; it is a busy day for them and their servers are maxed out. I downloaded a form that my employer will need to fill out, which is part of my proof that I cannot afford the insurance offered by my employer (it is well over the 9.5% of family income that is the cutoff). Our income falls easily within the range that should make us eligible for a subsidy on our premium payments. It looks promising; the best I can tell, we should be able to find coverage in the "Marketplace" and get by for no more than we currently pay, and receive much better coverage.

"Obamacare" is a term of derision coined by the program's detractors -- there are some deep-pocketed people out there who have funded a sophisticated program of dis-information about the law, and at this writing, the Republicans in Congress remain determined to kill the program. I use the term in the hope that "Obamacare" becomes a badge of honor for this president, who has staked everything on it. I believe that it will do as much to benefit the ordinary people of the U.S. as Social Security.

At the least, this American, who on the whole is not a fan of President Obama, wishes to thank him for bringing us to this day. My hat is off to you, Mr. President.

[I tip my hat also to Sen. Edward Kennedy, of blessed memory, for whom this was an issue of utmost importance. And Pres. Richard Nixon, who was among those who tried and failed to bring universal health care to Americans. His proposals back in the 1970's, built around a mandate for employer-provided insurance, have many likenesses to the Affordable Care Act as it now stands.]

on Angels

[reprinted from my old LiveJournal: Feb. 22, 2008]

I have always felt a little guilty about believing in angels. They are like something out of a fairy-story – like Ents, or Hobbits. There is no evidence whatsoever of their existence in the Real World of the scientists. Rational men and women should have laid such fantasies aside by the age of nine or ten, along with Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.

Nonetheless, if we are to give the slightest credence to Holy Scripture, the words of our Lord Jesus, and the universal testimony of the church (well, almost universal; many liberal clergy and professors of theology do not believe in angels any more than they do in the Resurrection), angels are as much a part of this Real World as trees and elephants and bumblebees.

It is as if Gandalf were to show up for supper, knocking on our front door with his staff, a dozen dwarves in tow.

"The existence of the spiritual, non-corporeal beings that Sacred Scripture usually calls 'angels' is a truth of faith. The witness of Scripture is as clear as the unanimity of Tradition." (Catholic Catechism, paragraph 328).

What are angels like?

We have evidence from Scripture, which I will leave for the reader to explore. My mental image of them owes much to Tolkien. The author Poul Anderson and his wife Karen noted in an essay that many of JRRT's species – dwarves, orcs, trolls, for example – are stock figures of northern European folklore. But not his elves; JRRT's elves are quite different from the sidhe. The Andersons suggested that instead, they are like angels.

I think of Glorfindel at the ford, shining like a flame of fire, or Galadriel, wise and strong and true, seeing into the darkness even while the darkness could not penetrate the light of the Golden Wood, and all the while capable of being as merry as a child. Or the company of elves with which Frodo and Sam dine while leaving the Shire. Or Legolas, sturdy friend and companion in good times and bad. I can imagine that angels could be like this.

I can also believe that angels can be like Fëanor of old, falling from brightest light and skill into pride. For Lucifer is an angel, one of the mightiest, and it was not Lucifer alone who fell into darkness.


How do angels help us?

Guardian angels? So the catechism says (paragraph 336, with a half-dozen Scriptural citations in support). I am less confident of this than I am of the more general presence and work of angels in the economy of God's providence to us, and perhaps to others of God's creatures. But it could be true. It is hard to explain several occurrences in my past without resorting either to “what some call chance” or the action of God, directly or mediated through an angel.

It is well to not rely overmuch on a guardian angel: “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God,” as our Savior said when presented with Psalm 91's promise that “he shall give his angels charge over thee, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.” We should not expect unlimited protection when the Lord of all the heavenly host, who could have called ten thousand angels to his rescue, was nailed to the cross. No angel helped him that day. No angel can do for us those things which are given us to do. They can strengthen us with hidden graces, as they helped our Lord in the desert and at Gethsemane. But they cannot bear our cross, or his.


The catechism reminded me of another way, one that is so obvious that I had forgotten it, and perhaps more important than all the rest:

They help us sing.

“Therefore, with Angels and Archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious Name; evermore praising thee, and saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts....”

