thanks - i needed that

Came across these words the other day, and let's just say they pretty much "hit the nail on the head" for me right now... words I need to hear...

"The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

what shall we then sing?

My list (file folders/binder) of "songs to write" keeps getting longer (thicker, deeper-and-wider...), far outstripping the pace of actual writing.

And this, I think, is as it should be.

One of the questions I often ask myself and those around me is "what do we NEED to sing?" That is, given what is going on around and among and within us, and given who we are and who we are called to be, and given what God is up to and God's intentions for the world... what shall we then sing? What are those texts that would be especially good, useful, important, necessary, URGENT for us to sing, right now?

The way this flows from my last post is, I trust, obvious, as it demonstrates the way I understand myself, and my vocation, to be functioning within the broader "body" of the church. "Texts that linger, words that explode," indeed.

The song I'm working on now is a result of that process - from a comment via e-mail that "in our church we really need a new song to sing at baptisms, when we welcome a new member into the body of Christ."

The two songs Charlene and I were harmonizing yesterday both come out of that process in a different way - one was written as a prayer for us to sing at last summer's Mennonite Church Canada Assembly (based on the theme text for that event), and the other for next year's Advent worship resources in Leader magazine (based on next year's Advent lectionary texts).

Each of the three CDs that I've recorded so far have emerged in different ways from this same kind of process... as does the new collection of songs (mostly based on prophetic texts - are you surprised?) that I'm getting set to record next... and the community supported music "membership" system is a particular way to structure that kind of process...

People often ask me where I find "inspiration" for so many songs, and the answer may be so mundane as to seem unsatisfying. (At least for those who find the mundane to be unsatisfying.)

Where does the pastor find "inspiration" for writing regular sermons? Where does the scholar find "inspiration" for writing more articles and books? Where does the teacher find "inspiration" for another day's classes, or the farmer for another year's crop, or the cook for another day's meals?

I don't know that the process is so different for any of us exercising our vocation as members of the body of Christ. We pay attention to the realities around us... we are immersed in Scripture and in prayer and in the life and mission of our local community of faith... and we do the work that has been entrusted to us - to prepare something "for the building up of the body" and to offer it to the community in hope and trust that it may contribute in some way to the formation of a people that is capable of living its vocation in the world.

(Also in hope and trust, by the way - at least on our better and more honest days - that the community may also point out when we've gotten it quite wrong.)

This is not solitary work, although parts of it are often done alone. This is "community work" in the best sense of that word.

And it is in faithfulness to that vocation that our work may indeed be "inspired."

So what do we need to sing?

I hope you'll keep telling me. I'm still listening. And getting it wrong, and sometimes getting it right.

Let's keep singing.

a candidate for daring?

As I embark on the adventure of 2009, seeking again (still, anew) to be faithful to this vocation of "building up the body of Christ by creating and sharing songs of faith for small and tall," I am drawn to these words (yes, Brueggemann again) that, I think, express it very well. They help me to better understand my own role, along with those of other colleagues, companions and co-conspirators in the context of, and for the sake of, the work of the church in the world.

"It is the work of canonical practice in ecclesial communities and the work of criticism in the scholarly community to keep the (biblical) text available. It is by the ongoing enterprise of religious and scholarly communities that the text lingers over time in available ways. Out of that lingering, from time to time, words of the text characteristically erupt into new usage. They are seized upon by someone in the community with daring. Or perhaps better, the words of the text seize someone in the community who is a candidate for daring. In that moment of reutterance, the present is freshly illuminated, reality is irreversibly transformed. The community comes to know or see or receive or decide afresh. What has been tradition, hovering in dormancy, becomes available experience. In the moment of speaking and hearing, treasured tradition becomes present experience, inimitable, without parallel, irreversible. In that utterance, the word does lead reality."

Will I be "a candidate for daring" this year? Will you?

Will our community(ies) "come to know or see or receive or decide afresh?"

That is my prayer. Looking forward to working (walking, singing, musing) together with you again.

(The full text of Brueggemann's article "Texts That Linger, Words That Explode" can be found here. I read it in his book by the same name, with the subtitle "Listening to Prophetic Voices.")

jeremiah and christmas

Christmas, it seems to me, is the best and worst time for anyone who cares about prophetic literature and thinks it matters (which, I suppose, are two ways of saying the same thing).

Lately I have been greedily devouring Walter Brueggemann’s collection of essays “Like Fire in the Bones: Listening for the Prophetic Word in Jeremiah.”

Brueggemann’s writing has always impacted me deeply, ever since that first reading of “The Prophetic Imagination” many years ago while sitting in a green double-cab Toyota pickup truck at 6:00am, slowly inching around the block waiting in line to buy gas in Cochabamba, Bolivia. (Lots of time for reading!)

His articulation of the vocation of an “alternative community” - as depicted throughout the biblical text and engaged with characteristic clarity, nuance, and unflinching honesty in Brueggemann’s own writing - has been formative for me in so many ways.

And lately, as I have been growing into (and wrestling with the implications of) my own vocation as a songwriter of and for the church, I find myself deeply moved by Brueggemann’s obvious love and respect for - and keen insight into - the function of poetry in the life of the “alternative community” throughout scripture and in our present age.

