Albums 16: Keep Awake (2000, WLP)

Way, way back in the late 20th century, World Library Publications of Chicago, the music publishing arm of the missalette juggernaut J. S. Paluch Company, decided to compile a songbook for young people. Anchored by songs by campus music ministers  par excellence Joe Mattingly and Steve Warner, along with works by John Michael Talbot, Paul Tate, Ed Bolduc and hits by Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, Dana, and Rich Mullins, Voices As One in its first incarnation was published in 1998 with 105 pieces of music as a softcover supplement to other worship aids.

Sometime in the late spring of 1997, there was a knock on the door of my Barrington home, and there at the door were Laura Dankler and Ron Rendek, with a modest proposal. This new youth hymnal project was coming up, and they were hoping I would consider writing a few songs for it. Of course I was honored. Here, for the first time every, was a publisher actually asking me for songs, instead of me having to sell my songs to a publisher. On the other hand, I was mildly apprehensive about the task, which had a deadline and was out of my "comfort zone" in the sense that I rarely wrote specifically to that target audience. In fact, I don't think that, even when I was writing as a young man, I was writing to that target audience. The congregation in my head is people of all ages, but I think largely adults and, maybe necessarily, like the people I know. The music I write is like popular music, but more like standards and oldies than like anything remotely hip, even 15 years ago!

But when someone comes to your door asking you to write songs, it's not the right time to say no. There would be time for that later in the editorial process if what I wrote wasn't a fit for their project. So I told them that I would do it, and that I would enlist the help of my daughter Claire, a budding writer and poet who was 16 at the time. That summer, when she came to visit for a few months, we would find time to write together.

I gave Claire some possible texts (from Scripture), and told her to concentrate on psalms and stories that interested her, where she was in her own life, and to "translate them into English." I wasn't so concerned about the texts sounding like other people's, or even my, voices, but what she as a Gen X-Y (b. 1981) child might hear in those texts, and how she might want to express them in her prayer. There are some really fine examples in her writing, even at that young age. I was hoping for an edge of idealism in the texts that might appeal to other young people, and Claire's most consistent metaphor for idealism was "dreams." Her lyric for "Jerusalem of Dreams," for instance, a paraphrase or inspiration from Psalm 122, while not one of the original songs submitted to WLP, was one we used on Keep Awake. You can make out the contours of the ancient song of ascent as you read or sing her words, probably gently edited by her father:

We have found our Jerusalem of Dreams,
A place for coming clean,
Wash away the sweat and soil.
We have found our Jerusalem of Dreams.
Shall we rest?
What dreams will come next?... 

We, a tribe,
Each is blood to all,
Drawn to march by the memory of a call.
Some confused,
Weary, battered, bruised,
Marching to Jerusalem of Dreams. 

We have found our Jerusalem of Dreams,
Bright, shining, and serene
And we pledge we shall be loyal.
We have found our Jerusalem of Dreams.
Shall we rest?
What dreams will come next?

Claire and I would go together to the Parish Center for a couple of hours a few times a week where I would take her lyrics and play with various feels and melodies until I could capture what I thought I was hearing in her lyric, and we would settle on ideas together that I would develop. We sent to World Library four co-written songs, "Stranger and the Nets," "Holy You," "I Choose You," and "You" (at least no one could accuse our song titles of being Pelagian!) and two of mine, "Morning Song" and "Fly Together." I wrote "Morning Song" several years before while working as a youth minister one summer at "Youth Sing Praise" during its second year, when they produced the musical Champion of Israel with book by Fr. Ron Brassard and music by Chris Brubeck. I had been writing songs for my children's graduation masses at St. Jerome School in Phoenix, and wrote "Fly Together" that year for Aidan's graduation. I remember writing much of the lyric for "Fly Together" in the studio in New Orleans as Gary was recording some overdubs for our GIA album This Very Morning, including the street musicians who played trumpet, trombone, and clarinet on our "A Litany of Saints" that features the refrain of "When the Saints Go Marchin' In." Those six songs, sent as our contribution to the hymnal Voices As One, formed the beginning of the collection that became Keep Awake.

Gary had moved back to his hometown of Gonzales, LA, and built a studio into the house, where the CD was recorded. He made frequent trips to Chicago because of his association with the publishers there, and this was the first time we used our current modus operandi in recording my music. As I've mentioned before, I hate studio work, you know, so much repetition past the point where I can hear a difference. Terry and Gary, on the other hand, thrive in the environment. So Gary came in and we played through the songs, and he made notes and recorded me playing the songs on my little piano. He then took that information back to Louisiana, and, using local musicians and singers, made the recording. Terry went down and did some overdubs, I think, because I remember being down there for some infamous events involving our sons, Desi and Grant, making an unbelievable mess of their 5-year-old selves in a mud hole.

