Deep Thoughts – Page 19

Vermillion

When I pass a stand of erstwhile unnoticeable maples, and am caught by the color of the leaves, that’s the the word that comes to mind. Vermillion. Brighter than red. Deeper, more passionate than burgundy. There are showers of gold along some roads — early to color, already gone. There are trees tinged with red, orange as flame in their hearts. And some rare trees, stark in brilliance against the blue October sky, are vermillion.

For all the pumpkins, it is red’s time of year to reign supreme. The trees are red. The sunsets, early, tinge the world with their crimson kisses. Noses, flesh-toned through the warm days of summer, reflect the season’s changes too. And the socks, even the socks are red as colored clothing faces winter birds in the World Series. And the blood of a sports hero tinges his sock with the team, the season color. A red darkening to brown with scoreless innings pitched.

Soon, we head into brown of pilgrim scenes. Then the dark pine green of Christmas. Finally, we settle into the long, bitter gray of ever-enduring winter, with only the faintest touches of purple at Lent, scarecly daring to believe that the light and misty greens of spring will ever arrive.

But for now, my friends, I am content to live in a world aflame with vermillion.

Modern sinfulness

Sinfulness just isn’t something I *feel* very much. I very rarely walk around despairing of my own sinfulness. That sort of diminishes the power of grace, when you don’t feel the weight of sin.

But I was thinking today that I’d love to not feel guilty, even for a little while. I forgot to give my guest a clean pillowcase last night. Guilt. I didn’t talk to everyone as much as I wished last night. Guilt. I think I was too preachy in Sunday school today. Guilt. I’m behind in planning some things. Guilt. I complain too much. Guilt. I spent money on things I don’t actually need. Guilt. I didn’t talk to a single guest in church today. Guilt. I don’t practice my trumpet much anymore. Guilt. I haven’t talked to my parents much lately. Guilt. I’m working right now. Guilt for working. If I wasn’t working, I’d be feeling guilty for not working.

So imagine, maybe, if God’s grace for me was not about removing the weight of sin, but instead the weight of guilt. What if I could give him all my own guilt, and come off scott-free and feather light? Maybe what Augustine and Paul were talking about — the weight of that sin — maybe I *DO* feel the same thing, but I call it guilt. And maybe God would be willing to take that from me, if I asked.

Religious action vs religious belief

I’ve been thinking lately about the difference between belief and action in a life of faith. One of our hosts at our Maine retreat was raised an observant Jew, and obviously since it was a Christian Education youth retreat, most of the rest of us came from Christian backgrounds. At one point in an excellent discussion, he pointed out that being Jewish had very little to do with belief, and a lot to do with inheritance and observance. You could think the whole Yahweh thing was so much hogwash, but if you were born Jewish and lived according to the law, you were still Jewish. (Forgive me, friends, if that’s an oversimplification.)

Christianity, meanwhile, has evolved to be almost exclusively belief-based. If you (yes you!) wanted to join my church, all you’d have to say is, “I believe in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior”. You don’t have to promise to quit having multiple wives, murdering people, cheating the poor, robbing from the blind, etc. The criteria for being Christian has become almost entirely based upon orthodoxy of belief. And lest you blame that on the dissolute modern era, the very first big ol’ schism of the church was the so called Arian heresy (c. 350?) that claimed that Jesus was not coeternal with God the father. Tons of Christians died fighting this difference of belief out.

I’d like to point out that nowhere in the gospels does Jesus claim to be coequal and coeternal with God the Father. At least, I haven’t seen it anywhere. I’d also like to point out that Jesus spends almost no time talking about where he fits into a trinitarian theology. Instead, he talks a lot about helping the poor, being kind to others, etc.

Now, Jesus does talk about belief. There’s the father who prays my favorite prayer, “Lord, I believe. Help my disbelief.” And Jesus says, at one point, “No man comes to the father but by me.” But I would argue that Jesus himself give priority to right-acting over right-believing.

For example, with the youth group all of last year, I taught about a passage in Matthew. It’s a scene of final judgement. The righteous people (the Pharisees and keepers of the law, as I see them) stand self-certain in front of the judge, and he gives them hell because while they may have kept ritual purity laws, and believed the right things, they were not kind to him. And since they worry a lot about important people, and the judge is obviously important, they protest that they never neglected him. He tells them that he is the poor people, and in not helping the poor, they were not helping him. Then he welcomes the dirty people (the people who worked with their hands, upon whom that first group heaped scorn for their failure to abide by the laws, or their superstitious stupid beliefs), and thanks them for being kind to him. And they’re confused — they’re not even usually supposed to TALK to big important people like that. When did they help him? And of course, he gives the same answer. Whatever you did for the poor and needy among us, you did for me.