Somehow this Christmas I find myself responding differently to so many of the texts and songs that speak of good news, and peace on earth, and the God who comes to set things right. In other years I have found these texts and songs to be inspiring, to be hope-giving, to be reaffirming of a sense of vocation for the church as an “alternative community” in the world.

Somehow this year, in the face of so many cascading crises of economy/ecology and in the expectation of escalating crises to come, I find myself in a “darker” place. I’m finding some of the songs I’m writing have a darker “edge” to them (as will be obvious to the members of my CSM who received my latest “delivery of songs”). I’m struggling to find the words. I’m realizing that I (and, I suspect, we) need to learn to lament.

Not a coincidence, perhaps, that I have of late been drawn to Jeremiah, who is best known to many of us for his words of lament embedded in “the Christmas story” in Matthew 2. Jeremiah, “known as the most troubled of prophets,” and “competent beyond reason in bringing grief to speech” (Brueggemann, pp. 184-185). Jeremiah, thrown into prison and vilified as a traitor because he saw catastrophe coming, and said so, and refused to share the cheery prognostications of official-dom that wanted to reassure the populace that their plans and management techniques would resolve the issues.

And yet...

The same Jeremiah who, after the collapse and in the midst of the chaos, did the most astonishing thing, and bought property. Chose to incarnate hope, in concrete form, “For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.” (Jer. 32:15)

An action that prefigures in a vivid and dramatic way what we celebrate at Christmas - Word becoming flesh, God “pitching a tent and dwelling among us,” incarnate in the midst of crisis and chaos and confusion.

... the “body of Christ” that continues to be “incarnate” in an “alternative community”...

I once heard a wise man (OK, it was my dad) musing that in the midst of crisis and catastrophe, the most urgent and strategic thing to do would be to plant churches. Local manifestations of “the body of Christ,” called, equipped and sent to live out their vocation and “incarnate” good news in the midst of whatever circumstances arise.

An “alternative community” that is capable of giving voice to (and not papering over) lament and grief. An “alternative community” that is committed to “pitching its tent and dwelling” in the midst of the very place where it seems there is no hope.

As I read in Brueggemann’s essay this morning:

“... What is at issue is how a griever can be a hoper.

“I submit that holding these two texts together (Jer. 8:18-9:3 and Jer. 32:1-15) may be our most important agenda in our societal context. The vision of the promise cannot be abandoned because we are charged with a vision and cannot renege. But the poet of grief cannot be silent, for the word burns to be spoken. Our problem is how to hope so convincedly and yet to discern so deeply at the same time.

“...It is the embrace of and engagement with the hurt and forsakeness of 8:18-9:3 that permits Jeremiah to move on past despair to buoyancy. Indeed it is in the specific, concrete expression of despair that there come the seeds and possibilities of hope.

“I conclude that tamed cynics and chastened radicals, if they are to continue their vision of an alternative world, must find concrete ways of giving voice to their despair that is likely also the despair of God. It is the utterance of the hopeless poem of 8:18-9:3 that creates the rhetorical, psychological, theological possibility of hope in 32:1-15.

“...If Jeremiah had not spoken the despair of 8:18-9:3, it would not have been verbalized anguish but would have become immobilizing, unexpressed rage... Thus the despair of 8:18-9:3 is not the anithesis or denial of hope. It is an essential “door to hope” (see Hos. 2:15).

“... Out of this I submit a liberating juxtaposition for radicals who can move in and through and beyond despair to a new buoyancy. On the one hand, there is need for concrete, public acts of hope, public risks for newness, and public assault on conventional hopelessness.That is the meaning of the land-buying in 32:1-15...

“... On the other hand, and prerequisite to the concrete public act of hope, is the pathos-filled expression of despair.

“... So I argue it is the grief of Jeremiah that is the ground of hope. It is the pained word that precedes the anticipatory word. It is liturgy that grounds public action.

“... Speechless radicals are bound to be hopeless radicals, left only with their wishes, stridency, and coercion. Grief-filled speech permits hope-filled action.”

(Walter Brueggemann, “Like Fire in the Bones: Listening for the Prophetic Word in Jeremiah,” pp. 186-188).

insisting on vocation

What a deeply moving experience it was last week to gather with leaders of numerous Christian denominations to focus on "sustainability."

To hear from David Radcliff (of the New Community Project), Fletcher Harper (of Greenfaith), Jeff Woods, Stan McKay, Mark Vincent (of Design For Ministry).

Wow.

And as I read this column in today's Toronto Star, I am struck again by how well this writer, and so many others (as I've blogged before), is actually articulating something that resonates deeply with our calling and vocation as "alternative community," as church. The vocation/identity that was the focus of the daily worship sessions that I led with last week's ecumenical gathering (Genesis 12:1-4, 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 3:10)...

In the words of today's article by Carol Goar:

"... ways to achieve full employment, reduce poverty, cut greenhouse gas emissions and keep government finances in good shape without economic growth. People would have to live differently - work less, buy less, and pollute less. Values would have to change. The economy would have to fit within the biosphere.

