Exploring a jazz shaped spirituality...

The more I play with jazz - on my bass, in my mind, on my CD player or in a club - the more at home I become with what some have called a "jazz shaped spirituality."  As Robert Gelinas puts it, a jazz shaped spirituality embraces life not as a given but rather as an extended improvisation.  It embraces authentic syncopation - a groove that searches for the backbeat in our experiences (that which is not obvious) and teases out new or even hidden meanings from the sorrow and celebrations of each day.  And does so with a call and response rhythm that honors God's love as the core of creation; in a word, our life is a living response to God's great and mysterious grace.

Unlike some Reformed theologians, who emphasize right thinking and doctrine, I prefer the ambiguity of the word spirituality - mostly because spirituality has to do with our practices - and I don't believe that "right thinking leads to right living" (or as they like to say in the academy:  orthodoxy leads to orthopraxis.) I know too many "believers" who are totally down with the tradition's abstract thinking - they know all the right words - but remain the same mean, sad and selfish souls they've always been.  They look to be incapable and unwilling  of incarnating the Word of grace in their flesh - and incarnation is essential to the faith.   

I much prefer what my friends in the 12 Step movements say: our goal in life is "progress rather than perfection."  Or as my bass teacher told me a few weeks ago when it comes to playing scales: "don't rush this, man, do it slowly over and over so that you get the right feel and sound - then you can speed things up -but not until it sounds and feels right."  That's why in ministry I spend more time teaching and encouraging the small spiritual practices or disciplines that can reshape our lives than discussing doctrine.  Most people who show up on Sunday morning want something useful - something that will help them become the person they ache to be and the person God created them to be in their generation - and that means spirituality. 

Now there is always a tension in emphasizing practice because Americans are convinced that if we just work harder, know more, make the right connections we can fix everything.  Our cultural utilitarianism and addiction to perfectionism, however, is "the common form of works righteousness - the attempt to justify (or save) oneself by means of achievement."  As Jim Nelson puts it:

The sought-for-achievement may be moral goodness.  It may be the worldly success with its constant anxiety about performance. It may be the need to be the most needed.  Whatever the form, the dynamic is the same:  it is still self-centered and prone to be alternatively self-inflating and self-deflating. (Nelson, Thirst, p. 137)

Trusting thoroughly in grace, I still contend that those with their boots on the ground in the local church share the gospel in useful ways by attending to the practices of spirituality.  And a jazz-shapped spirituality is one way to help ordinary people playfully take up a life-long commitment to living in new and healing ways.  Two thoughts from Gelinas have already become valuable to me:

+ First, he writes that when "jazz musicians take the stage, they are there, in part, to take the risk of composing in the moment - improvisation.  Now the word improvisation derives from the Latin im and provisus, meaning "not provided" or not foreseen."  Improvisation then is the willingness to live within the bounds of the past and yet to search for the future at the same time.  Improvisation is the desire to make something new out of something old." (pg. 33)

That is one of the greatest challenges to me doing "church renewal."  Often, those who have hung tight with the church are both deeply committed to saving the institution and profoundly in love with the past.  What they rarely possess, however, is a willingness to make something new out of the past.  They don't want to sing in new ways, they don't want to create any new songs to the Lord, they don't want to change their practices of worship or hospitality and they don't really want any new people to sit in their time-honored seats.  Again, the  12 step folk know a lot about the consequences of holding on to the past in practice when they say:  if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got.  Improvisation honors the past in a playful and creative way while making something new that is alive for this moment in time.

Just look at what the jazz masters do with what has become known as "the jazz standards" of the American songbook:  every night these grand old tunes are cherished and then changed in ways nobody can imagine.  I think of what Miles did at the height of his career - or Bird - to say nothing of what Herbie Hancock is doing now to the new international song book of rock and pop.

I am struck by the possibilities for improvisation in the wisdom of St. Paul when he said:  We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which the Lord prepared in advance for us to do." (Ephesians 2:10) Gelinas notes that the Greek work, workmanship, is poiema - the root of what we in English call a poem.  "What an amazing thought to think of oneself as a poem created by God..." (p. 48) I think of some of the best Beat poets - or today's hip hop wizards - taking the fabric of their lives and improvising in ways that brings something new to birth out of the old. 

+ Second is the notion of syncopation:  accenting the offbeat while exploring the tension.  Or discovering "the meaning that is always present but often missed because" we don't go deep enough into the groove. (p. 125) In the predominately Anglo congregations I have served over 30+ years, I have often done something I call "remedial clapping for white folks."  Learning to find the back beat - clapping on the 2 and 4 rather than the 1 and 3 - feeling the deeper groove and being playful with it.

As Gelilnas notes, when we look at Scripture and our everyday lives, we "usually discern and hear only the main beat... but there is much more to discover if we syncopate." (p. 127) If we learn to search for what is not obvious, what is both mysterious and gracious, what helps us incarnate God's love and move in life to a whole new rhythm.  I believe that living into the rhythm of our Open and Affirming commitment will help us to move in new and more gracious ways.  I know that being an ally with the LGBTQ community will help us see and hear the beat of the Lord in new and unexpected ways.  Same is true with our partnership with BEAT (Berkshire Environmental Action Team.)  "How can we sing the  Lord's song in a strange land?" laments the Psalmist; learning to listen for the syncopated beat is one crucial way.

Tomorrow we will start worship with an improvisation on a Kyrie from Ghana and we'll close with another based upon an ancient melody from Scotland.  I'm going to need to spend some time playing with these tunes today - practicing and listening - and becoming comfortable with the feel so that when we start to let things fly I am open to the new possibilities.  Que la fête commence!

credits:

1) midlifediscoveries.com