I still find this recording a pleasure to listen to. The songs did not "hit" with the audience, and did not appear in later editions of Voices As One, and as usual I'm at a loss to explain it. It could just be that they are too idiosyncratic, and not traditional enough in either words or music to appeal to churchgoers. They seem to have a life on Rhapsody and Pandora, which is encouraging. I'm particularly proud of "Apocalypse," which was our take on Daniel's vision, sort of expanded into a more general and universal "dream" of new world saved by a community in solidarity, and of the title track, "Keep Awake," another end-time song that ends with a litany I wrote, based on Mt 25, as a kind of homage to Bruce Springsteen's "Land of Hope and Dreams." Great guitar work and an outstanding vocal performance by Gary on that song really give it wings. In our concerts, we give "Apocalypse" and "Stranger and the Nets" frequent play, and occasionally "Fly Together" and "I Choose You."

Terry's performance of our take on the Magnificat, "In God I Will Rejoice," is a country-tinged smile that I can't help but love, and Claire's ebullient lyric "Is This Goodness God?" appealed not only to me as a writer, but then to the wonderful Meredith Dean Augustin, who covered it on her CD Deep River.  If you haven't heard the songs on Keep Awake, I hope you'll give them a listen. You can audition them on iTunes using the links at the bottom of this page, and get the flavor of what Claire and I set out to do. At any rate, it was a great first experience making music for a wonderful company that has only gotten better over the intervening years. Our next CD with World Library would come five years later, when we recorded Christ the Icon.

Keep Awake, by Claire Cooney and Rory Cooney
© 2001, World Library Publications

1. Morning Song (by Rory Cooney)
2. I Choose You
3. You
4. Fly Together (by Rory Cooney)
5. Psalm 146: All in You
6. In God I Will Rejoice
7. Holy You
8. Is This Goodness God?
9. Jerusalem of Dreams
10. The Stranger and the Nets
11. Apocalypse
12. Keep Awake

Starting a brilliant fire (A5O)

Light and fire are the great images that pop out from the readings and psalm this Sunday. But as always, it's not about being "shiny happy people" who are nice to work and play with. Being light in the world is about being part of a burning fire. This light that is God's inbreaking presence radiates from the oven. It turns heads in the surrounding culture and causes a stir, provokes change, and even persecution. It is the light of the anawim, the "poor in spirit," the merciful, the single-hearted, the sorrowful, and those who hunger and thirst for reign of God.

We missed the gospel of the beatitudes, which initiates a five-Sunday continuous reading of Matthew's Sermon on the Mount, because of the feast day that fell on Sunday last week, but that should be all right. For us Christians, the lectionary readings aren't supposed to be isolated experiences of God's word as though we were hearing them for the first time. We already live by the book, we say. Hearing the readings ought to summon from within us the memory of these stories, like a whiff of perfume or a song might conjure memories of days, weeks, or months of our lives. So hearing today's gospel about salt and light should remind us of the beatitudes, and have us, in a way, leaning forward in our seats, waiting to hear more of what will follow. The sermon will unfold over several weeks in a way that it has not for many years, since Easter, and hence Lent and the end of winter Ordinary Time, come so late this year.

I wanted to say a couple of quick things about "salt of the earth," and the strange question about salt losing its flavor. People have bent over backwards trying to explain this apparently rhetorical question from Jesus, but cultural exegetes have offered a different and much more cogent explanation for (at least) the last thirty years. It goes back to how Hebrew/Aramaic words got translated into Greek and then into English, but it makes a powerful argument for several other scriptural passages. For a fuller treatment, and so you don't know I'm just making this up, check out this article from 2011 in Theological Studies, "Salt for the earthen revisited," by John Pilch. To make a long story short, a single word in Hebrew is used for "earth" and "earthen oven." In this case, Pilch suggests that the Greek gē renders the Hebrew gere, should be translated as "earthen oven." He then talks about the role that salt plays as a catalyst for dung fires in the Middle East where there is little firewood, and there is much disgusting detail about which dung is best for fires. Not for the squeamish. Just take my word for it. Flat plates of salt were placed in ovens to make the fires light and burn better. After time, due to chemical reactions, the salt became useless as a catalyst, and a new plate of salt was needed to line the oven. The old plate was thrown out onto the ground.