Our poor efforts at song are riddled with mistakes and missed opportunities. They are never sufficiently rehearsed; they never live up to what the song ought to be. But we human singers and instrumentalists are not the only ones in the choir loft, or the congregation, or the orchestral stage, or the opera house, or gatherings of Celtic or bluegrass or jazz musicians, or any other place where there is effort to offer a song that is true. There is more to the song than what we can hear.

Ye holy angels bright,
who wait at God's right hand,
or through the realms of light
fly at your Lord's command,
assist our song,
for else the theme
too high doth seem
for mortal tongue.
(Richard Baxter)

Grown-up, rational men and women must recognize that there are Things out there for which scientific evidence cannot account. Some of these Things are even more wonderful than all the angels of heaven and all of the songs, ours and theirs – the presence of God in the church and in the Blessed Sacrament; the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting; the Son seated at the right hand of the Father; Our Lady and all the saints around the throne; the promise that we will one day join them.

Soli Deo gloria.

some thoughts on Money

Ye cannot serve God and mammon. (St. Luke 16:13)

Well, that is clear enough.

The rest of this morning's Gospel lesson (St. Luke 16:1-13, the parable of the Unjust Steward) is puzzling. What are we to make of this scoundrel, who cheats his master and is commended for doing so? It sounds to me like Jesus is telling us in verses 8 and 9 to go and do likewise, to use the "unrighteous mammon" in any way we want with disregard for such niceties as honest dealing and stewardship of what belongs to others.

He then seems to contradict what he has just said:

He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? (v. 10-11)

This at least makes more sense: money is a passing trifle, not to be compared with the "true riches." But it is a testing ground for us; if we cannot be faithful with money, we will not be faithful with anything.


So, what are we to do? Experience shows that Jesus was right: "no servant can serve two masters" (v. 13). St. Paul gives this advice:

But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain that we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment let us be therewith content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil, which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. But thou, O man of God, flee these things, and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. (I Timothy 6:6-11)

Yet, we must pay some attention to money in order to at least have "food and raiment." St. Paul says in another place that "if any would not work, neither should he eat" (II Thessalonians 3:10). More specifically, in this society we must normally have a job, for which we are paid with money. What are we to do with it? And should we lay some of that money aside for future days, so that we may have food and raiment when we are old and can no longer work?

In my parents' day, this aspect was easier. Most Americans had jobs that promised a retirement pension, plus social security at age 65. They did not need to give any further thought to these matters; the checks would be in the mail when the time came. Almost no one currently in the workforce has a defined benefit pension nowadays, and social security is on shaky ground.

Instead, if we have a pension at all, it is a "defined contribution" plan, where we have considerable responsibility for how it is invested. That means we should know a little about the subject, enough so that we can be faithful stewards in this matter.


In light of these thoughts, I suggest three books that have been helpful to me.

The first book is "Your Money or Your Life," by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin. It has gone through several editions since the first in 1992; I read it in the late 1990's, and again last year. Mr. Dominguez died in 1997; Vicki Robin maintains a website that is a helpful introduction to the ideas in this book and much else, such as sustainable living and local foods:

Here is a summary of the book.

A related website is this.

It has a longer guide to the "financial integrity" program, based on the work of Dominguez and Robin: this is a 132-page PDF.

One concept from the book that helped me was to think of money as a representation of "life energy." For example: my effective salary is $16 an hour. When I ate lunch today at the Chinese restaurant, it cost me a little less than $7. I can think of this as roughly a half-hour of "life energy," the amount of time I needed to work in order to earn that $7. Was that a worthwhile use of that half-hour? I think so.

But what about that $16,000 car on the dealer's lot? One thousand hours of life energy, plus more to insure it, fuel it, and repair it. Is it worth that much time out of my life? Probably not, especially when I have an older car that is all paid for and still runs well.


In the earlier editions of "Your Money or Your Life," Mr. Dominguez recommended that once you are out of debt and begin to have a little money left over, you should invest it by purchasing 30-year U.S. Treasury Bonds. Every time you get $1,000, buy another bond. If you had done that in the 1990's when he wrote this advice, you would have done well. But it is a less attractive investment plan nowadays, given current interest rates. So, for this aspect I would turn to two other books:

"The Intelligent Investor" (Benjamin Graham). This was written in 1949 and remains a classic. It outlines a simple approach to asset allocation and investing. Several differing editions are in print, some considerably expanded by more recent authors such as Warren Buffett.

