Streamlining the Blog

We're in the process of moving this blog from Blogger to Wordpress. The URL will not change; you'll still access the blog as "www.hymnnotes.com." My husband pointed out, however, that Wordpress would more easily enable you to receive any new posts via email. We expect to have it up and running in time for the first "regular" post on January 29. These are the technical details akin to an artist crushing ingredients for paint, setting up the easel, making preliminary sketches, setting up the easel: eleven days to go!

Where "Hymn Notes" Is Heading: A City Near You?

Dearly Beloved Readers of Hymn Notes, Having children upset my plans. I stopped writing and started surviving. However, now that the little angels are more independent and now that a babysitter is coming twice per week, I intend to resume posting on a regular basis. This will begin on January 29, after I complete several commitments to individuals and institutions. Please "follow" Hymn Notes if you want to stay engaged because I do have a plan for this blog. In the meantime, would you consider hosting a lecture-concert in your home or church? "Joining the Party: Celebrating Two Thousand Years of Congregational Song" is a walk through church history with a representative song from each era, about one-third talk and two-thirds performance and audience participation. Along the way we'll explore why we need chronological breadth as well as global breadth in our songs! My family (me, one husband, and two daughters) will be traveling May 20-June 3, 2015, to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. If you decide to host a lecture-concert, your commitment would be to provide room and board for my family for one night and $150 for a house concert or $300 for a church concert; if you choose a house concert, you would receive $50 back to reimburse you for some of the food costs for your guests. I will bring a digital piano, if needed, for house concerts, and could use either that piano, your church's piano, or your church's pipe organ for church concerts. Happy New Year to all of you! Keep singing. Rebecca

The Holly and the Ivy

This Christmas you can learn an ancient carol more simply by creating a visual tag. Practice looking at a piece of holly and slowly singing or listening to the first stanza of "The Holly and the Ivy." Eventually, every time you look at a piece of holly, you'll think of this song. Here's a contemporary recording of the hymn. I think they're singing "merry harp" instead of "merry organ."

Hymn Society Annual Conference: July 13-17, 2014

The Hymn Society's Annual Conference will be held in Columbus, Ohio, this year, July 13-17. I'll be speaking in the first round of sectionals: "Hymns for a Crisis: Communal Preparations for Small to Large Calamities."

Integrating Children in Worship

I was surprised to receive two separate queries this month about a post from last year on children's sermons. Having worked a little more with children this year and having read a lot more about children, here are the two very best titles I've found for integrating children into worship:

The Church of All Ages, ed. Howard Vanderwell (Herndon, Virginia: The Alban Institute, 2008)

A Child Shall Lead: Children in Worship, ed. John D. Witvliet (Garland, Texas: Choristers Guild, 1999)

They include some discussion of the development of the children sermon; the historical role of children in worship; philosophical and theological perspectives; and LOTS of practical ideas.

Merry Christmas!

"A Mighty Fortress": The Reformation Lives On

Note: This was originally printed for a September bulletin.

On October 31, 1517, twelve years before he wrote this hymn, the Roman Catholic monk Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses on the Power of Indulgences to the door of a Wittenberg, Germany, church, effectively sparking the Protestant Reformation with his critique of indulgences sold by the Catholic church. Out of this Reformation, celebrating its 490th anniversary next month, was born all of the other churches (besides Roman Catholic and Orthodox) that we know today: Lutherans, Presbyterians (including the branches of the Reformed Church), Anabaptists (predecessors of the Baptist denominations)--and Anglicans [that's the church I'm currently serving]!

One of the hallmarks of the Reformation was the five "solas", meaning "alone":

Sola gratia (we are saved "by grace alone")
Sola fide (through "faith alone")
Sola scriptura ("Scripture alone" is the source of Christian doctrine)
Solus Christus ("Christ alone" is the mediator between God and man)
Soli Deo Gloria (all glory is due to "God alone")

Two of the ways Luther expressed the idea of sola scriptura were by encouraging ordinary people to read Scripture for themselves and to sing scriptural ideas in their own languages, rather than merely hearing scriptural ideas sung in Latin. Because of his emphasis on ordinary people participating in the service, Luther was a father of congregational singing.