So Pilch and others postulate that Jesus was saying "you are salt for an earthen oven," that is, you're in there to light a hot fire. If you don't do that, what good are you? If salt doesn't catalyze the fire, what do you do? You throw it out and use some other salt that will start the fire. He goes on to talk about the "light of the world" and the "city set on a mountain." Here, he sees the use of the words in the passage with literary eyes as a chiasmus, an inclusion, like this:

These verses are structured like this: a – light: b – city: b’ – lamp: a’ – light. The relationship of light in a + a’ is clear, but city and lamp in b and b’? Von Rad’s (1966:232–242) analysis explains it clearly. He notes that the city is the eschatological city of God (Is 2:2–4; Mi 4:1–3). It is to be revealed at the end time by God and is a large, walled city above all human habitations, with total security. It has its own light supply, therefore it is always bathed in light. The entire world can see it. (Some archaeologists think that the view of Sepphoris from Nazareth might have been the inspiration for this image.) 

Harkening back to the oral tradition behind the sayings of Jesus, Pilch reminds us that there is a pun in the Hebrew words 'or (light) and 'ir (city).

Ultimately, what is this light and salt for the fire in the earthen oven which Jesus is calling his hearers to be, which, in fact, he says they already are as they hear his words? To take a step backwards to the beatitudes, which Pilch refers to as makarisms, a word he derives from the Greek makarios, which is the word translated as "blessed" or "happy" in the beatitudes, and which actually means something like "fortunate," these saying describe a state of being which his hearers might already claim. That is, they are not something that needs to be striven for, they are the actual locus of makarios, they are already the place where God is present! Clearly, as the Sermon on the Mount is challenging the way people like us are to treat one another, it is just as clearly redefining God for us, making us consider who God is, and how God is present to us and acts in the world, in a wholly different way.

Isaiah and Psalm 112 give us more insight into what it means to be "light in the darkness" of the world. Isaiah 58 starts out with the Lord and his prophet mimicking the complaint of Israel: "we're fasting our butts off here, Lord, and offer all those dang sacrifices. Why don't you give us what we want?" But God says, "all I see is your fighting and violence, and they way you treat those who are working for you. Do you think I care about your fasting and sacrifices? Who do you think you are? Who do you think I am?" We don't get the famous line that we sometimes hear in Lent: This is the fasting I seek: "releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed, breaking off every yoke..." which all comes in verse 6. Our passage Sunday begins with verse seven: share your bread with the hungry; shelter the poor; comfort the afflicted; don't shun your own people. Then, God says through the prophet, then your light will shine and glory will guard the road behind  you. Feed the hungry and satisfy those who don't have enough, then your light will shine, and darkness will seem like noon.

Light for us isn't just a matter of nice words, a matter of being. It's a call to action. You are light, Jesus says, so act like it. You're what makes fire in the world possible: do what you're supposed to do. Burn. Shine. And the way you burn and shine is laid out for you there in the prophets: feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, welcome the stranger, comfort the afflicted, don't make life worse for people.

The ones called to be fire and light are the same ones address in the Beatitudes. "You're already blessed, right where you are," Jesus seems to be saying, "you don't need to look higher or elsewhere. Look deeply into your shared life, and you will find the presence of God." His intention seems to be to change the world with them, and us when we are with them, the poor (in spirit), the merciful, the lowly, those who long for justice, the single-hearted, peacemakers, and the persecuted. He has come to start a fire with them, with us, with salt and dung. It's like remembering Genesis 3: 19 on Ash Wednesday. If God can make a world with mud and breath, what might God be able to do with me, salt of the earthen oven, and pile of sh*t that my life sometimes seems to be? Think about that when you hear this Sunday's gospel!

Throwback Thursday: "Promising Presence" (1990)

I thought it might be interesting to look back at some of my hieroglyphs, those "ancient writings" of mine that were the product of my association with Gary Daigle and John Gallen, SJ, in the 1980s and 1990s. They make me smile with their fervor and bravado. I hope I've learned that "the pen is mightier than the sword" doesn't mean you should still use the pen to stab those who disagree with you, or that all of this knowledge we accumulate about worship and God is anything more than an approximation of imagination, art more than science, love more than knowledge.

Here are the opening and closing paragraphs of a 1990 pamphlet Gary and I wrote together for a booklet, now out-of-print, called Promising Presence. It was written for Resource Publications, for whom John was, at the time, a consultant. No sense reprinting the whole article, because it was written for a different missal and certainly a different dispensation than exists now. Still, there were good ideas in it, and some of the core dynamics and insights still apply, I think. But I publish this as a glimpse into our lives a generation ago. Maybe it will make you smile too.