"The Little Book of Common Sense Investing" (John Bogle, 2007). This follows many of the same ideas espoused by Graham, providing a more recent perspective. The basic principle of both books is to have a balance of bonds and equities, and pretty much leave them alone except to rebalance when one or the other goes up or down. Most of all, "chasing the market" is a fool's game, certain to lose most of your money.

I also recommend the website of the Vanguard company, which has a lot of educational material for someone new to investment. Our IRA accounts are with Vanguard, and I recommend them.


So I have gone from St. Paul's "having food and raiment, [being] therewith content" to being an Investor. My wife and I have managed to stay out of debt and save some money, mostly in our retirement accounts, and considering our age, this is a good thing. But it lays us open to "temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts," and some aspects are harder now than they were when we had little or no money. It is perhaps not helpful that I find the subjects of economics, finance, and investment to be fascinating. They can easily consume a lot of time -- more of that "life energy," that properly belongs elsewhere.

Perhaps the key is simply to remember whose money it is. We are stewards of it, responsible for using it in a manner appropriate to the Kingdom. And (borrowing from Dominguez and Robin), we are equally stewards of the "life energy" that is granted us and that is in part represented by money. "He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much."

a choral warmup

A choral warmup exercise, developed in our youth choir rehearsal today:

Have the full choir begin on the C above middle C (third space treble clef). The tenors and basses are in unison with the trebles, in their head voice (not an octave below them)

Sing down the scale, using solfas (Do - ti - la - sol...)

At middle C, the trebles go back up (Do - re - mi ...) while the tenors and basses continue down another octave, down to the tenor C. [If there are male altos, they should take whichever part is more comfortable, probably singing with the trebles and female altos. But if they have the low notes, they can go on down with the tenors and basses.]

The two parts turn around and come back down/up the scale to meet at middle C.

Not every choir is capable of this.

I am very proud of our tenors and basses and altos. Nearly all of them have beautiful and comfortable head tones in the range from F or G of the treble clef up to the third space C, and a couple of them beyond that. I have tried to model this for them by singing that way myself, and it amazes me that they have picked this up. I hope that some of them might move with better freedom among the three male parts (alto, tenor, bass) than I have done, and maintain a wide vocal range throughout their adult lives -- I was well into my forties before I learned to properly sing in my upper range.

In my experience, the best way for a young man to develop his voice is to first establish the head voice, in a sound that some would call "falsetto," and at first it may be more of a falsetto and not a developed head voice.

Each day, after the first preliminary warmups (Posture, Space, Breath: sustained note on "ee" in comfortable range -- low voice or high voice -- yawn-sigh on "Oh", then "over the top" on "Oh" - start low, go high, slide back down low), sing several sustained notes in the high head voice, middle of treble clef. "Oh" is a good vowel to start, then use other vowels.

After establishing this sound, sing scales downward across the passagio [register "break" or "change"] into the lower voice. Then scales down and back up [not up and back down! Start high, go down first.] Then other patterns, such as arpeggios, melodies with skips, etc.

In my own singing practice, I improvise at this point, consciously seeking to make melodies that cross the passagio. This is enormous fun, one of the most enjoyable parts of my day.

It is important to develop the low voice as well, and to carry some of the power the low voice into the high voice. The "mezza di voce" is excellent for this. At first, do it on pitches that are well within the low voice or the high voice and not near the passagio. Then, work on pitches nearer to the passagio, where the exercise takes the voice from the higher register to the lower register and back.

Evensong: Sunday of Proper 17, Year A

Psalms for the First Evening: 6, 7, 8
I Kings 8:22-40
St. John 8:47-59

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, *
the moon and the stars you have set in their courses,
What is man that you should be mindful of him? *
the son of man that you should seek him out?

Eleven weeks ago in the middle of June, we started this cycle of Lessons from the Old Testament for the Daily Office with Hannah and Samuel. We have read of Saul son of Kish, of David son of Jesse. And now we are at what must have seemed the high point of the narrative: Solomon son of David and the dedication of the temple.