"A Mighty Fortress" expresses the strength of ordinary people's devotion in the face of much resistance, and since its words and tune were both written by the founder of the Protestant Reformation, it has been called the "Battle Hymn of the Reformation." For a while, it is the last hymn we will sing that was written by a monk--because ordinary people learned to read, write, and praise God with hymns in their own languages. May we sing it today with vigor, knowing we stand with generations of ordinary people to praise an extraordinary God.

"Be Thou My Vision" 4: Valuing the Tune

Not only the words to the church's hymns but the tunes themselves are gifts from the Holy Spirit, to be treasured and passed down from one generation to the next. The tune of Be Thou My Vision is known as SLANE (hymn tune names are typically capitalized), and refers to a very dramatic event that occurred on March 26, AD 433 (Easter Sunday), on the Hill of Slane in Ireland.

Oral tradition relates that at the command of Leoghaire, the Supreme Monarch of Ireland, the druids and Irish chiefs were to meet in full number...

"...and the decree went forth that... the fires throughout the kingdom should be extinguished until the signal blaze was kindled at the royal mansion. ... [The druids] would muster all their strength to bid defiance to the herald of good tidings and to secure the hold of their superstition on the Celtic race, for their demoniac oracles had announced that the messenger of Christ had come to Erin. St. Patrick arrived at the hill of Slane, at the opposite extremity of the valley from Tara, on Easter Eve...and on the summit of the hill kindled the Paschal fire [as an Easter fire, it was a sign of the presence of Christ, the Light of the world]. The druids at once raised their voice. 'O King', (they said) 'live for ever; this fire, which has been lighted in defiance of the royal edict, will blaze for ever in this land unless it be this very night extinguished.' By order of the king and the agency of the druids, repeated attempts were made to extinguish the blessed fire and to punish with death the intruder who had disobeyed the royal command. But the fire was not extinguished and Patrick shielded by the Divine power came unscathed from their snares and assaults. On Easter Day the missionary band having at their head the youth Benignus bearing aloft a copy of the Gospels, and followed by St. Patrick who with mitre and crozier was arrayed in full episcopal attire, proceeded in processional order to Tara. The druids and magicians put forth all their strength and employed all their incantations to maintain their sway over the Irish race, but the prayer and faith of Patrick achieved a glorious triumph. The druids by their incantations overspread the hill and surrounding plain with a cloud of worse than Egyptian darkness. Patrick defied them to remove that cloud, and when all their efforts were made in vain, at his prayer the sun sent forth its rays and the brightest sunshine lit up the scene. Again by demoniac power the Arch-Druid Lochru, like Simon Magus of old, was lifted up high in the air, but when Patrick knelt in prayer the druid from his flight was dashed to pieces upon a rock.
"Thus was the final blow given to paganism in the presence of all the assembled chieftains. It was, indeed, a momentous day for the Irish race" (from "http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11554a.htm", accessed July 25, 2007).

The Irish folk song Slane was written about this occasion, and became the hymn tune SLANE when it was matched appropriately to the Irish monastic prayer of protection, Be Thou My Vision, in the early 1900's.

******************************************************

If the tunes themselves are gifts, we should treat them well!

If you are singing this tune at home, here is a hint to help you find the correct rhythm in one difficult place: for the words to match the tune, one syllable in the third line usually gets two beats instead of one.

The syllable that gets two beats is capitalized in the following illustrations.

1. Thou my best THOUGHT, by day or by night....
2. Thou my great FA-ther, I Thy true son....
3. Thou my soul's SHEL-ter, Thou my high tower....
4. Thou and Thou ON-ly, first in my heart....
5. Heart of my own heart, whatever befall.... (here the syllables match the tune, beat for beat)

"Be Thou My Vision" 3: Fighting and Resting

I wrote the following a couple months ago with a migraine; there are a lot of semi-colons....


Be Thou my Battle Shield, Sword for the fight;
Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight;
Thou my soul’s Shelter, Thou my high Tower:
raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.