"Victor (author of "Managing Without Growth - Slower by Design, Not Disaster") admits many readers will have trouble getting their heads around the idea of life without economic growth. It's alien to everything they've been taught. "If I can at least get the to open their eyes to alternatives, I'll think I've accomplished something."

"... Something's stirring. It's not a groundswell. But a conversation is beginning about what recovery really means."


Do we have ears to hear?

easy being green...?

In a few hours I leave for Marco Island, Florida (oh, what a hard life I lead...!), where I'll be leading worship at the Leadership Seminar of the Ecumenical Stewardship Center.

This is a group of leaders of numerous Christian denominations across North America who get together annually with a focus on "stewardship" agenda. And this year the emphasis is on stewardship and environmental sustainability. Sound like something I'd be interested in?

The title chosen for the event is "It's Easy Being Green," and quite frankly, I don't buy it. Which puts me in an interesting position for the next few days, wouldn't you say?

I'm sure, at one level, the selection of this title simply represents a need to have something snappy and memorable and positive-and-action-oriented... I don't expect to be fundamentally at odds with the organizers or presenters... I'm looking forward to a very stimulating and challenging and meaningful time, and I expect to be learning a lot.

But I must say, whenever I hear a statement like "it's easy being green" I'm immediately on the look-out for someone trying to sell me something. If you just buy this product, or invest in this initiative, or do this or that, then you'll be "green"... and if everyone did it - just follow these three simple steps - then we wouldn't have to worry about that pesky little ecological crisis anymore.

Sorry, but I'm not convinced. I think there's lots of stuff we can be doing - and a lot of it is simple - that is vitally, vitally important. But "easy being green?" I don't think this kind of statement takes seriously enough the kind of economic and cultural transformation that will need to happen - and that will happen one way or another, whether we like it or not - in a transition out of the era of cheap oil and exorbitant consumption. A global economic model that is by definition in desperate crisis when "consumer spending" goes down by a fraction... I'm sorry, but I don't believe the kind of change that is needed here is going to be "easy." Not by a long shot.

Case-in-point. How many of us going to the Leadership Seminar will be flying? I will. I tried to arrange to go by train - the better ecological choice - but it wasn't "easy." In fact, I couldn't figure out how to do it at all (one of the requirements of my P2 musician work visa is that I MUST leave the country the DAY AFTER my last engagement... NO EXCEPTIONS... kinda tough to get by train from South Florida to Toronto by train in that kind of time...). So I'm flying.

No problem. Wouldn't it be "easy" to arrange for some other gigs on the way back home and work my way north by train? I was going to try that too, but ran out of time and didn't want to jeopardize the visa process (the application had to be in 120 days in advance)... so I didn't get it done. Or wouldn't it be "easy" to just say "well, I have this music ministry vocation, but I won't travel to come to your event"...?

Well, no. That wouldn't be easy at all, and I also don't think it would be right.

hmmm...

Don't get me wrong. I'm by no means "down" on this event, or the theme, or the fact that I suspect virtually everyone will be flying to get there (ok, I suppose I am a bit "down" on that last one...). I think this is good and vital agenda, and a good and vital event, and I can't wait to meet and hear from and learn from all these good and vital people (and all the others too, who I'm sure will be just as "good and vital").

Just don't tell me that following through on this agenda is going to be "easy." I don't believe it.

Makes me think of the guy with the catchy slogan "Take up your cross and follow me." Not exactly easy. Life-giving, fulfilling, community-and-joy-and-pain-filled... yes. Spirit-led, yup. Worthwhile, you bet. GOOD NEWS - absolutely.

Easy? I don't think so.

what about worship...

Does anyone else find it strange that in 12 or so pages of Canadian Mennonite's coverage (print version) of this summer's Mennonite Church Canada Assembly and MCCanada/MCUSA "Summit" there is virtually no mention of our time spent in worship?

The opening editorial reflects on the theme text from Deuteronomy 4:1-9 and Tom Yoder-Neufeld's "keynote address," and there is an article outlining the content of Tom and Christine Sine's sermon... but I could find no other mention of any of our plenary worship times and "the work of the people" (that is, the "liturgy") that was, it seems to me, central to what we did during those significant and meaningful days.

In fact, when one article refers to "the last 90 minutes" of the MCCanada Assembly it mentions a number of items/issues that were addressed and discussed, but it's as if the concluding worship time (including an annointing service) never happened... and similarly, another article refers to the "final session" of the Summit as Thursday afternoon while neglecting to mention that the "final session" was, in fact, our concluding worship service on Thursday evening, including a communion service of covenant renewal.

It's no surprise that I'm particularly alert to this, given that I served for 10 months on the national and bi-national planning teams that planned the worship, and given that I was involved in leading singing during 14 worship times in 4 days (10 "plenary worship" times and 4 with the children's assembly).