By the time the Books of the Kings were most likely set down in order as we have them, the temple lay in ruins, not one stone left upon another. The prophet Isaiah wrote of this: "Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire: and all our pleasant things are laid waste." (Isaiah 64:10-11)

It is no wonder that the editors who assembled First Kings under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost devoted eleven chapters to the reign of Solomon, four of those chapters to the building and dedication of the temple. It was a Good Day, the best of days. In a few short years the kingdoms would be divided and begin their spiral into ruin. Never again, even to this day, would the land have rest from all its enemies round about. Never again could it be said that "Judah and Israel were many, as the sand which is by the sea in multitude, eating and drinking, and making merry." (4:20)

But what is that to us? The days of the Temple rituals are past, and we worship One who is greater than the Temple. "Before Abraham was, I am," he said to the people (St. John 8:58), identifying himself as not only one who is greater than Abraham and the prophets, but as the one who is the Son of the Father, the "I AM" revealed to Moses at the burning bush: "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made; being of one substance with the Father."

And yet... we continue to build places that are called by his name.

Many people come into this place during the week to pray -- on Sunday, but also throughout the week. They often kneel in silence, most often well back in the church. Or they kneel at the side altar. Perhaps they light a votive candle. Others walk by outside and leave prayer requests in the book, or tie a ribbon on the tree as a symbol of their petition.

I count myself blessed to spend many of my working hours in this room, on the organ bench or at the piano, and I pray that I may never take it for granted.

Some of us would say that our Lord Jesus Christ is present in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, reserved in the tabernacle up there by the candle. Whatever we may think of that, most of us in the Anglican tradition would say that this place is more than what the Puritans would have called a "meeting house," simply a convenient place to gather on the Lord's Day. This, and every other Christian church, is a place that is called by the name of Christ, and where, in some manner, he chooses to dwell among his people. As we shall recall shortly in the prayer of St. Chrysostom, "when two or three are gathered together in his Name, [he] will be in the midst of them."

Why should God pay attention to us this evening, or any time that we pray in this place, or even when we remember it from afar and pray "toward this place," as Solomon phrased it? "What is man that you should be mindful of him, the son of man that you should seek him out?"

Part of the answer is in the sign that Our Lord Jesus gave after cleansing the Temple, saying that it must be a house of prayer for all people. In chapter two of his Gospel, St. John recounts it in this manner:

Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body. When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said. (vv. 18-22)

And another part of the answer comes from St. Paul, in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians: "... ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." (6:16b)

The Temple was but a figure of "a greater and more perfect tabernacle" (Hebrews 9:11): Jesus Christ Himself is the holy place, the One in whom all the fullness of God doth dwell (Colossians 2:9). When St. John the Divine described the holy city, new Jerusalem, he stated that he "saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof" (Revelation 21:22-23).

Through him, we "as lively stones, are built up an spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ." (I Peter 2:5)

In connection with this we must consider a detail that is omitted from the narrative in First Kings. We find it in the parallel account of Second Chronicles:

And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy place: (for all the priests that were present were sanctified, and did not then wait by course: Also the Levites which were the singers, all of them of Asaph, of Heman, of Jeduthun, with their sons and their brethren, being arrayed in white linen, having cymbals and psalteries and harps, stood at the east end of the altar, and with them an hundred and twenty priests sounding with trumpets:)

It came even to pass, as the trumpeters and singers were as one, to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the LORD; and when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of musick, and praised the LORD, saying, For he is good; for his mercy endureth for ever: that the house was filled with a cloud, even the house of the LORD; So that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud: for the glory of the LORD had filled the house of God. (5:11-14)

In Psalm 22, we read that the Holy One is "enthroned upon the praises of Israel" (v. 3). This is as true now as it was on that day in the Temple: the presence of God is in some manner connected not only with the Blessed Sacrament, or the house that is called by his name, but with the music that we sing in this place, most of all in those moments when through the making of music, we become "as one."


It is with these things in mind that we can hear Solomon's prayer. We can join with him on behalf of those who enter this place to pray, those who tie a ribbon on the tree outside, those who remember this place from afar and wish that they could be here.

... hearken unto the cry and to the prayer which thy servant prayeth before thee to day: That thine eyes may be open toward this house night and day, even toward the place of which thou hast said, My name shall be there: that thou mayest hearken unto the prayer which thy servant shall make toward this place... And hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place: and when thou hearest, forgive. (8:19-20)

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Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen. (St. Jude 24-25)

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(slightly expanded from the version that I preached at Evensong: September 1, 2013.)

A good start

First Rehearsal Day.

Every year, I am anxious about this, more than any other event of the season. Stage fright? I know what that feels like, and this is not quite the same, for it is not a concern about how I will do. It is how others will do.