I love that scripture. Anyway, my point is that Jesus clearly gives priority to right-acting over right-believing — at least in that passage. But I don’t think that means law-abiding-ness. I think that means kindness. And I think that he would find cruel-acting in order to punish wrong-believing anathema. Which is, of course, exactly what we Christians have done for the last 1967 years.

I am an evangelical Christian (please note the little “e” not the big “E”). To me, that means that I have a story of hopeful and meaningful living to offer. I believe Christianity can help guide people towards lives which are better, and offers the hope of a life after this living. I believe there are many people who live lives devoid of hope, meaning, and joy, and that Christianity may help them. So if I encounter someone who needs a path towards joyous, hopeful living, I offer them what I have: Christianity.

However, I think it would be the height of arrogance to decide and announce that I happened to be born into and introduced to the ONLY right way to believe.

Instead, I will try to choose to see the right-acting. You could be a born-again Christian who attacks others for believing “wrongly”, says that the poor and destitute deserved their fates for not working hard, and earns money by cheating the poor. Or you could be an agnostic or atheist or Pagan or Muslim or Jew who is kind towards people in your daily life, tries to do no harm towards others, and would not want to profit at other’s expenses. I will take the right-acter over the right-believer any day of the week.

Stop. Rest. Think. Pray.

This Sunday’s sermon was about time. It was our (beloved) pastor’s first Sunday back after a 3 month sabbatical. He talked about the Sabbath — the divinely mandated one day in seven of rest. He talked about how God himself, after a hard week making creation, took a break. He raised the question: who are we, to think that our labors are more important and more critical than God’s governance of the created world? He could and did rest. Are we so much more integral to the running of the universe?

And he was talking to me and I knew it.

But he didn’t condemn me. And he didn’t say that the working and the striving are bad. He just reminded me that time needs to be taken for all things in this world. God did work hard for the six days. He may even have pulled all-nighters.

We had dinner with a friend from church. He owns his own business in order to make his own hours. He theorizes that we Americans are so busy because if we stop, the silence of the void within us might echo back. And so we’re afraid to stop. I’m pretty sure that my inner life is not echoing. I believe it to be rich, and have taken time for it. But he may very well be right, that it is not a comfortable thing to stop and hear.

My pastor also made a suggestion. In our bulletin was a corny little photocopy of four windows. Pick, he said, four windows of time between now and Thanksgiving. Make them good blocks — four hours or so. For those four windows, stop. Rest. Think. Pray. Do not even plan to do those little hobbies that fill up the corners of our time. Allow that time to be open. Do not do the chores. Do not plan ahead. Do not prepare. Stop. Rest. Be at peace, four times for four hours.

And he is right. I need to.

I threw away my bulletin with the little four windows. But I have before me my calendar — a pretty Presbyterian calendar that I always hope will remind me from whence my time on this world came. I must, of course, coordinate with my husband (who will point out that I do not have these quotes verbatim — that’s what they said to ME dearheart, whether or not it’s what came out of their mouths). But I will do it. I will find four fours. I will obligate myself to let go. I will mark them on my calendar, and they will be inviolate. And I will stop, rest, think and pray.

And so it begins

It’s August. August should be hot and humid. August rises in waves from blacktop pavement, and smells of tar. August fans itself laconically in the shade, hardly fathoming the concept of being comfortable, never mind cool. August sears to the bone with its heat, melting the ice still lingering on in the marrow of a New Englander. July rises us, like bread dough put near a hot stove, and August bakes us into tall loaves, ready to be taken from the oven.

Well, a normal August does. This year, I’m afraid. For the second year in a row we have a temperate August. We had a few hot, humid, properly miserable August days. But now there’s an autumnal tint to the air. The skies are clear and blue. The breezes are cool and crisp. The grasses are still green. Now, don’t get me wrong, this is my favorite weather. But for August, it is simply wrong. We have slipped straight from June to September once again, my friends. The icicles in my veins still cool my heart with every drop of blood.

