“You have an odd concept of freedom,” my friend said.
Odd? It was the definition I grew up with –freedom is the ability to choose to obey.
“Can you disobey?” he asked.
“Not without suffering rejection and other dire consequences,” I answered.
“You have an odd concept of freedom,” he said.
Freedom, like grace, was a concept I struggled with during my much-delayed adolescence (that took me well into my forties). It took me a while to figure out that I had accepted mixed messages without question.
Mixed messages are crazy-making.
I just read a recipe that defines mixed message for me. It calls for a bowl full of lovely, fresh, healthy vegetables, sunflower seeds and green grapes. To this collection of organic goodness you add 1/2 a pound of diced fried bacon, eight ounces of grated cheese, and a salad dressing that crams the maximum number of calories possible in the form of fats and sugar into a measuring cup. Healthy with a death wish.
Some people who talk about grace will welcome you into their church and tell you that you cannot earn God’s love and that salvation is a free gift, that Jesus paid it all. They will point out the verses that say the purpose of the law was to demonstrate, like an impossible-to-please teacher who never gave out perfect marks, that you were never quite good enough. You could never obey all the rules perfectly, no matter how hard you tried. But now you are free; you are saved by grace through faith.
That’s it. They welcome you to the fold.
Then they remind you to pick up a copy of the new rules on the way out.
The new rules are book length and some of the pages written in ink so faint you need special secret decoder ring and spy glasses to read them. And guess who has the decoder ring and spy glasses?
Mixed messages are crazy-making. They’re like a green salad that will give you a myocardial infarction before you get to the gluten-free zucchini muffins.
Grace is not sin-consciousness; Grace is Saviour-consciousness. Grace is not about your failure; it’s about Jesus Christ’s success. Grace is not about who you were; it’s about who God sees you as.
And freedom? Freedom is permission to run toward that destiny – person you are becoming in Christ, unencumbered by fear of making mistakes, and being secure in the knowledge that you are cherished by the One who holds his arms open wide.
You are precious in his sight. He absolutely adores you, you know.
June is the usually rainiest month in this part of the world. Combined with melting snow pack in the mountains it can be a dangerous season. When dire predictions of more flooding were broadcast on various media this week part of this song started playing in my head:
If the sky above you should turn dark and full of clouds and that old north wind should begin to blow, keep your head together and call My name out loud. Soon I will be knocking upon your door. You just call out My name, and you know where ever I am I’ll come running to see you again. Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call and I’ll be there.
Hey, ain’t it good to know that you’ve got a Friend?
People can be so cold. They’ll hurt you and desert you. Well, they’ll take your soul if you let them, oh yeah, but don’t you let them.
You just call out My name, and you know where ever I am I’ll come running to see you again. Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call, “Lord!” I’ll be there, yeah, yeah, you’ve got a Friend. You’ve got a Friend. Ain’t it good to know you’ve got a Friend.
Ain’t it good to know you’ve got a Friend. Oh, yeah, yeah, you’ve got a Friend.
(You’ve got a Friend by James Taylor and Carole King)
There is more than one kind of storm. Sometimes people have no idea of the kind of storms that rage inside our hearts. A line in another old song talks about “fightings within and fears without” and yet, “just as I am, I come” to the Lover of my soul.
Calling out for help is not always easy, particularly for those of us who don’t want to admit we need help.
I looked at the dark clouds. I called. He answered.
The rain was heavy, and there was some flooding, but nothing as serious as was predicted.
I looked at the raging storm within. I called. He answered.
It’s been a year since the rains came down and the floods came up. Our son and his family are back in their house in High River, but it’s still a construction zone.
The kids are back playing soccer and baseball, but I see some of them watching the approaching rain clouds as much as they watch the ball.
The middle school band plays at an outdoor concert for an audience of proud parents, grandparents and siblings who step around puddles in the gravelled yard.
The temporary business structures beside the Saturday artisan’s tents have become the new downtown.
When I ask my granddaughter how her friends are doing she says everything is different , but different is kind of normal now.
Then she asks, “Do you think it’s going to rain like that again?”
There’s a greater maturity, but also something akin to a lost innocence in High River. I suppose that is what happens after any disaster, or after any change in the definition of normal. Whether it’s a flood, a tornado, a serious illness – or a betrayal, wherever we experience unexpected loss we can no longer say, “That would never happen.”
Now we know it can.
And now that we know we are left standing in the playing field on a Saturday morning in June checking the sky for signs of rain, wondering if it will happen again.
“Folks are a bit twitchy when the forecast is for heavy rain in the mountains,” a merchant/artist told me. “It’s understandable -especially for the kids.”
The thing about lost innocence is that it is one thing that can never be restored. You cannot un-see things. When I’m with my family it seems like half a dozen times a day I hear the phrase, “We had one of those, but it was lost in the flood.” My grandchildren don’t have bikes or outdoor toys because even though we offered to replace them, they don’t have anywhere to store them yet. The shed containing their old bikes and toys was also lost in the flood, and that image is still with them.
