days have become my new reflection/writing day (which is a sacred privilege and responsibility that I value deeply.) But because I won't be preaching on Sunday - we will be back in sunny Tucson, AZ for the wedding of a friend - I spent much of the day catching up on a variety of pastoral duties like returning phone calls, visiting and a little paper work, too. It was very satisfying...Later this evening, we will have band practice as we get ready for our Good Friday "sounds of solace" gig. (If you are around on April 2nd at 7 pm please join us.) What began 10 years ago as an experiment in mixing sacred readings and secular music has matured into a unique way of doing liturgy in a post-modern context: it is prayerful rock and roll, it is holy laments saturated in the blues, it is a contemporary encounter with the promise of Psalm 85 where, "compassion and truth meet together along the way of life and social justice and shalom embrace in a kiss."
Henri Nouwen put it like this in one of his reflections on prayer:
The invitation to a life of prayer is the invitation to live in the midst of this world without being caught in the net of wounds and needs. The word "prayer" stands for a radical interruption of the vicious chain of interlocking dependencies leading to viol
ence and war and for an entering into a totally new dwelling place... It is not easy to express the radical change that prayer represents, since for many the word is associated with piety, talking to God, thinking about God, morning and evening rituals, Sunday services, grace before meals and words from the Bible... but when I speak about prayer as the basis for peacemaking, I speak first of all about moving away from the dwelling place of those who hate peace into the house of God... To be sure the movement from illusion to prayer is hard to make since it leads us from false certainties to true uncertainties, from an easy way of living to a risky surrender and from the many "safe" gods to the God whose love has no limits. That is why the NEW post-modern liturgy boldly blends new/old elements together and insists on weaving the once secular with the formerly sacred into one seamless garment of music/prayer/action. This year the Good Friday liturgy looks something like this:
+ We begin with Vince Guaraldi's "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" and move right into the Passion narrative in the gospel of Mark. A prayer for mercy follows the reading - and then a haunting, stripped-down reworking of the Beatles' "I'm a Loser" with two more short readings from scripture: Matthew 11:28-30 and Romans 8: 1-5.
+ An original blues/gospel song by my band mate, Brian, is next followed by an original poem amplified with traditional gospel hymns by Dianne including: "Precious Lord, Were You There, Amazing Grace and I Wonder as I Wander."
+ More readings - from Anne Lamott and Mark 5 - followed by Meatloaf's "Heaven Can Wait." Psalm 42 and the words of Gertrud Mueller-Nelson about healthy vs. pathological social rituals precedes Leonard Cohen's "Joan of Arc."
+ A body prayer happens next - an invitation to take a stone and become one who cries out for the way of God's peace - and will be accompanied by a classical piano composition by our music director.
+ Prayer and prayers in song: "Over My Head and Balm in Gilead" followed by a reading from Gen Xer, Douglas Coupland, leads into JJ Heller's, "Your Hands" and Scott Cairns poem, "Blood Atonement." The liturgy ends with the Appalachian/Celtic hymn, "Wayfaring Stranger."
I am hoping that this post-modern "liturgy" can morph into something this fall that strikes me as The Sounds of Solace: An Inter-Faith Celeb
ration of the Songs that Sooth Our Suffering. I hear jazz and chant - I see dancers and musicians from all over the Berkshires of every conceivable tradition - gathering to make music together. How does Psalm 150 put it?
Hallelujah! Praise God in his holy house of worship,
praise him under the open skies;
Praise him for his acts of power,
praise him for his magnificent greatness;
Praise with a blast on the trumpet,
praise by strumming soft strings;
Praise him with castanets and dance,
praise him with banjo and flute;
Praise him with cymbals and a big bass drum,
praise him with fiddles and mandolin
(Maybe even sitars, rock and roll and jazz, too!)
Let every living, breathing creature praise God!
Hallelujah!
I think Deanna's on to something with this sound (I had the privilege of hearing her last week in NYC.)
+ We begin with Vince Guaraldi's "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" and move right into the Passion narrative in the gospel of Mark. A prayer for mercy follows the reading - and then a haunting, stripped-down reworking of the Beatles' "I'm a Loser" with two more short readings from scripture: Matthew 11:28-30 and Romans 8: 1-5.
+ An original blues/gospel song by my band mate, Brian, is next followed by an original poem amplified with traditional gospel hymns by Dianne including: "Precious Lord, Were You There, Amazing Grace and I Wonder as I Wander."
+ More readings - from Anne Lamott and Mark 5 - followed by Meatloaf's "Heaven Can Wait." Psalm 42 and the words of Gertrud Mueller-Nelson about healthy vs. pathological social rituals precedes Leonard Cohen's "Joan of Arc."
+ A body prayer happens next - an invitation to take a stone and become one who cries out for the way of God's peace - and will be accompanied by a classical piano composition by our music director.
+ Prayer and prayers in song: "Over My Head and Balm in Gilead" followed by a reading from Gen Xer, Douglas Coupland, leads into JJ Heller's, "Your Hands" and Scott Cairns poem, "Blood Atonement." The liturgy ends with the Appalachian/Celtic hymn, "Wayfaring Stranger."
I am hoping that this post-modern "liturgy" can morph into something this fall that strikes me as The Sounds of Solace: An Inter-Faith Celeb
ration of the Songs that Sooth Our Suffering. I hear jazz and chant - I see dancers and musicians from all over the Berkshires of every conceivable tradition - gathering to make music together. How does Psalm 150 put it?Hallelujah! Praise God in his holy house of worship,
praise him under the open skies;
Praise him for his acts of power,
praise him for his magnificent greatness;
Praise with a blast on the trumpet,
praise by strumming soft strings;
Praise him with castanets and dance,
praise him with banjo and flute;
Praise him with cymbals and a big bass drum,
praise him with fiddles and mandolin
(Maybe even sitars, rock and roll and jazz, too!)
Let every living, breathing creature praise God!
Hallelujah!
I think Deanna's on to something with this sound (I had the privilege of hearing her last week in NYC.)
2 comments:
I confess to envy of those who will attend the Sounds of Solace.
Ah Pete... we are trying to get this one filmed - and if successful - we'll send you a copy for sure.
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