"Stated very simply, the function of the gathering rite is to prepare the assembly to hear the word of God and to faithfully share the meal of Jesus. To do this, it will be necessary for the assembly to begin to experience itself as a corporate entity, specifically, to become awakened to its true identity as the body of Christ. The gathering rite does this by a sequence of events which have function within the form. The gathering song gets us into the mode of communal action, of doing something ecstatic (or "outside of ourselves"), of establishing some of the ritual roles in the community (assembly, cantor, choir, instruments), and generally opening up the right brain of the gathering through metaphor and non-discursive interaction to a possible new way of being together: the reign of God. The sign of the cross names us as a baptismal people, the greeting announces the presence of God and the possibility of that presence in its fulness with its subjunctive verb: "The Lord be with you," "Grace and peace...be with you." The penitential rite names Christ as the power above all other powers in our world, as it asks the One who has conquered by surrender to lavish the spoils of victory on us who have our dying before us. The Glory to God explodes from the penitential rite, praising the triune God with unrestrained passion. All of this leads up to the opening prayer, which closes the gathering rites and in a proleptic way announces the need of the church and the world with imagery borrowed from the scripture of the day... 

"Gathering is not easy. We should not imagine that the goal of this current reform is to minimize the rite, to impoverish it or desiccate it. The reason that there are so many elements in the current rite, I am sure, has much to do with liturgists' sensitivity to the multi-facetedness of the challenge of gathering. It is very important to understand that the introductory rite has a function in itself (to awaken the Christ-identity of the community), a function which serves the major rites to which it is a prelude (i.e., preparing us to hear and respond to God's word and to participate in the Eucharistic meal). We ordinary folks have an extraordinary calling, one which connects us intimately in ways we don't often consider, and one which connects us to the beyond One who lives in unapproachable light. The move from the parking lot into the reign of God is not far (the reign is, after all, "at hand") but it is nevertheless a plunge for us into the icy waters of faith and ecstasy. 

Those of us charged with the responsibility of liturgy preparation must not imagine that the introductory rites are of little importance, any more than we should exaggerate them into a panoply of false triumphalism and pseudo-military pomposity. To graciously welcome, to acknowledge in one another the presence of Christ, to assent to a common awareness of our assembly as a sphere of divine rule, to begin to see our congregation as a whole greater than the sum of its parts, these are the tasks of the rite. If this is well done, we shall be ready for the word of God to be proclaimed among us, that we might both celebrate the work it has done in us and be called to deeper conversion. And we shall be ready for the meal of God's justice, in which the presence we promised one another in song and prayer earlier on is made visible in the sharing of the bread and cup. Here we will submit again to initiation into the mystery of Christ, into being God's word of healing and justice from Trump Tower to Disneyland, in classroom, bedroom, and city street, into being-for-others like a loaf divided and eaten, a cup passed around. "I shall be with you" is the name of God, evidenced in scripture from the Exodus through the exile to the ascension. In Christ, "I shall be with you" has become our name as well. To gather well is to promise presence, to move a body of people from just "being there" to being here, together."

SongStories 22: Mass of St. Aidan

Last time around trying to get music published, probably in early 2005, I wanted to publish a setting of the eucharistic texts that I called Mass of St. Aidan. I approached one publisher after another with the collection of songs, and there was interest particularly in a song I had written for Holy Spirit Catholic Community in Naperville, Illinois, on the occasion of the 2003 dedication of their church, a song called "You Have Built Your House." But all three publishers said that the new translations were coming down the pike soon, and that they didn't really want to publish a mass until the new texts and new missal were finalized and published. So I found myself back at square one, with what I felt were some good songs, but being (as usual?) at cross-purposes with publishers.

Then, something unusual happened. A publisher called me! Mary Beth Kunde-Anderson called me to say that World Library had rethought their objections, and reasoned that it would probably be years, not months, before the missal finally emerged, so they were willing to publish the song collection with the mass included. World Library was going to do the collection that became Christ the Icon, with the Mass of St. Aidan as a part of the collection.

I had written the mass with a three things in mind. First, I wanted to have a setting that was simple and direct, not a lot of repetition, that would stand up to repeated use and retain its emotional impact over time. I also wanted to include a sung version of the "prayers of the faithful" (universal prayer) and a simple acclamation for the dismissal of catechumens and the sending of children to the liturgy of the word. (This latter didn't actually happen as part of the mass, but "Let the Children Come" became part of the larger collection.) Finally, I wanted it to have an Irish flavor, but not cloyingly so. That wasn't too difficult, since I'm several generations off of the auld sod, I wouldn't have been able to be too authentically Irish anyway.