Watching the colors turn in autumn is like watching a child grow old. You love each stage, and yearn for more — the first word… the first sentence… learning to read… learning to write… But you know that eventually your baby will be a man full grown and leave you. A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. So does summer go. It goes beautifully, here in the Northeast. The breath catches in the chest as the leaves turn yellow and gold in the slanting October sun — just as your child riding a bike by himself for the first time. And as beautiful as that moment is, it also foretells the future of absence.

Today, I saw a flash of scarlet on the side of the road. A shrub, in a wetland (always the first to go), has signalled defeat and raises a vermillion flag of surrender. It is early. Possibly the shrub is diseased, or otherwise in difficulty. But it is the first. In time, even the mightiest and healthiest of maples shall bow to the inevitable and strip themselves of their summer garmets.

And I am not ready. Another summer like last — short and cool. Another winter like last — harsh and frigid. I am becoming like the Arctic permafrost. I feel the beginnings of a glacier forming in my inmost center. The summer was not hot enough or long enough to melt off last winter’s snow, nor the winter before. It grows and accumulates, and becomes a powerful river of ice, scouring the landscape.

And there is nothing I can do but brace myself, and look longingly at the velvet night sky — too clear for August — and hope.

The 8 modes

I’ve sat down at the keyboard the last two nights to write one entry about music, and different ones keep coming out. Let’s see if I can get the one I intend out.

When my parents came to visit, we stopped by a store that sold sheet music. This is rarely a satisfying experience for me. My library usually knocks the tar out of their trumpet selection. But we stopped and I looked because I could tell Dad needed to sit.

I found this book: Plainchant for Trumpet. I was enchanted. The composer (W. Jonathan Gresham) took 22 chant lines from the Liber Usualis (Medieval Big Book o’ Chants) and wrote etudes on them. The etudes are quite nice. But my favorite part is that he highlights the medieval mode in which the music was written.

Medieval theoretical musicians (the best kind, according to my buddy Boethius who’s responsible for transmitting most of this stuff from the Greeks to the middle ages) thought there were 8 different modes of music. It gets all squishy in my brain, what goes where, because they stole this from Ancient Greece and didn’t completely understand it. The Greeks thought that the modes inspired different methods of action (here we’re getting into my thesis topic). For example, music in a Phrygian mode would cause someone to be warlike. A Lydian mode, on the contrary, tamed inflamed passions. I can’t remember which (the Dorian perhaps) the Greeks discouraged ever using because it made men timid and weak.

Medievals pulled across this idea of modes, but they sort of ignored the alchemical nature of the modes. There are 8 medieval modes (which act similarly to keys in modern music), four of which are authentic and four of which are plagal. They are the Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Hypodorian, Hypophrygian, Hypolydian and Hypomixolydian. The very names to me are magical. They carried a significance, a meaning along with them.

I’m not really going anywhere with this. In some ways, I’m being nostalgic over my own past, when I was given the marvellous opportunity to delve into these mysteries and call it homework. I’m not sure I ever truly mastered my subject, but I was fortune enough at times to see glimpses of a whole and coherent picture.

If I won the lottery, and I had the time, energy and attention to devote to whatever I wished, I’m sure I could find more meaningful and more important things to do. But what I would like to do is delve even further, understand even better, and see clearly and laid in front of me that picture of the genesis of music that I made the barest pencil outlines of in college. I’m not sure what I would do then — if I could transform my understanding into a communication for others.

That day will probably never come. But that doesn’t stop me from rolling the words off my tongue and dreaming about how the obscured picture might look. Dorian. Lydian. Phrygian.

The inevitability of polyphony, and lack thereof

Music history is fascinating to me. I have a music history minor, except for Theory II which Paul Althouse insisted on holding at 8:30 in the morning Monday, Wednesday and Friday. After my experiences with Theory I at that time, I didn’t think my GPA was up to it. But I took all the requisite classes otherwise.

I’m transfixed by music before it’s fully formed. Consider, my friends, that a mere thousand years ago (or so) music had no standard pitch. It had very little in the way of rhythmic variation, and nothing in the way of tempo. Written music only dealt with one set of voices at a time — there were no parts and no polyphony. Music was not written for specific instruments. Chant notation, while it has it’s own beauties and complexities was basically relational: you hold this note for twice as long as this other note, and then you go a step up from the first note you started with. (Yes, my musical friends who have studied it far more than I, I’m simplifying. Bear with me.) From that, in only a half century, you get to music so complex (hocketing) it wasn’t rivaled for another five hundred years. First you give different voice parts different notes, even though all the voices move together. Then you start having one set of voices move at a different time than the other. You standardize rhythmic notation. You create clefs and keys and accidentals. You start specifying which instrument you want used. You say whether you want it loud or soft. Fast or slow. (They even created an entirely different way of notating music for keyboards and strings, but I won’t go there lest I display my ignorance further.)