“Dignity” and “delight”, an unusual pairing in a hymn, provide the transition from fighting to resting. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “dignity” as worthiness, worth, nobleness, excellence; honorable or high estate; nobility or befitting elevation of aspect, manner, or style; becoming or fit stateliness, gravity. In medieval times, noblemen were required to fight with their king. Our King stays so close to us that we are not separated by the length of a battlefield nor even by another body; He defends us as our Shield and fights for us as our Sword. He goes deeper even than providing the tools of war; He confers nobility, the nobility belonging to sons and daughters of the King, that we may use the tools with good conduct and honor. This graciousness prompts deep delight, the kind of delight found in the safe shelter of a worthy lover, whose tower protects us from the battle raging outside. We have here pairings of outward activity (battle shield, sword) and inward rest (shelter, tower); the singer ecstatically prays that God meet all needs. “Battle shield” and “shelter” are further paired as images of things that surround us, while “sword” and “tower” are paired as images that point up and straight to the sky; we are protected from earthly perils and raised heavenward by God’s own power. The dignity of the uplifted human soul is joined with the delight of the sheltered human heart in one hymn of praise to God.

Sean's Question 2: All the Stanzas All the Time?

Sean asked: "It seems as though you spread the hymn out over the course of the month, is this formulaic or do you look at the context of the hymn stanzas? ... Do you sing ALL the verses in the hymn or just the verses in your hymnal..."?

Answer to both questions: it depends.

I'm interested in using the Hymn of the Month in different places in the service, so singing all the stanzas is not always appropriate. For example, my priest has requested that I almost always close our contemporary service with a high-energy praise song--send them out with a bang.... To honor his request, but also to illustrate to the congregation a correspondence of themes through the centuries, I closed with only the final stanza of "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God"--changing "That word above all earthly pow'rs" to "God's word above all earthly pow'rs" so we weren't hitting it without context--and then on the last note of the last line--"His kingdom is forevER"--launching immediately into the intro of a praise song called "King of Kings."

Another reason to not sing all the stanzas all the time is that the congregation could get weary of it. Some Sundays I present our Hymn of the Month merely as an instrumental during communion, offertory, prelude, or postlude. I hope the musical variations will bring different aspects of the text to light, as words drift in and out of the congregation's minds, both staving off boredom and illustrating text.

Finally, we don't necessarily sing the version in the Episcopal hymnal. In fact, we don't even have hymnals (which I much regret, but the church has other things to deal with right now). So while I'm picking the version or translation, I'm also studying all the original stanzas and beginning to assign them to different parts in the service during the coming month. Then we just pubish the desired stanzas each week, print format for the traditional service, Power Point for the contemporary service.

I have no idea if people in the congregation are actually holding on to the bulletin insert from the beginning of the month, the insert that prints the hymn in its entirety, but if they are, then they have a bird's eye view of the hymn to work with at home.

Sean's Question 1: Origins of Hymn of the Month

Sean asked a number of questions in the Comment section of the last post. I thought they each were worth answering in a separate post.

By the way, Sean, since you're one of about three people who reads and comments on this blog, I'm curious: Are you a church musician? Do you have a web site you'd like me to feature one of these days?

OK, here we go:

“How did you first start the hymn of the month idea?”

The summer after graduating from college, I had a few weeks in an apartment with nothing to do before the next gig. I decided to memorize hymns. Every day I would walk to the college library with a list of favorite hymns and then I would research their first appearances to get as close to the original lyrics as possible. Every afternoon I would order the hymns by date of writing and happily memorize them, stanza by stanza, in strict chronological sequence. Why deny my congregations this pleasure just because they have only a few minutes per week instead of hours per day?

The next year, as a first-year graduate student in Massachusetts, the church I served as organist requested an extended prelude once per month to prepare the congregation for communion. I thought the congregation might as well understand what they were hearing, so began little synopses in the bulletin each month, describing the prelude music, especially how the tunes and organ colorings illustrated the text.

Later, as a choir director, with a ton of music to teach every week and very little time to allow the words we were singing to sink in, I found it helpful to have a “theme” hymn just for the choir, to help focus their attention during a season.

Finally, at this most recent church, I’ve had the joy of considering what hymns could best minister to the congregants if they were deeply in the congregants’ minds—and what hymns would best help the congregants minister to God. They’re not all my absolute favorites—my personal favorites being rather too complex and often in different languages—typical of any trained musician—but they’re well-loved and quite good enough to live in hearts through a life-time. Many of them already have survived many centuries, so they’re likely good for a few more years….