Innocence may not be restored but many other things can be. Bikes and sheds and houses can be restored. Purity can be restored. Faith can be restored. Respect, hope, joy, peace, confidence can all be rebuilt, but they require new firmer foundations than the absence of the experience of suffering.
I asked an older gentleman how he saw the town now, 365 days after the rushing water that poured down from the mountains changed everything.
“It’s the best thing that ever happened to this community, ” he said.
“Why do you say that?”
“We discovered what it means to be a community,” he answered. “We discovered what it means to have real friends, and who our real friends are. We discovered what it is to work together for more than our own comforts. We discovered the generosity of strangers. We discovered what it is to need help and give help. We discovered faith.”
He smiled sincerely when he said this. He had genuine joy.
“Not everyone is back in their homes yet and a lot of businesses are still in temporary quarters or not even up and running at all. We hope it doesn’t rain like that again, but you know, we also hope it does so we will know if the steps toward flood mitigation are working. We hope another disaster doesn’t happen anywhere in Canada, but we also hope the things we have learned here can be put to use if there is one – when there is one.”
Loss of innocence is being reconciled to the reality of sin in people around us and in ourselves. Loss of innocence is acknowledging that all is not right in the world. The Bible says all creation groans until things are put right again. For some who have survived disaster there lingers an increased fear and greater sensitivity to pain which results in anxiety that hums in the background like the drone of a machine that never shuts off . For some there grows a greater faith that seems to free them from fear of the future. I watched this gentleman in a crowd after church, smiling and greeting folks, shaking hands and giving hugs when he met someone he hadn’t seen for a while. After I took the kids home for lunch I remembered his words.
“The flood showed us that God is faithful and even though we have been down and bone-weary, we now know that with His help we are much stronger than we ever thought we could be.”
Look how fears have presented themselves, so have supports and encouragements; yea, when I have started, even as it were at nothing else but my shadow, yet God, as being very tender of me, hath not suffered me to be molested, but would with one Scripture or another, strengthen me against all; insomuch that I have often said, “Were it lawful, I could pray for greater trouble, for the greater comfort’s sake.”
Over the years, I have become convinced that in the Christian life at least two things are certain: God never changes, and we are always changing. Our lives as Christians are a continual transition from one place to another, one level to another, one understanding to another. The purpose of spiritual light is to bring us into change and growth. The more light we have, the more change we experience; and the more we change (for the better), the more we are brought into higher levels of glory. Unless we are in constant transition, we will stop somewhere along the way and settle down. The Christian life is a frontier. God did not call us to be settlers, but to be pilgrims and pioneers.
Those who seek after a great deal of knowledge and information about the ways of God are really trying to satisfy their reasonings and to attain to God by means other than those of the spirituals. In no such manner can you attain a true and passionate love for the Lord. Such men who seek after God by the acquisition of information about God and acquiring information about the Scriptures are really nothing more than scholars. They do not know the unseen realms, nor do they realize that hidden things of God are found only within the spirit. Nor have they come to touch those joys which abide in the inmost depths of the believer, that place where God keeps His throne and communicates Himself to the one who comes and joins Him in that place.
Last night my son and husband and I were talking about worship, and about how worship springs, not from our efforts to do something for God, but “Christ in us” jumping up to acknowledge the presence of the Father (who I call Abba.) It’s like the way the baby John the Baptist leapt in his mother’s womb when the Holy Spirit within him was conscious of the presence of God in Mary. Worship is being conscious of God making us his temple and of the perfect love and unity between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Worship is what we carry in us. Worship is a gift God fills us with so we have something to give to Him. Music, art, dance, brick-laying, whatever, are merely the vehicles to express our praise.
Unity is when we are conscious of Christ in us, and the perfect Oneness of the Godhead, so we can recognize Christ in others and thus desire to worship together -because it is who we are. It’s in our new DNA.
This morning I had a dream of Jesus giving his children a gift that looked like maggots (ew) but it turns out they were living seeds. They just had to move it, move it, move it. Then he gave me a pack of playing cards and I heard the song, “Take a Chance on Me” -by Abba.
Jesus singing and dancing to Abba. I love his humour.
I’ve known many pianists, but very few excellent accompanists. It’s a rare and beautiful talent that not only requires skill, but also outstanding sensitivity and a willingness to put someone ahead of oneself. It’s not fair, but that’s the way it works. As I thought about it I realized that good accompanists demonstrate servant leadership.
The topic came up for me as I stumbled upon a Youtube video in which a famous conductor was playing piano accompaniment for an equally famous singer. It was a great performance including several of my favourite lieder by Brahms (and became even better when another famous conductor made a brief appearance as page turner.) When I listened a second time to the song, Von Ewiger Liebe (Of Eternal Love), I could hear the accompanist’s ego asserting itself as he kind of dragged the singer along during a display of passionate virtuoso playing. Brahms is not easy to play, and if I could do it I would probably take off with the music too, but as a singer I remember what it feels like to be in competition with an accompanist who is bounding for the finish line ahead of me.