Part of me asks if the worship was not meaningful or memorable enough to warrant mention. Or, on the other hand, perhaps there was such an effective weaving of worship into the agenda and work of the assembly/summit that the whole time was so imbued with the spirit of worship that it doesn't need to be mentioned, any more than that we would mention the (delightfully fresh, to these Toronto lungs) Winnipeg air that we breathed and the (absolutely excellent) food that we ate, even though those are clearly vital and worthy of mention as well...

And then part of me asserts that, meaningful or memorable or "effective" or not, our worship together is indeed the "work of the people," and important and essential in its own right, while also providing the context and framework that enabled the gathered people to prayerfully discern the many significant issues that we need to be dealing with together.

In any case, I find it troubling that one can read through the pages of (otherwise excellent) reporting on the event, and wonder whether worship was even part of the proceedings.

Here's a link to a bunch of stuff from the assembly/summit, including some of the resources used in worship. I'm still trying to find links to some of the songs... if I manage to find them, I'll post a link...

UPDATE:

Three of the songs are now posted online here.

meeting the maker

As you can see, I'm on my summer blogging schedule ("now-and-then" rather than "once-per-week").

Just got back from a VERY full and intense and good week in Winnipeg, where Marilyn Houser Hamm and I led singing at the Mennonite Church Canada Assembly and at the MCCanada/MCUSA "People's Summit For Faithful Living." What a rich time of worship and connecting and re-connecting with brothers and sisters and co-conspirators from all over the place... My only regret is that I wasn't able to spend more time connecting with people and attending the different "discernment" and "learning track" times, as my days were so full with leading worship (morning and evening with the adults, and with the Children's Assembly in between), and then preparing for the next one... and occasionally sleeping...

Along the way I got to re-connect with Tom and Christine Sine, Arlyn, Darryl (finally got to hear Kim and Darryl perform together live!), Jonathan, Charleen and Kendall, the House of Doc folks (got to make music with them too - I'll never forget that Samba during communion with Rebecca and Dan and Jesse on upright bass, with Myron going nuts on all those Brazilian drums... imagine if we actually had time to rehearse...), the gang from Douglas and the puppets from Home St. during the Children's Assembly, Raquel from the Baptist churches of Chile, and on and on and on it goes. Not to mention, of course, some time with Mom and Dad (thanks SO much!!) and my brother Derek, whose bang-up job on the Deuteronomy Bible studies and whose climactic ball-toss dunking dear old dad were among the significant happenings that I had to miss but heard a lot about from others.

God is at work, and I'm so grateful for these times when I can catch a glimpse of just how prolific and virtuosic that work is. Even if it sometimes feels like drinking from a fire hose.

And what a joy to be back home again, to spend more time with Julie and Matthew (camping soon - hooray!), to see how the tomoatoes have grown (talk about prolific!) and eat fresh-from-the-garden every day, to be looking to the future with excitement and anticipation...

And in the delayed-gratification department, I left my guitar in Manitoba for a date with its maker, Phil Campbell-Enns, who will be installing a pick-up that he claims sounds "HUGE." Which leaves me with my hack-around-the-campfire guitar for the summer... maybe it's time to pick up the fiddle again...

Among my various songs that we used throughout the week, I thought a few were going to be posted on the MCCanada website, but I haven't been able to find them... I'll try to post a link if and when I find one... especially to "Keep These Words" which we used as a "theme song" for the Summit... I'm thinking it may in fact make a good title track for the next CD...

alberta bound

Getting set to leave tomorrow morning for five days in Alberta. Looking forward to an interesting time - a couple of church/community concerts, a couple of Sunday morning services, a school concert, and for a couple of days I'll be the resource person for an Alberta pastors "Theological Studies" event.

Needless to say, today is crammed full of trying-to-get-stuff-done-before-I-leave... and today Matthew is home sick from school. Flu bug that's going around his class. And another good reminder to hold to things (including my many self-imposed goals and deadlines) lightly... other things (people!) are more important...

Anyway, before I go I thought I'd post the info of what I'm planning for that pastor's event...

Title:

Our Money Talks, God is Listening: reflections and resources for addressing economic stewardship themes in the congregation

Description:

Can we talk about money matters in our congregations, and in our worship? Bryan Moyer Suderman will lead us in biblical exploration of themes like abundance and scarcity, generosity and gratitude, excess and enough, and managing resources as "the body of Christ." Drawing on various resources in scripture, story, and song - including the experiences of the participants and Bryan's recently released CD and songbook "My Money Talks: songs for worship" - we will explore ways to lead our congregations into a deeper awareness of and participation in God's generosity for the world.

Session Titles:

Session 1 - God's Economics: Can We Talk? (setting the table for real conversation about money and faith)

Session 2 - God's Economics: Can God Be Trusted? (abundance and scarcity, hoarding and generosity)

Session 3 - God's Economics: Can God Trust Us? (from grasping to gratitude, from excess to enough)

Session 4 - God's Economics: A Dramatization (communion as an enactment of the economics of "the body of Christ")

good words

As I work at pulling together the songbook for the "My Money Talks: songs for worship" collection I came across these words from John Bell of the Iona Community and the Wild Goose Resource Group... important words for someone who "does what I do"...

"We do not believe that the Holy Spirit primarily inspires words and music for the benefit of profit margins."