The youth choir is the one that scares me the most. Today, we had four new singers, all girls: two second-graders, one slightly older girl whose family has moved to town, one fifth-grader who came at her friend's invitation. Will they have a good experience in this first rehearsal? Will they come back next week?

The RSCM training scheme is called "Voice for Life," and it starts here, this first day of rehearsal. If it goes well, these girls may be Singers all the days of their life. If it goes badly, they may never sing in another choir, and they would miss out on something of great importance.

So, I worry. I lose sleep. I fidgit all day, unable to do anything productive. And the hour finally arrives.

It is a good rehearsal. The new girls are paired up with experienced singers (some of them just a year older, in their second year of choir), each pair sharing one set of music scores so the new singers can begin to learn about following notes, finding their place. It is as good for the "experienced" half of the pairs as it is for the new singers, for now they have to teach someone else how to do these things.

I am grateful to our experienced singers for making this such a good choir, a place that is comfortable and safe and fun, and where we all grow in grace.

The adult choir worried me because we are slim in numbers. Two singers retired in the spring, another finished his degree and moved to the West Coast. But a new soprano appeared, at the invitation of J., with whom she works. She seemed to have a good time, and I think that she will return.

We opened with a setting of "When I survey the wondrous cross" by Gilbert Martin, and the choir's sound was terrific: strong, rich, confident. We began a new setting of the Preces and Responses (Heathcote Statham), and it is going to go very well.

It was a good beginning.

There is much to do, a whole year's work ahead. But now we have begun, and it will be easier.

Steinway update

The Steinway L is back; the rebuilder delivered it to the church about an hour ago.
(see here and here for some background)

My first impressions are good. He shimmed the two small cracks in the soundboard, cleaned and re-gilded the plate, replaced the strings, tuning pins, pinblock, hammers, and action parts. It was a complete interior rebuild, leaving the exterior of the case as it was -- and he did some minor touch-up repairs to the case so that it looks pretty good, much better than it did. The cost was $15,900.

I carefully played up and down the keyboard, checking the action regulation and voicing; all is well. With the lid up, it is scrumptiously beautiful inside -- all those shiny new strings, the bright and clean plate, the shiny nickel-plated tuning pins... I am prepared to certify this as first-rate piano work. This instrument is in all important respects (that is, everything except the appearance of the case) just like a brand-new Steinway. With reasonable care it will, Lord willing, be suitable for church and concert use for many decades to come.

But I will need to play it for a while. The personality is a little different, and I miss my sweet old dowager of a piano. She may still be there, underneath the good looks; I hope so. The soundboard is still that fine old 1920's wood with all that music-making in its history. It is as if one of my friends were to suddenly be thirty years younger - strong and healthy, and still in essence the same person, but not as I knew and loved him in his older age. I would be happy for him, but it would not be quite the same.

What is, is. The work needed to be done, and it has been done well.

[Added later: Saturday, August 24 -- I have indeed played the piano for a while, and it is just fine. It is still my old friend, and I am very happy with the result of the project.]

Conference Notes: Taizé

As with my previous essay, this one is an attempt to organize my thoughts about another aspect of the Hymn Society conference: the workshop on the music and worship of the Taizé Community, and the evening prayer service in the spirit of Taizé. I write my notes in this form in order to provide a space for links to online resources.

I wrote last week that my encounter with Taizé last month showed me that there is more to it than I had realized. Taizé was started by Brother Roger in 1940 as an ecumenical community of reconciliation and peace. "The defeat of France awoke powerful sympathy. If a house could be found there, of the kind I had dreamed of, it would offer a possible way of assisting some of those most discouraged, those deprived of a livelihood; and it could become a place of silence and work." Their small cottage in the desolate village of Taizé, where Roger was joined by three others, the first Brothers of the movement, became a sanctuary for many displaced persons during the early years of the war, until the Gestapo occupied it in November 1942. After the war, the four Brothers returned from Switzerland to the village and resumed their life of "simplicity, celibacy, and community." At first, their worship was in the village church. In the early 1960's, the community began to attract large numbers of young pilgrims, and they built their own church, the Church of Reconciliation, with the work of volunteers and pilgrims.

Should the coming decades bring what I expect, the quiet witness of these Brothers, just Brother Roger at first and then for many years fewer than ten of them, stands as a model for those facing times of famine, death, tumult and war. No matter what the circumstances, it is always possible to live the Christian life in community, and to serve as Christ's hands in the healing of the nations.