The worst accompanist I ever had will remain nameless. The event planners hired him and assured me he was a competent musician who played professionally. I sent the music on weeks in advance. Travel delays and bad directions meant we only had half an hour to rehearse.
“So how does it go?” he asked, sitting at a piano with no music in sight.
“You did get the music, didn’t you?” I said with a sense of panic about to introduce itself. “I sent it to you weeks ago.”
“I don’t read music,” he stated, seemingly without concern. “Just sing a few bars and I can pick it up.”
Now I appreciate jazz and most other forms of music, but with classical music one simply does not “pick it up.”
OK. Change of plan.
“Um…. how about a spiritual?” I was grabbing at whatever came to mind. “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child?” I did feel rather like crying for my mommy at that point. “It is slow and sad …it has a kind of blues feel,” I added just trying to be helpful, which it turns out was not.
We worked it out and added some more well-known music and rushed to the venue. I admit I was nervous and could have handled it with more aplomb had I any inkling that this guy’s professional piano experience was playing blues in a bar. I sang three verses of a two verse song and he kept playing, improvising…and improvising…and improvising. If this had been in his bar I could have enjoyed the two drink minimum while he did his thing without me, but instead I just stood around trying not to look surprised or fifth-wheelish and waited for an opportunity to jump back in. Eventually I rushed in and sang a big ta-da ending to a song which is meant to fade into a pianissimo -just to let the guy know that I, at least, was done.
At the end of the evening I took my compliments and my check and checked out.
Apparently the group invited him back for another gig. They didn’t invite me. (Although I did sing in a sold-out concert hall in that city later, with an orchestra which was too cumbersome to just “pick it up.”)
Once, when I was only about fourteen and singing in a large church I accidentally aspirated some saliva and choked right at my entry of the second verse -in front of God and everybody. The woman at the piano acted as though she heard nothing amiss as I coughed and cleared. She skilfully raced to the finish line without me. I slunk sheepishly off the stage swearing I would never do that again. (Thank God for an older gentlemen who encouraged me later when everyone else was too embarrassed to say anything.)
Here’s the thing. I did not feel honoured by either of those pianists because neither of them were listening. The only part that mattered was theirs.
Years later, to my horror, the same choking thing happened -and in front of folks who actually paid real money. This time my accompanist (who I freely admit was a superior musician) circled around, adding an improvised passage in a style consistent with the song to give me time to recover, and then modulated back into the introduction again. He swooped by like a hero on horseback to scoop me up and we rode off together, most of the audience none the wiser.
Once when he and I were looking at potential pieces for a concert I showed him the music for a song I liked but explained it was too low for me. He sight-read and transposed the unfamiliar piece of music at the same time. My jaw dropped. Later, when this guy gave musical advice, I listened. He was not a singer, but he was full of great advice.
Accompanists are often better musicians than the “soloist” (loathe as we singers are to admit that.) Sometimes they are also coaches or conductors. They know all the parts, not just their own. Making music is a collaboration and rehearsals are the place for discussion and compromise, but in performance a good accompanist lets the singer take the lead and will cover for things like rhythm errors and memory glitches. In private they are not afraid to call them out and work through a problem area, though.
When I hired professional accompanists for students the inexperienced often complained privately that the accompanist had played the piano too slowly in a performance.
“That’s because he’s much better than I am,” I explained. “You’re used to a teacher making heavy suggestions from the keyboard. Not only does this guy play all the notes -and accurately- he is listening and breathing with you. He’s just a hair behind you because onstage you are the one who sets the tempo. If he’s playing too slowly it’s because you slowed down waiting for him to do everything.”
When I thought about this singer/accompanist relationship I made a connection with leadership in the church. Ministry is not about doing it right, or drawing attention to oneself. It is not without honour or respect and actually requires superior understanding, skill and sensitivity -even nice clothes- but the job of a minister (whether apostle, prophet, teacher, evangelist or pastor) is to raise other people up to their potential in their own service to the Great Composer. It’s not to draw attention to themselves, nor even to do everything “right” by constantly taking control because others are not up to their standards.
Gerald Moore was a well-known accompanist. His love of music was greater than his love of recognition, although he was not a shy person. He teamed up with some of the greatest artists in the past century. In some videos only his hands were in the frame. He deserved more respect. The singer or instrumentalist received (and still receives) top-billing. He made them sound good, but anyone who has ever worked with an accompanist knew this man was a giant among musicians.
May those who desire to lead in the church raise others up with the same spirit of excellence and confident humility.
This is an example of his work. Morgen is a setting of a poem by the German poet John Henry Mackay (a story in itself) by Richard Strauss with Janet Baker before she was a Dame. Somehow Moore makes us forget that the piano is a percussion instrument. The song is about the hope of seeing a loved one again in the morning.
Charis: Subject to Change 