...and, in response to those who might say "We've got enough songs already! We don't need any more!"

"Imagine you had been married for 20 years and you, as the wife, were given the same box of chocolates (candies) by your husband every Friday for the rest of your life. Would you see this as a sign of enduring love or a lack of imagination?"

a good problem to have

You've heard of writer's block?

Well, these days I seem to have the opposite problem. Call it writer's backlog.

I always keep a file of "songs to write"... and that file has become a binder... and the binder is bulging...

People often ask "where do you get the ideas for songs," but for me right now the issue is how to carve out the time to write some of the songs that are waiting to be written... when I seem to be spending so much of my time on organizational stuff (which is also good and important), and in particular working at the small matter of increasing the odds of deriving adequate income for the work that I do (again, that question of what is "adequate" or "enough"...).

It is gratifying that after nearly 5 years of "doing what I do" without other employment (aside for the daily hour of barn chores, which continues to be welcome physical labour and some grocery money), it's happening more and more that others are coming to me with ideas and proposals for projects, rather than just the other way around. This is something that I've been encouraging - for instance, regularly inviting the household and congregational/institutional "members" of my SmallTall Music ministry to share their thoughts and ideas and needs for songs.

"What do we need to sing?" continues to be the question that I ask myself - and others - all the time.

Another source I look to that helps to set some of the songwriting agenda is the events and agenda of the "broader body" of the church. When I hear about the theme and Scripture focus of a particular gathering or conference - when it has been discerned by the "broader body" that this is a particular text that is important for us to wrestle with right now - that is enough "discernment" for me, and I take it as a cue to work with that Scripture and see what happens.

So the latest "delivery of songs" includes one based on Deuteronomy 4:1-9, the theme text of the upcoming "People's Summit For Faithful Living" in Winnipeg this summer, and another one based on Philippians 2:1-11 which has been chosen as the focus for the Mennonite World Conference Assembly in Paraguay in 2009.

Yesterday I sent off these and two other songs (and various accompanying resources) to be posted for the SmallTall Music members. This is now the 6th delivery that I've made in this system, and I'm glad that I'm getting to the point where the "nuts and bolts" of the delivery system take up less of my time and effort, leaving more (in theory at least) for the songwriting itself.

And as for that backlog of ideas - my own and those that have been/are being contributed by others - I always seem to say that I'll have more time once I get that mini-tour confirmed... or once that project proposal is done... or once that potential partnership is firmed up a little... or...

In any case, for now, it's a good problem to have.

an interesting conversation...

... on CBC radio yesterday about whether "the Mennonites" are being naive by engaging in dialogue with scholars from the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute in Iran. Have a listen.

A good and important discussion, it seems to me. One wonders... could the same questions be asked of other Christian leaders engaging in dialogue with the "spiritual advisers" - or serving as "spiritual advisers" - of other administrations we could name with a history of war-making and human rights abuses and seeking "legitimacy" on the world stage?

Just asking.

how do you know?

Just started the 100 Mile Diet (reading the book, that is, not actually trying to eat only local foods for a year)... loving it so far, but it made me hungry and I kept scrounging in the kitchen for snacks... few if any of which were local. It didn't occur to me until later that we still have one jar of last fall's apple sauce, from "our" apple trees (the ones we scrounge from).

By the way, since tomorrow is Pentecost, I couldn't help but notice that in Acts 2 the CLIMACTIC MANIFESTATION of the coming of the Spirit is...

Any guesses?

(This will be no problem, I'm sure, for longtime readers of this blog - all three of you! - but if you need a hint, trying read Acts chapter 2 ALL THE WAY TO THE END.)

In any case, that's what I'll be speaking and singing about tomorrow, as we celebrate Pentecost together and - surprise, surprise - experiment with some more of the new songs, including a 4 part hymn arrangement and piano accompaniment that Charlene has done for one of them, and Matthew rockin' and rollin' with his drumkit on another.

Looking forward to it!

rumours of resurrection

Just read this week's lectionary text (Acts 5:12-32, more or less). What a delightful - rather hilarious, actually - "resurrection" story, in the most unlikely of places.

These are the same disciples, after all, who had abandoned Jesus and watched as he was arrested, tried, tortured, and executed.

The same disciples who at the end of John's gospel keep meeting in fear, behind locked doors - and the risen Jesus keeps breaking into their room, somehow, and saying bizarre things like "Peace be with you" and "as the Father sent me, so I send you..."

The same disciples who at the end of Luke have heard rumours of resurrection, some have even seen the empty tomb, but don't know what to make of it and are disbanding anyway.

But by Acts 5 things have changed, the Spirit has come, there is a community that is living in radically counter-cultural ways, "signs and wonders" are going on, and the authorities, of course, are getting nervous...

So they have the apostles thrown in the "public prison"... and when they get the whole governing body together and summon the prisoners, THEY'RE NOT THERE! The prison (tomb) is EMPTY!

"Then someone arrived and announced - Look, the men whom you put in prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people!"

The resurrection continues... thank God... and there ain't no authority on earth that can keep it down...