Christ the Icon was released in 2005, with the original version of St. Aidan. In 2006, Mass of St. Aidan won, to my surprise, the Unity Award from the United Catholic Music and Video Association. (The UCMVA seems to have closed its doors in 2011, but don't blame me.)

It was in Advent of 2011 that the new Roman Missal took effect, and I admit that I lost my energy for the work in the babble of churchspeak and formal equivalence that drained the evangelical oxygen from the church in the months leading up to its release. Knowing we would have to do something at St. Anne, I thought it would be best to adapt my acclamations for the community since they knew them well, but not with the same interiority as, say, Mass of Creation.

Retooling the Eucharistic acclamations was, in my setting as for most settings, not a difficult task. Gospel verses needed to be rewritten after the influence of Liturgiam Authenticam, and the Glory to God needed to be overhauled. But I had based some of the memorial acclamations (Mystery of Faith) and the verses of the Glory to God on a Dorian chant line that is also found in the Kyrie and some of the gospel acclamation verses, so adapting the Glory to God in my mass was mostly about rewriting the refrain to accommodate the new language.

The music was re-recorded live in November at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Oak Park. The guitar and Terry's cantor parts were overdubbed later at a small studio in Park Ridge. In addition to Dominic Trumfio's flute and whistle parts, my former GIA editor Kelly Dobbs Mickus, now with MorningStar Music, played piano for the session, the redoubtable John Williams played bodhrán, friends from Chicago Musical Connection played the string parts, and a crackerjack choir under the direction of Paul French, music director at St. Clement of Rome in the city and whose musical sandals I am unworthy to tie, quickly found the right sound for the setting and recorded it in the space of about two hours. In terms of recording, this is dizzyingly great, even for as modest a piece of music as MSA. Paul's generous spirit and natural musicality brought out the best in all the players and facilitated a low-tension session that produced fine results in a short period of time.


In the 2014 release of the CD and printed music, the "Lamb of God" that I wrote to be used with "You Have Built Your House" when that song was used for communion has been included in the Mass of St. Aidan. In the previous incarnation, I didn't include a fraction rite with the mass setting because I feel that the Lamb of God might better be connected musically with the communion song than with other acclamations. But I'm not that much of an ideologue. I hope that including the "Lamb of God" makes the whole collection more valuable to music directors who audition it and decide to give it a try in their parishes.

The score and CD are available now, along with separate parts for flute and string trio. There has been some discussion about assembly cards, but I'm not in on that discussion. If you would like more information, call World Library Customer Service at 800-566-6150, or click here.

Liturgical Composers' Forum: Making Music Together

At concert rehearsal, "Be Not Afraid," L-R John Foley,
Bob Dufford, and Roc O'Connor, piano, Tom Kendzia

I spent last week at Mercy Center in Frontenac, MO, just west of St. Louis. During the last week of January, every year since 1998, the Liturgical Composers Forum has gathered there for a few days of learning, praying, strategizing, and networking.

We arrive on Monday from really all over the country, and, in the case of Paul Inwood, at least, other countries. Paul happened to have been in the US attending the SWLC study week last week, so the trip from Beaumont TX was a slightly shorter jaunt than it might have been, but Paul is one of the most consistently present members of this band of rhapsodes. After a welcoming cocktail hour, we have dinner, and spend a couple of hours getting reacquainted by updating each other in an informal way on what has been going on with us personally and musically since our last gathering, after which we celebrate some kind of night prayer, and, if I remember correctly, another cocktail hour. Or so.

Each year features one or two guest speakers who address us on some aspect(s) of our work about which we can all benefit. Over the years, we have heard from musicians like Alice Parker and John Ferguson, poets like Brian Wren, theologians like (CF member) J. Michael Joncas, spiritual leaders like Ron Rolheiser OMI, liturgists like Paul Turner, Anthony Ruff OSB, (CF founder and member) John Foley, SJ, and the late Lucien Deiss C. Ss. P., and many others. The website says that even I made a presentation one year, but I'll be damned if I remember when it was or what the subject was. This year, we were treated to presentations by the great scripture scholar Walter Brueggeman on two scriptural laments and on the nature of lament in general. It was an eye-opening and soul-baring experience to hear the song of Anna and the lament of David broken open in such a way that it invited us to reconsider what the subject of our songwriting is, and who the One is who inspires it. We also got to hear some of the doctoral work of CF member Ricky Manalo CSP on intercultural issues and the way they impact the way music is created and received by different cultural groups.

