MATHETΩN

39. Arie Soprano (mit Echo)

If there’s no mosh pit, it’s not a worship service.

“Dindi”, particularly as sung by certain singers, could be a church.

“When my family and I attended Wednesday night prayer meetings in small churches in Fairpoint, Ohio, or Hamilton, Montana, or Blackduck, Minnesota, or any of the small towns and communities in which we lived for a time here and there in this far-flung expanse of earth called America, we would generally begin by singing the verses of a few shaped-note hymns in harmony.

“Then someone at the front of the room would ask if anyone had any prayer requests or anything to share. While we waited for someone to speak, the person at the front of the room would take out a small piece of paper and a pencil to jot down a few notes.

“Edith might update us on a skin condition and request prayer for her doctor’s appointment on Thursday afternoon. Virgil would ask for good weather for the hay harvest. And Bubbles was still having seizures.

“Uncle Rudy and his family would be arriving soon for a visit, and we asked for traveling mercies. All of us were heartsick that Clovis was dying, a man in his thirties, his soft-spoken wife still so young. Andy Androsko Sr. was out of the hospital and doing much better.

“And there were requests for wayward sons off in the city (that they would return safely home) and reports of encouraging conversations with unchurched Uncles and Aunts in neighboring towns. The impending arrival of new babies, high school algebra exams or the ongoing search for gainful employment now that the coal company was leaving town were all discussed and noted in front of a group of believers. It was news, it was keeping in touch, it was gathering together, it was part of a high call to love your neighbor and to pray without ceasing.

“But there was something else.

“Occasionally someone seated in a gently curving wooden pew would raise their hand and say simply, I have an unspoken request. If someone had an unspoken request, they could receive prayer without need of finding words to speak. Perhaps they had no words. Perhaps it was a situation too personal or painful to talk about just yet. We would pray that God would be with them and their unspoken request whatever it might be.

“Unspoken requests nudged my imagination in those early years and left a deep impression on me. As a child, when I had no words, I often sat at home at the piano to try to find the impressions of what I could not speak. My heart would yearn toward something I could not name and my hands would follow along little by little. Those improvised imperfections drifted up out of the room and into the darkness.

“I still don’t know what I’m saying exactly when I sit down at the piano here at home, but I do often wonder about God listening when there is no other audience. I can remember slipping into an empty auditorium on a Friday evening after dark when many of the students at boarding school had gone home for the weekend. It was only me, a piano and 400 empty seats, but there was the hush of something holy in the room.

“I suppose the piano has continued to be a means of helping my soul to grow still from time to time. This unpremeditated, unspoken music may be as close as I’ll ever get to what the Benedictines call contemplative prayer, a form of prayer that requires being quiet and mostly listening.

“I still hope to feel a little something when I sit down at the piano. I hope to breathe a little something. I hope to hear silence as well as music. I hope to sit in the stillness of a room, maybe even in the presence of the Lord, and just be my unimpressive self. No words. The occasional grin.

“This is the third in a series of simple instrumental recordings I’ve made at home. Previously, painters painting, writers writing and especially new mothers nursing (all I think are forms of unspoken prayer) have expressed some gratitude for the simple, spontaneous backdrop that this music somehow provides. Thank you for your encouragement. These tiny songs without words, these unspoken requests are for all of us who at times find that we must pray without speaking.

“Nursing mothers, loosen your blouses.”

03 January 20—

Dear A——:

Your links page has changed—I happened upon the link to S——’s diary the other day. I didn’t read a lot of it, although I have no doubt he’s interesting and fun as all your friends, but I did read his latest, and it made me think. In it he asks (but of course you’ve read it): “Is it okay for a Christian to listen to secular music?” and answers: “I told my [Sunday school class that] things that were not of God, even if they were not bad per se, were a sin … that I wouldn’t listen to any secular music.” Somehow I’ve conceived a burning desire to opine upon this subject, and as I do not keep a diary, and I am prudent enough not to sign his guestbook—well I apologize in advance for oppressing you with my bloviation. Poor A——. Follows some thoughts, in no particular order, on S——’s Sunday school declamation (and might I specify that I do not think him wrong, nor am I silly enough to suppose myself right):

I suggest that it is unchristian: To call anything sin that Jesus Christ did not call sin—well I am not bold enough to do it.

It strikes me as illogical: To call a song sin, I should suppose to find sin in it: a preponderance of sin—let us say above a certain percent. And, further, perhaps we should calculate this percentage thus: P = sin% – (good% × 2)—for we must always value the good and true and beautiful more. Well this arithmetical illustration has put me in mind of another: God = love (I Joh iv.8); that is certainly worth thought.