The other day I got a message from Kendra, who's been doing some great writing based on experiences we had as part of a learning group in Colombia last August... You can read some of her stuff (along with some great photos by Mark) here and here and here... living, breathing stories of resurrection and new life emerging from violence and death...


"The high priest questioned them, saying, "We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with his teaching and you are determined to bring this man's blood on us." But Peter and the apostles answered, "We must obey God rather than any human authority... we are witnesses to these things..."

a nosehair in the body of Christ

Ahh.. to be a nosehair in the body of Christ...

If you want to know what's going on with the "body," ask a nosehair. The vocation of the nosehair is to be at the periphery, on the edge... and yet a vital and growing (at least at my age!) part of the body... nosehairs PAY ATTENTION to what's going on outside the body (what's "in the air" all around?... what are the particles, the toxins, the signs of spring and new life? What should we be breathing in deeply? What should we be filtering out?), and to what's going on inside the body (as evidenced by what's coming out of it... need I say more...)

Sound like "nosehair as artistic vocation," perhaps?

Or maybe a better image for me, considering I was "on tour" for the past two weeks, would be of a single red blood cell, circulating through the body... entering into and interacting with various "vital organs" in different places... at once "belonging" and "coming from somewhere else"... maybe carrying just a little bit of oxygen that might help feed a tissue somewhere... and returning, spent, to be renewed and sent out again...

Here are just a couple of moments from the second week of my tour when this particular nosehair/red blood cell got a chance to interact with some different "vital organs" and caught a glimpse, again, of the diversity and vitality and struggle and life and work of the broader "body" in action...

- evening concert at Belmont Mennonite Church... last song of the evening, "Peace Be With You," and to my surprise the children already knew it, and were doing some actions for the song that I'd never seen before... so I invited them up to the front, and the children led us by singing this song together, doing the actions, and helping us all to "pass the peace"...

- afternoon conversation with Larry Miller, executive secretary of Mennonite World Conference, about his work of turning the eyes of the church in North America and Europe to the global South... and working at mechanisms like the Global Church Sharing Fund to help the worldwide church to be in solidarity and better distribute resources throughout the body...

- morning chapel, classes, and lunchtime conversation at AMBS... a powerful sense of inter-connectedness with the broader body in this seminary community that exists to prepare and send out women and men to lead and serve and care for the church... a chance to share my songs as resoures for that work, and to hear their feedback and encouragement and reflections...

- uproarious middle-of-the-night jam session at the DSC conference... after a great weekend of connecting with this community of artists that are passionate about Jesus and passionate about their art but who often feel significantly alienated from/disillusioned with/rejected by "the church"... times of conversation and prayer, a healing service... and then, in the middle of the night, hearing Jonathan and friends singing songs of love, of longing, of faith, of struggle that put words to what was going on in my soul, and all I could do was weep...

Having lived in many places, and travelled to many more, I have a profound sense of being most "at home" in the extended "body of Christ," and experiences like these remind me who I am, and who we are.

"For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ...

If the foot would say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body...

The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you...

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it..."

Sounds like good news for nosehairs/red blood cells like me. How does it sound to you?

a gift

It's the halfway point of my tour, and I'm enjoying some Sabbath rest at Charleen and Kendall's place.

As I've said before in this space, I work at keeping my extended touring schedule within careful limits for the sake of healthy living, healthy family and community relationships, and because of my conviction that the "tour! tour! tour! sell! sell! sell!" model of the mainstream music business is spectacularly unhealthy and unsustainable...

But, man, am I having a blast!

What a gift it is to have this chance to be "on tour" for a while...! To travel around and connect with friends old and new, with communities of faith in all of their riotous and glorious variety, and to sing songs together! This sense of connection with the broader "body" is also, it seems to me, vital for healthy living and healthy ministry... It certainly has been life-giving for me...

So here's a quick glimpse at some of the wonderful people I've been meeting along the way:

- Andy and Wendy in Bluffton, Ohio are friends that I hadn't seen in 15 years (and I'd never met their daughters Hannah and Sara). It was great to catch up on the twists and turns of our lives and creative passions since the days when I used to pass myself off as a drummer in their band ("Wendy and the Bovine Boys" I believe it was... with the smash hit "It's Hard To Be a Leftist Cowboy"...). Wendy remains the driving force behind Mennofolk, and Andy's "upper room" workshop is becoming, it seems to me, a kind of sanctuary for his passion for woodworking and craftsmanship. What a delight to be welcomed into their family for a few days!

- Louise runs the Lion and Lamb Peace Arts Center - a tremendous resource for peacemaking housed at Bluffton University. I discovered that the Big Book For Peace which we've had for many years was actually a Lion and Lamb initiative, and that the royalties from that book basically funded the center's operations for a number of years... how's that for a creative and financially viable way for the arts to be part of the peacemaking mission of the church!

- apparently the first MCC Self-Help store (what has now become 10,000 Villages throughout Canada and the US) was in Bluffton... who'd-a-thunk-it...