We've been working over a period of five or six years on a book about the art of writing liturgical music from a wide perspective of topics, and that book is very nearly ready for publication, although its final form has morphed from a single volume into several smaller volumes grouped by similar topics. I don't really have anything more to say about this other than to express my excitement about its publication, and my hope that it will be of some value to the church at large in some small way.

We spend time praying together as well, with mass in the morning for those who are early risers, morning prayer and some evening worship for all of us, and a conference Eucharist on the last evening and a formal dinner with entertainment. We take turns preparing the various prayer services and liturgies under the organizational eye of CF member Carol Browning from California, a member of the Collegeville Composers Group who produced the wonderful collection of music called Psallite. This year, for instance, knowing that Dr. Brueggeman was presenting on the subject of lament, I adapted a rite of lament for our group that I had used in parish missions and Forum workshops about reconciliation. One of our priest members presides at the Eucharist for us; this year, it was Roc O'Connor, while Janèt Sullivan Whitaker organized the music for the Eucharist. In this group, you can be sure, there are plenty of wonderful singers and musicians to bring the music to life.

This year's dinner entertainment featured the jazz stylings of CF member and Chicago area musician Larry Harris. In previous years, we've had musical revues created by the likes of members Kevin Keil, Barney Walker, and Gael Berberick, and performances by St. Louis chanteuse Erin Bode, as well as by one of SLU's pop a cappella groups.

With a rare lapse of judgment and even good sense, the members elected me to the steering committee this year, along with Bob Hurd, to replace outgoing committee members Roc O'Connor and Paul Inwood. Tom Kendzia will be the new chair of the steering committee, on which John Foley serves ex officio and of which Jaime Cortez and Carol Browning are sitting members. Most of what we do will be to prepare the event for next year, attend to the progress of our website development being created by member Fergal King, and follow through on other business matters that arose in our meeting this year. My highest priority will be to seek grant funding for moving the January site to a more work-congenial location, like Bora Bora or St. Bart's.

This year's meeting ended with our first benefit concert, held Thursday evening in the chapel at Mercy Center. Looking both to thank Mercy Center for their ongoing hospitality and to provide some seed money for next year's programs, we asked Tom Kendzia to organize a concert for the area, which was sold out of the 250 available tickets weeks in advance. Members of the Composers Forum performed with a small ensemble and choir made up of ourselves and some ringers from local CF member Peter Hesed's musical forces and Forum friend flautist David Brinker. I felt this was an historic concert in that so many of two or three generations of composers and songwriters led performances of their own songs in the same concert. I do not recall an event of this kind, featuring artists from all the different US publishers of Catholic music, ever. Attendees got to hear Michael Joncas lead "On Eagle's Wings," Marty Haugen lead "Shepherd Me, O God," and David Haas lead "You Are Mine," as well as John Foley leading his "One Bread, One Body," Bob Dufford lead "Be Not Afraid," and Roc O'Connor lead "Lift Up Your Hearts." I think that, all told, we performed all or part of about thirty songs in ninety minutes.

We have well over a hundred members, though not all are able to attend every year, their presence and influence in felt even in their absence. One of the things I certainly hope to inspire is a dialogue-by-dining, a companionship, with more of those who write in praise-and-worship genres and more of those who write in classical church styles. We certainly have members and attendees in both of those genres, but we could use more to cross-pollinate our ideas, to learn from each other. The Forum invitation to membership is to all composers who have published a "body of work" for the church. With the publishing business changing quickly, even that kind of language will need to be investigated to be sure we don't leave out people who should be in our group as new technologies and distribution channels are embraced.

That's about it. Here's the link again to the Saint Louis University Center for Liturgy's web page about the Composers Forum, with a little bit more about the origins and history of the group.

This is a really hard-working bunch of really fine people, I want you to know, who take their work seriously but who are grounded in real-life ministry in many different churches and denominations. I celebrated 20 years in my parish this week, and I thought that was good, until I started hearing how long some of my colleagues have been in their communities, including the great Steve Warner, who has been over thirty years with the Notre Dame Folk Choir, which he founded in 1983. Several members mentioned being in musical positions longer than I've been at St. Anne's in Barrington. That's not just inertia, friends. That's symbiosis, I think: the community that is generated by life in the Spirit. It's not always easy; in fact, it's characterized by "cruciform beauty," and the pattern of the cross. But it is sustained by song, by the psalms of lament and the alleluia of Easter, as it makes its paschal journey. Let's keep to the road together, praying for each other, and singing our songs in the church's prayer with full, conscious, and active participation.