In some ways, I think learning to write words was inevitable. Many cultures came up with different solutions to the same problem — letters, phonemes, hieroglyphics, characters representing words, etc. But when Western civilization came up with a way to accurately communicate music by means of writing… well, I consider that little short of a miracle. And without that miracle, there can be no Bach fugues. Or rather, there could have been, but they probably would have died with Bach. Can you imagine trying to communicate a Wagner Opera line by line to the musicians, and then have them memorize it and try to put it all together? It might not be impossible, but it would be close.

I love polyphony. I think that’s one of the reasons a lot of modern (and by modern, I mean 20th century) popular music bores me. It’s not truly polyphonic. Ok, granted the base line is doing one thing, and the singer is doing another, so it KIND of counts, but I love the complex interplay between voices and lines. My favorite “pop” music has a rich harmony in multiple voices — like the Beatles at their best. My favorite music of all — mostly to participate in — is a quintet or similarly sized ensemble. It’s small enough so that you can pick out each line as a separate individual, but rich enough that you have to really pay attention to do so. I love Gabrieli for this. He passes the lines back and forth in downright enchanting ways.

I wonder: is complicated polyphony unique to Western culture? Did any other society create a fully-fledged way of communicating music, other than rote teaching? Is it possible that Pachabel’s Canon in D represents a truly unique cultural achievement?

Today I am North Korean

Death is a funny thing.

You hear that 10,000 people die in an earthquake in Turkey. You think, oh, what a pity. It gets some news coverage for a week.

You hear that 8,000 Brazilians die every day from Malaria — often children. You think, gee, that’s too bad. It gets no news coverage.

You hear that 3,000 North Koreans die in a train wreck, and you think. That’s no good. (Along with thinking that their government should keep their infrastructure up to date.)

3,000 some odd Americans die in a terrorist attack on American soil. And three years later, we think about it every single day.

We feel differently about accidental deaths than we do intentional ones. We don’t seem to mind preventable deaths nearly as much as we should.

But I thought, yesterday on hearing the initial death toll (revised downwards, I believe), how much more we value AMERICAN life than we do any other sort. I’m not sure our lives are worth any more than the Brazilians or North Koreans. In fact, I’m pretty sure they’re not.

So today, I am North Korean. My heart goes out to the people of North Korea whose friends and family members died due to a combination of back luck and negligence. I am Brazilian. I pray for all those mothers who watch their infants wither and die because they had no mosquito netting, or $10 pills to effect a cure. I am Turkish. I pray for all those whose sisters and husbands were crushed under buildings built quickly and not to code, in order to earn a quick profit.

Lent

Lent: The 40 weekdays from Ash Wednesday until Easter observed by Christians as a season of fasting and penitence in preparation for Easter.

[Middle English lenten, lente, spring, Lent, from Old English lencten. See del-1 in Indo-European Roots.]

Lento: [It.] (Mus.) Slow; in slow time; slowly; — rarely written lente.

These two words have had a connection in my head for a long time. In my youth (ah dissolate youth!) I assumed they were linguistically related. Because, you see, they do go together.

Lent is a long, slow time of year. There are two periods of waiting in the Christian calendar. The first is Advent, in anticipation of Christmas. In Advent, there is music and sound and anticipation. We look forward to the birth of our savior, and to Christmas trees and presents and colors and lights. We have shopping and baking and cleaning to do, and cards to write to our loved ones. Christmas comes all too soon (or too long if under the age of 12), and every day of Advent is delightful.

Lent is the second. Advent lasts for 4 Sundays. Lent lasts for 40 days (not counting Sundays). In Lent, we anticipate the betrayal, beating, humiliation and death of our savior — the man whose babyhood we celebrated a few short months ago. We look forward to a quick change of fortunes, to a friendship sold for silver, and to an abandonment of our God in human form by those who loved him most. Where Advent goes by with the snap of a sap-pocket in a cheery pine fire, Lent is like gradual erosion of mountains of dirty snow.