- had coffee with Lynne Miller, long-time "corporate theologian" for MMA and well-known speaker and writer on stewardship themes... his book "The Power of Enough" is still one of the freshest, most incisive, practical, and memorable things I've read in my recent stewardship explorations... It was fun to see his converted barn home, boat-building workshop, and to hear about his latest initiative of a "50/50 Club" of people who want to increase their giving and do a "double tithe," giving half for the local church and half for the global church... What do you say? You want to join up? He's thinking of planning an annual party for the 50/50 Club, to celebrate and encourage and give some more...

- experienced some serious (for me) psychedelia at Trevor and Susan's place... I've never "seen" music on a screen quite like that before... To be expected, I guess, when visiting someone who teaches theology and digital culture as Trevor does... hadn't seen Trevor for probably 17 years (and yes, we too played in a band together in high school... "Obsessed With Crayons"...)

- Miriam and Everett graciously took me in at the last minute, and shared delicious home-made pie with me (March 14 was "pi" day, after all - 3.14 - Marian teaches math), showed me Pittsburgh and gave me my first ever experience of a Toyota Prius hybrid car... and the adults at Pittsburgh Mennonite Church sing and dance with as much or more wild abandon as their children...

- Kurt made an extra last-minute trip to get more sound equipment, and along the way explained that Somerset, PA is close to where the 4th plane went down on September 11, and there are plans to build a memorial of some kind... and that close by lives the one who "blew the whistle" on the Abu Ghraib prison torture story, and that Kurt's efforts to get the local Congressmen to officially recognize that person for his significant role have not been warmly received...

- Elaine at Laurelville bound up my wounds and gave me some basic "first aid on the road" education after a pre-concert wipeout that tore my jeans and scraped up my knee pretty badly... I'm glad to report the knee is healing up nicely... oh, it's a hazardous job being a touring musician...

- Lois in Morgantown, West Virginia helped me find me way through the hills to the worship service on Sunday morning, and kept me well plied with tea and coffee while I was there... and I learned that Morgantown was the home of Don Knotts of "Apple Dumpling Gang" fame (yes, I'm old enough to remember those movies)...

- and last night, at Kern Road in South Bend, Indiana, before the concert with an enthusiastic gang of "small and tall" we had a jam session like I've never seen - or heard - before... with two basses (one acoustic and one electric), a cello, viola, guitar, trumpet, French horn, a whole bunch of drums and a number of singers... Wow!

Today it's time for some rest, some laundry, a celebratory meal, a good long walk...

What a gift! To know that we are not alone, that we are part of the same body, that God is up to something... all over the place... and we get to be a part of it...

catagenesis... and "financial folk songs"

"Conventional economics is the dominant rationalization of today's world order."

"So... you're writing... financial folk songs...?!"

The first quote is from a new book I just finished reading, called The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization by Thomas Homer-Dixon.

The second quote is from the toboggan hill yesterday, as we stood together watching our children hurtle down the slope, and as a group of parents tried, yet again, to understand just what it is that I do...

It's true - I'm in the midst of writing a cycle of songs around "economic stewardship" themes. I've been reading and reflecting and conversing around these issues for quite some time, and now the challenge is to write songs for the church that can help us to sing (and hopefully internalize) an "alternative vision" of the "economics of God's Kingdom"... songs that may even help us to sing our way into new ways of living that are more in tune with God's intentions for the world...

Oh, and they should be fun and engaging and compelling and catchy and meaningful for young and old alike... and readily usable for congregational worship...

How's that for a challenge?

Homer-Dixon's book talks about the possibility of what he calls "catagenesis" - "the creative renewal of our technologies, institutions, and societies in the aftermath of breakdown." Breakdown that is coming due to the convergence of 5 major "tectonic stresses" that are building up beneath our societies (environmental degradation and climate change, energy dependence on increasingly scarce conventional oil, growing disparities between rich and poor, etc.).

I've been struck by how much Homer-Dixon's notion of "catagenesis" mirrors the processes that I was describing in my last post ("exploding eggshells...") - processes of "tearing down and building up" that we were working with, based on the book of Ephesians, during Prayer Week (and that are also reflected in this week's lectionary text from Jeremiah 1)...

In fact, read this paragraph from Homer-Dixon's book and tell me if this doesn't sound like a remarkably accurate - even prophetic - description of the vocation of the church in our world today:

"Conventional economics is the dominant rationalization of today's world order. As we've overextended the growth phase of our global adaptive cycle, this rationalization has become relentlessly more complex and rigid and progressively less tenable. Breakdown will, all at once, discredit this rationalization and create intellectual space for new ideas to flourish. But this space will be brutally competitive. We can boost the chances that humane alternatives will thrive by working them out in detail and disseminating them as widely as possible beforehand." (p. 293)

In other words, among other things, it seems to me that we need songs to sing that articulate and help to disseminate an "alternative economic vision"... and we need to be communities that live that way... already, "in detail"...

Better get back to work...

exploding eggs in essex county

It wasn’t pretty.

There I was, on Friday night, toward the end of the first session of the Prayer Week services with the Essex county cluster of churches. So far, it seemed to me, things had gone reasonably well, all things considered. I hadn’t had as much time to prepare as I would have liked, and was a bit more wordy and rambling than I wanted to be, and had included less singing than I had hoped… but the initial activities had gone well, the people were engaged, and we were setting the stage for our weekend of reflection and prayer around the theme I had been given – “Walls: Divine and Dividing” – based on Ephesians 2:11-22.