"And did not Jesus sing a song that night
When utmost evil strove against the light?
Then let us sing, for whom he won the fight!
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!"                                                                                              ("When in Our Music God Is Glorified," by Fred Pratt Green, © 1972) 

                                                           

Ricky Manalo, Janèt Whitaker, Paul Inwood (photo, Jaime Cortez) 

Yours truly, warily eyeing the turista with camera, and Tony Ward  (photo by Jaime Cortez)

Marty Haugen, Paul Hillebrand, and Michael Joncas (photo by Jaime Cortez)

David Haas and Walter Brueggeman (Jaime Cortez photo)

Some of the folks at rehearsal - first row, Fabing, Hillebrand, Ward, Demny; Second row, Cosas, Haas, Ridge; Third row, Soper, Joncas, Haugen, Mellis. 

Fire, light, and glory (Presentation of the Lord)

It has been eleven years since the feast of the Presentation of the Lord fell on a Sunday, and you could tell that by the difficulty our priests had preaching on the subject. I heard about Pete Seeger, Boy Scouts, and Horton Hatches an Egg, but I'm not really sure anyone knew how to deal with the texts we had, and any notes they might have had from previous rounds through the lectionary were long lost in half a generation of filing. On a midwinter day where "glory" in America boiled down to the tantara and hype of the SuperBowl and its advertisers, "glory" might have been a good starting place, to keep us from completely consumed by our culture's preoccupation with consumption and glitz.

It has been traditional in most years for the Vatican to leave its large Nativity scene up until yesterday's feast day to emphasize that, while the liturgical season of the nativity ends on the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, there is an aspect of the nativity cycle that lasts the forty days from Christmas to this feast day. I thought of this at mass yesterday, and while we did not have much left in the main church by way of Christmas environment, the white poinsettias around the altar platform and the many red ones in the gathering space provided at least some visual context that linked the celebration to the Christmas season.

We blessed candles at all the masses, though we had no procession as such, people held lit candles in the pews for the blessing and singing of the Glory to God, and I admit to loving the ambience of all the lit tapers both for the sacramental effect of light, warmth, and beauty, but also for the visual memory of the Easter Vigil. These emotional linkages are somehow important, don't you think? Like Luke's prophecy of Simeon concerning the "sign that will be contradicted," and the pain that is in the future of the child and his mother, they connect the events of the Nativity with the events of the Passion-Resurrection narrative, and to the larger world of Acts. To some scholars, Crossan and Raymond Brown among them, this is the whole point: the infancy narratives are either "overtures" to the gospel, or even gospels-writ-small, a literary metaphor for the meaning of what will happen to the adult Jesus and the church.

We can't really hear that first reading from Malachi any more without hearing the corresponding aria and chorus in the Messiah, can we? To me, the reading suggests at least two connections to the feast day, first, that the Lord will come to the temple, and second, that the coming of the Lord will be like a "refiner's fire or fuller's lye," that is, a purifying event, that will change the "sons of Levi." This is not just a reference to Israel, but specifically to the priesthood of Israel. The purified priesthood will offer to God a pleasing sacrifice. Hebrews orients our attention to the life and death of Jesus as that sacrifice, which was for "the descendants of Abraham," the brothers and sisters of the Lord, to deliver us from slavery and the power of death.

The temple narrative of the Presentation in the gospel, and in particular, I think, the oracle of Simeon, pull all of this together. But we need to try to grapple with what the author of the third gospel means by words like "light" and "glory." It does help to orient our hearing to the infancy narratives, in which we recall that, at the birth of the Lord, the "glory of the Lord shone around" the shepherds at the appearance of an angel, then an army of angels, who sang that the "glory to God in the highest (is) peace on earth."

Simeon says,

“Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace,
according to your word,
for my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you prepared in sight of all the peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and glory for your people Israel.”

The literary parallelism in those last two couplets equates what "my eyes have seen" with "in the sight of all peoples," that is, "your salvation." The nature of that "salvation," or making-healthy, is the child who is "light of revelation --> Gentiles" and "glory --> your people Israel." Again, parallelism like this implies a relationship of equality. The prophetess Anna spoke of Jesus to "all who looked forward to the redemption of Jerusalem." I took this to mean, "who looked for a political messiah". Already, the game is afoot. Luke has situated this entire story in the political context of the Roman empire, under the rule of Augustus and the governorship of Quirinius. It is going to be a political story, but it's not going to be politics as usual, neither for the Romans and other Gentile followers of Jesus, nor for the Jewish subjects of the empire, nor their priests, nor for their political agitators.

The culmination of the story? Jesus is taken home by his parents. It's as simple as that. He grows up like a normal kid in his home and on the village lanes of Nazareth.