Most of the hymns chosen for this congregation come from Hymns and Tunes Recommended for Ecumenical Use (ask the Hymn Society of the United States and Canada for this list), and then I chose which version of each we’ll use and what month it would fit best, including which hymn it best follows. Twelve to twenty months, meaning twelve to twenty hymns, is probably enough to plan ahead.

Hal Hopson has written One Hundred Plus Ways to Improve Hymnsinging: A Practical Guide for All Who Nurture Congregational Singing—do you know this book? I’ve only skimmed it, but it’s chockful of good ideas. You could spend the rest of your life and ministry implementing his ideas.

"Be Thou My Vision" 2: Men, Men, Men!

Be Thou my Wisdom and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise;
Thou mine Inheritance now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart;
High King of heaven, my treasure Thou art.

Today we focus on the second and fourth stanzas (see above) because one leads to another. Although we proclaim Christ's salvation for male and female, the language of "sonship" here conveys an important theological truth for both sexes: in Christ we share His inheritance, the inheritance of the first-born Son, which is freely given to all. The exclusive language of Psalm 2:7-8 ("The LORD said to me, 'You are my son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession."), exclusive because it speaks of Christ, becomes the inclusive language of Galatians 3:26, 28-29: "...for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. ... There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free; there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's , then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise." Because the Son inherits, all of us inherit.

In "Be Thou My Vision," instead of our inheriting the nations, we inherit God Himself. "The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup; thou holdest my lot. The [property] lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage" (Psalm 16:5-6).

Lord God of Abraham, we cannot quite grasp what it means for us to inherit this promise--the promise of fully dwelling with You. May Your Spirit begin to probe in us what it may mean to live in the light of this inheritance; while we serve as stewards of earthly treasures, help us consider what it means for You to be our greatest treasure.

"Be Thou My Vision" 1: With That Missing Third Stanza

So the first Sunday of the month, I always print the full hymn text as we will eventually sing it. Even though we may not sing all stanzas every Sunday, individuals are offered the chance to take that first insert home and work on memorizing the whole thing.

Of course YOU aren't surprised by the third stanza about battles and fighting and such, since as the people who read hymn blogs, you know almost everything there is to know about hymns already; but the congregation sure was surprised, since mention of Christian-as-warrior, even though it doesn't mean we should literally take up swords to hack our enemies, is removed from most P.C. hymnals. But you knew that.

Here's a little review:

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best Thought by day or by night;
waking or sleeping, Thy presence my Light.

Be Thou my Wisdom and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Be Thou my Battle Shield, Sword for the fight;
Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight;
Thou my soul’s Shelter, Thou my high Tower:
raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.

Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise;
Thou mine Inheritance now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart;
High King of heaven, my treasure Thou art.

High King of heaven, my victory won,
May I reach heaven's joys, O bright Heaven's Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

"All Creatures of Our God and King" 2: St. Francis Not a Nature Lover

(Note: The following didn't actually publish in my church's bulletin, because I decided not to play the hymn that Sunday.)

This hymn from St. Francis was a brilliant departure from the pantheism (nature-worship) of his day--instructive for us in a day when paganism is alive and well in parts of the United States, and when we ourselves feel a proper yearning to be in closer harmony with the nature God made.

The original lyrics included addresses not merely to Mother Earth but to Brother Fire and Sister Water, from a Christian perspective. G.K. Chesterton’s marvelous biography, St. Francis of Assisi, brings this into focus ([San Franciso: Ignatius Press, 1986], 81-87; first published in 1923):

“St. Francis was not a lover of nature. … The phrase implies accepting the material universe as a vague environment, a sort of sentimental pantheism.… Now for St. Francis nothing was ever in the background. … He wanted to see each tree as a separate and almost a sacred thing, being a child of God and therefore a brother or sister of man. …

“Though in some ways [All Creatures of Our God and King] is as simple and straightforward as a ballad, there is a delicate instinct of differentiation in it. … It was not for nothing that he called fire his brother, fierce and gay and strong, and water his sister, pure and clear and inviolate. … St. Francis was…the founder of a new folk-lore; but he could distinguish his mermaids from his mermen….