The end of the Lenten story, though, is the one that makes both Christmas and Easter meaningful and worthwhile. After the humiliation, after death, after despair, after the end of hope, Jesus rose up from the dead. I really think that we forget how surprising — how shocking! a conclusion to the story that is. Imagine if JFK had come out of his final repose, cured of his gunshot wound, three days after that day on the grassy knoll? If Martin Luther King JR. had bestirred his cold body after three days in a coffin? If Lincoln, three days after the theater and the botched surgery, rose up to tell us that not only had he given us guidance during the days of his natural life, that now he was immortal and would be with us always. Jesus’ disciples probably hoped that he would be a political leader (see James and John, sons of Zebedee, sucking up to him the week before holy week hoping for what they probably thought would be material power), but his messiah-hood far surpassed just a political solution for Jews under the thumb of the Romans. It was a promise to all humanity that death itself is not final.

Lent anticipates this, but it focuses not on the triumphant celebration over death at Easter — it focuses on the nastiness of getting there. Being raised from the dead didn’t make dying on a cross any more a pleasant experience. Nor did it help as Jesus was paraded and mocked with his crown of thorns. These were very real and very painful experiences, for a man whom we believe to be God. And in Lent, we think about the love it took for him to do that for us.

The music of Lent is slow and mournful. Lento. Contemplative. The 40 days stretch long, cold, and seemingly hopeless across the span of late winter and early spring. They leave a dusty taste in the mouth, with a touch of New England despair that the flowers will never come, and the countryside will never again be green and verdant. But our dispair is misplaced. Spring does come, against all fears. And God does rise up from the dead, against all expectation.

On how I affect others

Apologies ahead of time if this sounds conceited, self-centered etc. It is a self-realization, but a a self-realization about something that’s good about me, which I don’t feel nearly as comfortable talking about as my many flaws.

For those of you who know me in real life (and perhaps it even comes through on LJ), I’m a happy person. I tend to be cheerful, and I tend to enjoy my life. Not that I don’t complain as much as anyone, but all in all, I have always been on the positive edge of the emotional scale.

There are times, frequent times, where I hit my zone. It’s not that I’m necessarily ebullient — although I’m that often enough too — but that I am in my own skin and quietly joyous. I may be thinking about something else… the autumn colors, the coffee I’m about to buy, how much I like Garrison Keillor, how that was a pleasing church service, but I seem to radiate something.

Yesterday, after church, I was thinking about all those things, and I was obviously in my zone. I was whistling the PHC theme song “Oh hear that old piano, from down the avenue…” as I walked through the rain to Starbucks to get coffee. And I stopped a man dead in his tracks. He said, “You must be in a good mood.” (I get this a lot. In addition to questions — often vaguely suspicious — about why I smile so much.) As usually happens in these situations, I hadn’t really been thinking about my mood, but I realized he was right. I smiled, and I told him that it was a beautiful world. He sort of nodded his head, surprised, and agreed. I was even happier then when I realized I was happy, and sort of bounced through the store. He couldn’t take his eyes off me. He waved a shell-shocked goodbye as I left.

This particular phenomenon has happened to me more than once (and often in Starbucks — one barista actually bought me a bouquet of flowers after a day like this). And you know, I’m cute but not that cute. I don’t think it’s about how I look. And yesterday I realized what it was. A joyous person is incredibly attractive. When I am happy, and in my zone, I really *see* people. I don’t look past them and I don’t look at them, I see them. I look them straight in the eyes. My head is up, and I’m engaged with the world around me. There is music in my head and in my heart, and I can’t not smile. And I think that all of those are so unusual, they really attract attention. When I’m in that state, drivers in other cars smile back at me.

When I was 16, I remember being miserable at school and hiding in a corner, hoping someone would care enough to come find me and dissuade me from my misery. You’ll be shocked, shocked I tell you, to hear that never worked. But when I am joyous, and don’t actually *need* anyone to do anything for my contentment, I attract people like flies to honey.

So what’s my take-away from this? I’m not sure. I know that when you are blue and would like to attract people, it is almost impossible to radiate contentment. I don’t think it can be faked. But maybe it can be emulated when I’m not in the mood… instead of hanging my head (which is natural and pervasive), force myself to look up, and meet other people’s eyes. Smile reflexively. Try to actually see people. Joy begets joy, while isolation and misery drive away others.