More specifically, we church musicians must keep the Taizé songs and their manner of worship in mind. There may be more strength to these songs, these prayers, than one might think.

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The workshop and the evening prayer at the Hymn Society conference were led by David Anderson (davida@giamusic.com), who is an editor at GIA Publications. They are the U.S. agent for the Taizé publications, and all of the music is under their copyright for the U.S. and Canada. Several collections of music are available from GIA; recordings as well.

The Taizé website is this:
http://www.taize.fr

At this site, the most useful aspect for our purposes is the menu item "Prayer and Song." This takes you to a page with many subheadings; all of them are very important.

There is a page with mp3 files recorded live and quite unpolished (and thus, more real. For example, the cantors sometimes sing flat, the instrumentalists fluff notes, the congregation coughs and drops things on the floor and is sometimes not "with it." But there are times when it is all incredibly splendid. As with real worship, these moments are unpredictable.) There is a link to a weekly broadcast of the Saturday evening prayer service at Taizé, by a Catholic radio station in Cologne. There are many older services on the page as well as the one for the current week; each of the recordings runs about one hour and fades out in mid-song when the hour is expired.



The basic resources that Mr. Anderson recommended as a starting place are these:
- Songs and Prayers from Taizé (G-3719 for the basic edition) - 50 chants, guidelines, prayer texts and litanies.
- Taizé: Songs for Prayer (G-4956S for the vocal edition)
- Christe Lux Mundi (G-7101S for the vocal edition)
- Prayer for Each Day (G-4918) - this is text only; prayers for various seasons, a general introduction to worship in this manner.

Also two DVDs:
- Praying with the songs of Taizé (DVD-391). This is helpful because it is hard to enter the spirit of Taizé worship without seeing it. And it is done badly in many places, so badly as to turn people away from it. A similar result can be achieved from the broadcast recordings noted above.
- Life at Taizé (DVD-481) - a sixteen-minute video introducing the Community and its life.

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What should I make of all this?

There is already a weekly Taizé service in our community, so it would be wrong to try and start another one at our parish. Besides, we have the form of daily prayer that is proper to our tradition: Rite One Matins and Evensong, and especially Choral Evensong. We should nurture this rather than looking to Taizé for a model.

Still, it is worth noting that the Taizé form of evening prayer is based on the same model of monastic prayer that lies behind Roman Catholic Vespers, Lutheran Vespers, and Anglican Evensong: a beginning, psalm, Bible reading(s), prayers including the Our Father, song [in the basic tradition, the anthem or office hymn. In the Taizé form, this element is considerably expanded]. Perhaps there are lessons that we could carry over into Choral Evensong -- much longer silences after the readings, use of candles and icons, more opportunity for meditative prayer toward the end of the service (where our rubric says "Authorized intercessions and thanksgivings may follow" [BCP p. 71]), including ten or fifteen minutes of silent prayer, and then an open-ended conclusion to the service?

The result would feel very different from a traditional Choral Evensong, and probably very different from anything that is being done anywhere. I surely am not aware of any place where one might hear the Smith Responses, Anglican Chant psalmody, a Stanford Mag and Nunc, and end up with a couple of hours of Taizé songs, prayers, and meditation by candlelight. I would attend such a service; one of my problems with our Choral Evensong services is that when they are finished, what I want to do is to spend another hour or so in the church, in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, contemplating what we have sung and continuing the prayer.

Of more interest is the question of incorporating elements of this into the Sunday morning Eucharist, specifically our 8:45 "contemporary" service. The practice at this service is to sing a Taizé song or other repetitive song during the administration of the Blessed Sacrament. (We use songs from other sources, such as the Iona Community, and more of these than the genuine Taizé songs. But the ones we use are in a similar style, and aim for similar effect.)

There are many problems with this. The most notable is that it requires a mental shift from the discursive to the meditative. And this is supposed to happen in a service where the clock is ever-present. We have to be done by 9:45 so that people can go to their church school classes. A secondary problem is that silence is just as important to the Taizé spirit as the music, and there is often not so much as thirty seconds of silence at any point in the 8:45 service -- again, the clock is the ruling factor. We must press on from one thing to the next in a headlong rush. One cannot easily flip the switch from this mindset to one of stillness. Even if we were not in such a hurry, the people would have to learn to tolerate silence.