“[When he was going blind, he was told the solution was to cauterize his eye.] When they took the brand from the furnace, he rose as with an urbane gesture and spoke as to an invisible presence: ‘Brother Fire, God made you beautiful and strong and useful; I pray you be courteous with me.’

“If there be any such thing as the art of life, it seems to me that such a moment was one of its masterpieces. Not to many poets has it been given to remember their own poetry at such a moment, still less to live one of their own poems. … For Francis there was no drug; and for Francis there was plenty of pain. But his first thought was one of his first fancies from the songs of his youth. He remembered the time when a flame was a flower, only the most glorious and gaily coloured of the flowers in the
garden of God; and when that shining thing returned to him in the shape of an instrument of torture, he hailed it from afar like an old friend,calling it by the nickname which might most truly be called its Christian name.”

Creator Spirit, as we sing this hymn, minister to us; help us to properly name the many creatures You have made and to understand and rejoice in Your purposes for them. By our seeing all nature in Your light, help us to minister to creation, to care for it in the way You desire; may we have patience with its limitations and happiness in its strengths. May we become living testimonies to the care and delight You take in creation, in all the particular, different things, and to the hope we have in Christ of Your restoring it in the new heavens and new earth. Alleluia, alleluia!

"All Creatures of Our God and King" 1: The "Alleluia" Refrain

OK! Thank you, Adam and Sean, for your encouragement. I would be happy to publish some of the Hymn Notes appearing weekly in the church bulletin. We've been doing this only two months now, although of course I've had the idea and done similar things at other churches for many years.

On the first week of each month, the congregation receives an insert with the full lyrics. They are encouraged to take these home and memorize them.

On successive weeks, they may receive some historical background or devotional material about the hymn.

Here's the second week of "All Creatures of Our God and King," as it appeared in the bulletin in June:

The songs of God’s people were never meant to rest in the church building, but to bubble up from our hearts throughout our moments and days. We pray that the Hymns of the Month may help us reflect on the inspiration of the Holy Spirit through two millenia of congregational song, and to dwell on some of the words and tunes the Spirit inspired in our brothers and sisters before us, so that the Spirit may have opportunity again to bless God, others, and ourselves through these phrases in our own hearts in this time. As an example of how different hymns may be sung in different moments of our lives, we will sometimes sing them at different points in the Sunday morning service.

The refrain of this hymn of the month (“O praise Him, alleluia”) makes it particularly appropriate for use before and after the gospel reading.

“Alleluia” survives as a transliteration of the Hebrew “Hallelujah”, meaning “Praise Jah[weh]!” It appears numerous times in Psalms 113-118 and four times in Revelation 19, where it serves less as an injunction to praise than as a mighty summation of all the intensity of praise in heaven. This word’s continued use from the Old Testament temple worship to the New Testament’s revelation of heavenly worship, from the liturgies of first-century Christians to twenty-first-century Christians, allows us to join our voices with the company of heaven and to participate in the worship of all believers through time and space.

Please encourage one another in worship this morning, and yourselves throughout the week, by singing “Alleluia” with loudness and might.

Martin Marty 4: No Private Spirituality

The last item I want to discuss from Martin Marty's list is #8, Going Public. Marty remarked that confessing our faith in public, as illustrated by such hymns as "I Love to Tell the Story", is a very strange act in our American milieu of private spirituality.

Yet the psalms are filled with announcements that "I will speak of Thy goodness in the great congregation." The Old and New Testaments do not really credit any faith that remains private.

My husband pointed out recently that people who say they believe in Jesus but not in the church do not really believe in Jesus at all—not to the point of following His teachings beyond a vague niceness (and was Jesus actually "nice"?). Jesus reveled in symbolism and community, following the Old Testament law to the letter in His circumcision, presentation at the temple, and baptism; He went to the temple feasts with His parents; He attended the synagogue regularly, reading Scripture there publicly until the crowd decided to stone him. His first followers continued these Jewish practices, giving them a Christian twist, but not neglecting to meet together and not neglecting to carry on Jesus' commandments to use physical signs—water, bread and wine—to convey His teaching. The signs themselves were of community with the Trinity and with each other, and could not be practiced in any act of private spirituality.

Take a deep breath. Sing it out. "I will speak of Thy goodness in the great congregation; I Love to Tell the Story."