It is also impractical: How are we to categorize instrumental music? or the alphabet song or “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”? Are poems that are “not of God” sin? What of art? Many paintings do not depict the Passion or the vistas of heaven. And what is the alternative to (alleged) musical sin? “Contemporary Christian” music I presume. But while the producers of CCM perhaps make music righteously, they cannot seem to be bothered to make it well. Is God a god of mediocrity? What is lukewarm, we are told, he spits from his mouth (Rev iii.16).

It is specious: What (merely for example) makes P.O.D. “of God”? Is “I feel so alive” in their mouths a tribute to God’s grace because I say it is? This is the sort of thing that reduces salvation to a parlor trick. I am in and you are out because I know the secret code. Perhaps this is petty and forgivable human nature—but when you who are out are to be tortured forever it becomes macabre. Again—to call salvation or sin or damnation or grace anything but what Jesus and his apostles called it is unchristian and dangerous and often absurd.

Now I daresay if we examine more rigorously S——’s statement: That which is not of God is sin; we will recognize that it begs the question: What is not of God? Indeed that question underlies the entire postulate, and without its answer debate is futile. Thus I abandon my earlier arguments and seek to answer: What is not of God? Of course I cannot tell what answer S—— might propose, but I have a proposition of my own. Firstly: There is nothing not of God—God is all and in all (Rom xi.36); secondly: We have been granted by God the will to do as we please (Jam i.13f), and that which we do and those things which we make in rebellion toward God and contrary to his good nature pain him, and he rejects them—they are not of God (I Joh iii.10), while that which we do and those things which we make in gratitude toward God and in unity with his good nature specially please him, and he asks them of us—they are a glory to him (Php i.11). Thus, that which is not sin is of God, and that which glorifies God is specially of God.

Shall we suppose it is a very particular thing that glorifies God? the reciting of a psalm perhaps? Paul Apostle says: “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to God’s glory” (I Cor x.31). If my eating a sandwich glorifies God, then my speaking of it—nay singing of it—can do no less. I venture that an act, a life without sin and with gratitude toward God is an act, a life that glorifies him.

I will not barrage you further, O A——, with thoughts and arguments and questions. I will finally quote for you an essay of Gerard Hopkins on glorifying God; an essay—and an author—of which I am quite fond:

There once was a Note, pure and easy,
playing so free, like a breath rippling by.
The note is eternal—I hear it—it sees me—
forever we blend and forever we die.

I listened, and I heard music in a word—
the words when you play your guitar.
The noise that I was hearing was a million people cheering;
and a child flew past me riding in a star.

As people assembled, civilization
was trying to find a new way to die.
But killing is really merely scene-changing,
and all men are bored with other men’s lies.

Gas on the hillside, oil in the teacup—
watch all the chords of life lose their joy.
Distortion becomes somehow pure in its wildness—
the Note that began all can also destroy!

We all know success when we all find our own dreams,
and our love is enough to knock down any walls;
and the future’s been seen as men try to realize
the simple secret of the note in us all.

There once was a note— Listen! There once was a note— Listen! There once was a note …

—The Who

Lord, Lord, time gone you save me—now I cry by night and day.
Lord, Lord, time gone you save me—now I cry by night and day.
Put my prayers where you can see them.
When I cry, turn your eyes this way.

Lord, my soul is full of troubles, and I think I goin die.
Lord, my soul is full of troubles, and I think I goin die.
You can find me in the graveyard
wanderin where the murdered lie.

It you, Lord, Lord, that put me into darkness, into hell.
It you, Lord, Lord, that put me into darkness, into hell.
Lord, you so angry with me—
your rage it swirl and swell.

You drive my neighbors from me, and they gone so far away.
You drive my neighbors from me, and they gone so far away.
They say that I be damned, Lord—
and I ain’t got a word to say.

My eyes, they mourn and cry, Lord—and I call and call on you.
My eyes, they mourn and cry, Lord—and I call and call on you.
My hands, they reach to heaven,
and I call and call on you.

Can you show the dead a wonder—can you make him rise and sing?
Can you show the dead a wonder—can you make him rise and sing?
With your lovin and your kindness—
can you make the graveyard sing?

You do wonders and you do right, Lord. They be seen in the dead and
dark?
You do wonders, you do right, Lord. They be seen in the dead and
dark?
Can a land that remember nothin
know the Lord got a faithful heart?

It you, Lord, Lord, I callin—and this mornin, goin make you stay.
It you, Lord, Lord, I callin—and this mornin, goin make you stay
and answer why you hidin
once you threw my soul away.

You know I been afflicted—when a child, I wish to die.
You know I been afflicted—when a child, I wish to die.
Your rage it like to drown me—
Lord, it you who terrify.

Your terror it come round me, and I think I goin drown.
Your terror it come round me, and I think I goin drown.
There ain’t nobody love me,
and I ain’t got a friend around.

—Pace King David

As King David knew, believing is dancing.