That morning, after the barn chores and before packing up and leaving for the weekend, I had performed some experiments with the morning’s eggs out by the manure pile. I had heard that eggshells, if squeezed a certain way, were so strong that that they literally could not be broken. “The miracle of eggshells” was a central image (along with membranes, skin, and other “boundary” images like “walls”) that I was planning to use throughout the weekend as we reflected and prayed about the dynamics of identity and vocation, of building up and tearing down, of resilience and fragility, of formation and brokenness and new life…

In other words, about the church… drawing on musings from urban planning, ecology, architecture, agriculture… and the grand sweep of Biblical narrative from Gen 1 to Ephesians… and, of course, my daily barn chores… and a few tunes…

There’s good reason why the session was getting a bit long.

And then we got to the part where I demonstrated the amazing strength of eggshells by picking one up and squeezing it, hard, as I had practiced that morning.

It held. Amazing. Appreciative twitters from the gathered assembly.

Going for more dramatic effect, I invited a volunteer – a big strong one – to come forward and give it a try. As he strode to the front and took the egg in his hand, evidently confident that I knew what I was doing and ready to apply all of his considerable musculature, I had my first premonition that this may not have been such a good idea.

“Wait!” I said, and shifted the egg lengthwise in his hand… “Ok, now give it a try…”

And he did. And the egg held. Amazing. More appreciative twitters.

Unable to resist, I asked: “Are you sure you’re really squeezing it…?”

And as he nodded, he gave an extra effort, and the egg exploded.

I’ll spare you the details.

Let’s just say none of us had ever seen anything like it... It threw me off in a pretty big way, and the insightful climactic conclusion toward which I was building pretty much escaped me… The melody of the song I’d written the day before to conclude the session evaporated as well, so I had to improvise one on the spot to go with the words and the chords that, mercifully, I had not forgotten…

I got down from the platform and took my seat, certain that I’d “blown it”… in more ways than one… and that the weekend was off to a pretty miserable start… and a funny thing happened.

Ed led us in a time of prayer. Paul led us in a closing hymn. I felt like sneaking away… but almost instantly I was surrounded by nearly a dozen people, all smiles and laughter and encouraging words… and eager to show me the proper technique for squeezing eggs without breaking them. It turns out that the crowd was full of experts, and that it can in fact be done. There were plenty of good humoured and effective demonstrations while damp cloths were cheerfully brought out to clean up the mess at the front of the sanctuary.

For the rest of the evening people kept walking up to me, huge smiles on their faces, telling me this was a night they’d never forget. That they couldn’t wait for the next night’s service. Even that this evening’s session, and the exploding egg, spoke to them, and to what was going on in their lives and community, in ways that I couldn’t have realized or intended…

And one person did tell me that my talk was a bit long…

An egg, you know, needs its shell to become what it is. And, for the egg to be true to its vocation, it must be broken.

thanksgiving... and lament

I received an e-mail this week from a friend who works as chaplain at a hospital in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania – the hospital which received the Amish girls who were shot on Monday morning in their school house.

I can only imagine what that must have been like. Actually, I can’t.

So as the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend approaches, I have been re-reading an article by John Bell (of the Iona community) called “The Lost Tradition of Lament.” (Sorry I couldn’t find a link to an online version – I have it as a chapter in the book “Composing Music For Worship,” edited by Stephen Darlington and Alan Kreider). He begins his article with a brief description of a school shooting on March 13, 1996, in Dunblane, Scotland, when a gunman “opened fire on classes of children in the school gymnasium, killing sixteen children and one teacher.”

And then, Bell says, “On Sunday 17 March 1996, throughout Scotland, if not further afield, ministers and worship leaders of all traditions were forced with a dilemma – how to reflect a nation’s anguish in liturgy and song.”

How, indeed. What can we sing at a time like this? What MUST we sing? And what is appropriate to say – and to sing – with our children?

I have been musing about this for some time. In part, I suppose, because writing songs as I do for “small and tall” to sing together, I am very aware of the kind of relentlessly upbeat tone that is so often expected of anything that’s considered “music for kids.” And while I've written songs in different "modes" (I'm thinking, for instance, of songs like "Thank You" and "Beloved Child" and "You're Not Alone"), I've never intentionally worked at writing in the form of lament.

Here's a song for worship that a friend wrote in response to 9/11, and an article by another friend in response to the recent campus shootings in Montreal.

I would love to hear from you. What resources are you aware of? What could we – should we – be singing together at such times?

John Bell’s article highlights a number of hymn texts, Scripture passages (such as Psalm 130 and Job 38), as well as a text that he wrote after a conversation with a couple whose baby died an hour after birth. He wrote this in part because of the realization that “what compounded their sorrow was not having anything to sing at the child’s funeral that represented where they were before God…” and that “their sense of abandonment by the liturgy of the church is not isolated.”

Hmmm…