A third problem is that the effect of the songs is cumulative. In a proper Taizé service, there are many songs in a row after the concluding prayer -- in the service broadcast that I am hearing as I write this, almost a half-hour of songs. We have time for only one song, perhaps five minutes, eight or nine minutes at the most.

Nonetheless, with all these obstacles, it sometimes works. Or (I am guessing) it works for some people some of the time, while simultaneously for others it falls flat. And on another Sunday, it might work for other people. It depends on what the people are bringing to that day's worship from their lives -- and, very much so, it depends on the work of the Holy Ghost who prays with and among us and can never be predicted or pinned down or planned, and does always what is best, and what we need.

There was a man who is a notable author who used to attend our 8:45 service. He would sit in the back row with his young daughters. In those days, someone else (Thomas W., who reads this blog) was leading the music, and I sat in the back row with them. In one of his books, he wrote of a particular day when we sang a Taizé song -- and how it changed everything for him. I remember that song and that day, and even sitting beside him, I had no idea what was going on in his heart. It is well to remember such things as these. We (especially we who plan worship and music) may think we know what is going on, but we do not.

What I am getting at is this: the Taizé song during the distribution of communion is the most unpredictable part of our 8:45 service. And it must remain so. All I can do is to pick a good song, lead it with some degree of sensitivity to the feel of the congregation, and stay out of the way. When it "works," the song takes on what Brother Robert called "a flow of inner life animat[ing] the singing," and it becomes like a little bird, or a butterfly.

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A practical note: One easily gets the impression that the instruments are more important than they are in fact. There are books of instrumental parts for all sorts of things -- flutes, trumpets, cellos, guitar (classical-style, not the "thrash and bash" type guitarist that so often appears in church settings). Mr. Anderson reminded us that they don't actually make that much use of the instruments at Taizé. In the off-season when there are not so many pilgrims, there may be only the guitar which seems to be their basic instrument, or a keyboard, and this is perfectly legitimate. Even in the peak season, there will likely be only one or two additional instruments at a given service. In the one I am listening to -- in August, a peak time with lots of pilgrims -- there is a trumpet, not very well played, and he or she only plays in perhaps one-quarter of the songs, maybe less.

What there are at Taizé, and what we lack: cantors. We have some people who sing at the 8:45 service, but none of them have vocal ranges that correspond to the written Taizé parts. Many of the songs benefit greatly from the solo descants.

Still, the song can and should be simple. If leading from the piano as I do, a good bit of improvisation is helpful, and it would be quite deadly if the pianist simply were to repeat the written accompaniment, over and over. I begin with the written accompaniment, and after a few times start to play descants, or change registers (e.g., revoice the chords into the tenor register), or reduce the texture to just the bass line, or just a descant line, or stop playing altogether, just giving a hint at the end of each repetition that we should continue. Or arpeggiate, or play what the old composers called "doubles" -- variations in eighth note motion. Brother Robert again: "Variations in intensity are desirable, to match the variations in the prayer itself. At times it will be calmer, and at other times more urgent." The piano and other instruments can give cues as to the changes in intensity -- but the pianist must not force this on the people; he must sense what is appropriate from moment to moment. If Brother Robert is correct (and I think he is), the pianist is sensing "the variations in the prayer itself" and through his playing helping the congregation likewise to sense the variation, the ebb-and-flow of the prayer.

I have tried accompanying the songs at the organ, and it has been a miserable failure. The piano is much better for this - though the organ could work with the strongest and most outgoing of the songs, such as "Laudate Dominum," if there is a large and vigorous congregation.

And the large congregation helps all of the songs. There is a special magic when hundreds of people are singing this music in a good acoustic, as we had at the Hymn Society service. We sang the Magnificat canon, which is one of the older songs, and got the four-part canon going plus the four-part secondary canon, and kept singing for about ten minutes. It was spine-tingling (not at all like the recording, which is a studio recording with a small group of singers -- much cleaner, but not like a real congregation). It is something that is not possible for our congregation of fifty or sixty people, most of them not especially interested in singing.

Here is a song that was new to me. I think it will be effective at our 8:45 service. The YouTube link is more of a real congregation, and shows the use of the guitar to accompany:
Let all who are thirsty, come

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I am left with many more questions than answers.
But that is true of almost every aspect of my work as a church musician, and my life as a Christian.