Martin Marty 3: Voices and Bodies that Rise, Fall, and Rise

The fourth point, Voice, emphasized Christianity as a material religion. Paying attention to our voices reminds us that we would not have Christianity without "a loaf of bread, a bottle of wine, and a river" (Marty was quoting someone else here).

The first time we sang the hymn "That Joyful Eastertide" (VRUETCHTEN) with text, the second time on "aw". We focused on the vibrations and resonance in our body, on our "wonderful madeness."

One of my employers said last week that he believes we will just be spirits in heaven, that Jesus' resurrected body was an illusion or something he cast off after he got through the clouds. That rather defeats the purpose of our belief, doesn't it? We long to be restored humanity, in all our spiritual and physical glory, not merely ghosts.

Fortunately, the Bible disagrees with my employer's views and holds out a different promise. Thomas put his hand in Jesus' side, and no body fell thunk to earth after the disciples stopped gazing up.

Dan Schutte 3: Hunger and Satisfaction

This Sunday a women's trio at my church is performing another of Schutte's tunes, "Pilgrim Companions", since the lectionary, as nearly as I can recall from planning this a couple months ago, has to do with Christ's being the Bread of Life (John 6) and with our walking together as imitators of God, His beloved children (Ephesians 4-5)--two themes unified in "Pilgrim Companions".

How do we capture the idea of the now and the not-yet, of Christ feeding us but not entirely satisfying us until heaven? One of the stanzas in "PC" reads, "Over and over, we hunger for someone to feed us and fill our desire; when the God of our longing has courted and captured our hearts, we will hunger no more," and the refrain closes with, "Hungry yet hopeful, sustained by the love of the Lord."

Since college years, I've latched onto that phrase, "hungry yet hopeful," as the theme of my life. My life didn't start that way. Since age nine, I had been nurtured on John Foley's version of Psalm 16, "For You Are My God" (and just why did a pack of St. Louis Jesuits have so much standing in a Reformed church?—but that is a question for another day), and its refrain, "For you are my God, you alone are my joy…". I thought God alone had to be my joy—sort of a beatific vision. But in college I began reading Psalm 16 seriously and finally noticed that immediately after the statement, "I have no good apart from thee," the psalmist follows with, "As for the saints in the land, they are the noble, in whom is all my delight" (italics added). So I began to get an inkling that God does not want us to enjoy "just" Him, but Him in His creation.

But how to enjoy God in His creation? The sadness of the world has never been far from me (many toddler portraits show a melancholy face, whereas my little brother is beaming), as the world, God's creation, including those made in His image, is continually falling short of God's intentions for it.

I read a lot of C.S. Lewis then and nearly memorized (really) his Weight of Glory essay, in which he talks frankly about our hunger for that which is not in this world, for the glory that is to come. This is still different from God alone being our joy; Lewis talks rather about our delighting in our Father's approval and stepping into the harmony and unity of creation that was meant from the beginning.

Hungry yet hopeful. You see how this develops.

When I taught for a couple years at a Christian high school, one of the kids' favorites songs was called "Hungry": "Hungry I come to you, for I know you satisfy." I sort of liked this song, but was worried that the students would get the ideas (1) that Jesus is supposed to satisfy immediately, meaning sometime in this life, and (2) that something is wrong with the kids if they don't feel "satisfied by Jesus" despite all their devotional practices. There certainly was a lot of unchristian guilt spread around that campus, possibly associated with songs like this.

I tried to talk about unrealistic expectations for satisfaction. I tried, for example, to tell the students in some chapels that if they got married, it could just increase the loneliness. My husband, The Abbott, is my best friend and a far-above-average partner in caring for me and preparing for our baby, but the loneliness I experience on a daily basis is real and unanswered by this wonderful man; I see more clearly after marriage than before that the dearest of human partners will not satisfy this ache, this hunger, for complete harmony and unity with God and His creation. I'm not sure the students understood this; I'm not sure I explained it well enough, or that because of songs like "Hungry", anyone was capable of understanding this.

The subtlety of Bernard of Clairvaux's "Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts" helps us here. Two stanzas will suffice:

Jesus, Thou Joy of loving hearts,
Thou Fount of life, Thou Light of men,
From the best bliss that earth imparts,
We turn unfilled to Thee again.