I couldn't help but remember an episode of the old cop series NYPD Blue, in which Detective Sipowicz and his wife Sylvia Costas bring their newborn son Theo to their (Greek Orthodox) church for a "churching" ceremony, a service reminiscent of the presentation ceremony in Luke, which reunites the mother with the community, and introduces the child. (citation) The priest took the child from his parents, and carries him to different  places in the church, but what I recall most distinctly is that he held the baby up and spoke the words of Simeon, "Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation..." In other words, this baby, today, is (also) your light of revelation and glory. Our baby. This ordinary baby from these ordinary people, is light and glory and salvation. Just like all the babies that passed through this door in the past, and will pass through it in the future.

So, on this day when everyone couldn't wait to get home to start millionaire-athlete worship, the competition, the "tailgating" glut, the cult of advertisement, need-making, and consumption, the Church was reintroducing us to the other "way," the way of ordinary life, salvation by relationship, and the rejection of competition among factions in favor of mutual service.

Since, it seems to me, that as long as they keep the SuperBowl on the first Sunday of February, the feast of the Presentation will, every dozen years or so necessarily coincide, we would do well to keep these things in mind, don't you think? Glory is not money, cars, power, influence, but peace among people. As long as we let the light and fire of God's word speak in the temple, and reflect on its meaning, we should have something to say to one another about Caesar's world, whether it's run by Augustus, Fox Sports, Anheuser-Busch, or Madison Avenue. "And he shall purify the sons of Levi." Priestly people, I think that's us.

More markings

It was just about a year ago that I started this blog. I kept one from 2006 to early 2009, but it was small, and I kept it in an Apple proprietary format called iWeb. By some combination of user error and useless upgrades to the application, it got to a point where I couldn't edit old posts anymore. Ultimately, Apple's nascent cloud service, called iDisk, went off-line, and so did my blog. Needless to say, hardly anybody noticed. I barely did!

As I looked over what I'd written then, I realized it through the intervening years I've change my attitude about a lot of things. Then, I was writing mostly for myself, and venting a lot of frustration about my work and some of the people who made life difficult for me, or so I thought. Now, I hope what I'm doing is trying to share some of the insights I've had through the years, not from some inner font of wisdom, but because I've had such generous access to the wisdom of others. In my church work, I've been extraordinarily privileged to have worked with and learn from some truly great people. I've had the friendship of wise and profound theologians. It doesn't seem right not to at least attempt to share what they've shared with me. Also, my own insight and experience for so many years in this work, a vocation and gift from God, may be of benefit to others who are on the same path. Hence my start-up again of this blog in January 2013, and I admit it's been great fun, interacting with you, having guest voices occasionally, and just opening up the experience of ministry in liturgy to more people.

So that marks one event of 2014. As I was thinking about that, I realize the 2014 is a marker year for me in a lot of ways. It's the 30th anniversary of our first recording, "You Alone." It's the 25th anniversary of our first recording with GIA, "Safety Harbor," which we think of as a kind of a milestone for us. On a personal note, Terry and I will celebrate 20 years married this November.

And, I realize with a sigh, that this weekend Saturday, February 1, I will celebrate 20 years at St. Anne Parish in Barrington, as music and liturgy director. That's quite a milestone for me, it's the longest I've ever held any job! In fact, it's nearly as long as the previous two full-time jobs I had put together, as I was a travel agent from 1974 to 1983, and then worked at St. Jerome in Phoenix as music director from 1983 to 1994.

I remember arriving at St. Anne's on Friday evening, probably January 31, 1994, and there was a memorial service going on in the chapel that night. There was snow everywhere, something I didn't really know what to do about being from the desert. I had my few possessions in a small rental truck, and needed to move in. The next day, I was to direct the music at the parish for confirmation, which was being held in the gym. That winter was all quite an adventure. I had to learn to drive all over again, on ice, with a stick shift, wearing boots. But I had a new home, among generous, kind, faithful people and it's been my home now for 20 years. For making me a part of their community, I will be forever grateful to the people of St. Anne's in Barrington.

All those dates and numbers don't mean much. 62 is kind of a weird year, not really a milestone of any kind in itself. But I have a new book out, I'm getting a special recognition from my professional group, the National Association of Pastoral Musicians, this July in St. Louis,

And it looks like Gary, Terry, and I will have a new collection of music in some form by the middle of this year. Of course, I'm excited to share with you and others some of the work I've done since our last recording came out in 2006.

So it looks like a busy year, even if it's not numerologically auspicious. Who knows what God has in store for us while we're making our plans? I'll keep the blog going, so check in once in a while and see what's happening in the church in Barrington and beyond. And thank you for taking me in for a part of your day.