We taste Thee, O Thou living Bread,
And long to feast upon Thee still;
We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead,
And thirst our souls from Thee to fill.

The now and the not-yet. We're still hungry--yet hopeful. They didn't often sing this at the high school.

Haunted in New Mexico: Lutherans Amok

Check out our friend's most recent post. She's been attending an art conference (writers' workshop?) in New Mexico with a pack of ex-Lutherans.

Martin Marty 2: Silence and Noise

The first two points, Silence and Noise, could both be illustrated within sound.

Silence here refers to the spaces between notes--the organist's touch or the length of pause between phrases or stanzas--and to the possibility of a leader simply reading a stanza out loud in the middle of the hymn, while the congregation listens. Attention to silence helps us tune in to sound; the silence becomes part of the sound, another of its forms or shapes.

I use this method of attentiveness instinctively when shaping phrases in congregational song, based on the meaning of the text, but I noticed last night that I also use silence and softness pedagogically during piano lessons or choral lessons. A quiet smile or other facial expression in response to a performance is very effective after I've been blathering away or the student has been pounding away for a few minutes; the sudden absence of verbosity, whether verbal or musical, quickens our ears and sharpens our focus.

I recall also that one theory behind chant is that monks were allowed to make it somewhat organically, without a strict tempus, and with lots of individual variations within a choir. The subtlety of these variations was due, not crassly to lack of practice, but thoughtfully to the Holy Spirit's interpreting the text through each vessel, nudging here, lengthening there, taking a little breath, according to as each understood and as each had need. I do hope that theory of chant performance is true. Even if it is not, we can make it true in our own performances, explaining to the choir why in some cases we do not want them to keep an absolutely strict rhythm and tempo.

Silence.

Noise was delightfully illustrated through the spiritual "Let My People Go", which we were instructed to sing "in a down and dirty manner", stamping our feet on beats three and four after "Go down" and "Moses." Not all hymns and church tunes should be sung reverently; not all the Bible should be read reverently, I mean in an ethereal voice.

This reminds me that in a later post I mean to cover a hymn written by one of the participants of the conference, Adam Tice, in which "[t]he maiden Mary (not so mild) bore into death's domain true God, and yet an infant child...." Not so mild! Get down and dirty, Mary. Bear us that child.

Martin Marty 1: Churchgoers as Naked Mole Rats

During the Hymn Society's recent conference, Martin Marty brought us a look at the phenomology of hymnody—"What Is Going on When Christians Sing Hymns in Congregation?"—with each of his points accompanied by an appropriate hymn.

The points seemed a little haphazard, some of them having to do with the manner or technique of making music, some with the content of the songs, and one (#8) as the most cerebral, describing what happens in general when the private becomes public. I could have used another level of organization, dividing the points more neatly into categories.

I'll list the points first, then ponder some of my favorites in this and later posts.

Introduction: Phenomenology Defined; Location of Sacred
1. Silence
2. Noise
3. Awe
4. Voice
5. Rhythm and Harmony
6. Narrating and Listening
7. Conversing
8. Going Public
9. Unisonality and Harmony
10. Catechizing
Summary: Praising and Story

I don't recall how Marty defined phenomenology except through his example of stepping back from the congregation as a stranger to observe. I would supplement this with a concrete example, comparing this attitude of the stranger in the congregation to how you might observe a colony of naked mole rats burrowing around at the zoo, underground in a clear container like an ant farm: What are those creatures up to? How are they moving? Do they look busy or languid? What happens when one naked mole rat encounters another naked mole rat going the opposite direction in the same tunnel? How big are they making their burrows? How much noise does burrowing make? Where are the baby naked mole rats kept while the adults work? Are the babies allowed to observe, or are they confined? Does any adult oversee them? (This vision of the naked mole rats is vivid in my head, since I dreamed last week that I gave birth to one. My actual baby, due the middle of November, promises to look more human than that.)

During the introduction, Marty mentioned (as an aside?) that the discipline of acting like a stranger allows one to answer the question, "Where is this congregation locating the sacred?" Some congregations locate it in the host (the communion elements), some in the center aisle, some in icons, some in the music itself. I don't think I've seen a congregation locating it in the center aisle and I'm not sure how this would be observed, but the other places seem standard.