Singing Along the Journey
Thoughts about faith and wholeness set to the soundtrack of life

Pink, and orange, and white, and red

Reader alert:  it is Spring, and therefore it is time for my annual garden analogy blog entry. I just can't help myself.  But no kudzu this time, I promise. Instead, this year, the topic is roses.  Somewhere, a long time ago, when we first moved into this house on Capitol Hill, I read an article that said planting roses in front of possible entries that might invite, shall we say, unwelcome visitors, was an excellent way to use landscaping to increase the security of your home.  And so I proceeded to plant climbing roses in front of the ground floor windows of each apartment.  In front of one house, I planted a…
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One Body, One Song…

In March, I had a chance to attend a conference about singing in the church.  I wrote my personal impressions while I was still there, but now I'd like to talk about a few of the things I learned.  The following is not just for those who work as musicians in the church.   If you go to church, if you have ever gone to church, if you have ever faced a moment when you had to sing in a group and were uncomfortable, if anywhere in your life someone made you feel like you couldn't take part in something just because you weren't "trained", please keep reading.  I think you will relate to…
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It is never about the high note…

Music is, in so many ways, all about the phrasing.  When you experience someone as a "very musical" performer, the technical musical thing that is happening is phrasing--phrasing that best showcases the emotion or meaning of the music being presented.  For the best musicians, phrasing becomes like breathing and requires little thought.  Most of the rest of us work at it most of the time. But one of the most important things we learn, as we learn to phrase, is this rule:  the high note is hardly ever the point of the phrase.  This rule applies to singers and to instrumentalists;  the most important thing about a phrase is its destination...and it is…
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The strangest story of all…

I will admit that when I began the committment to read from Orbis Books Bread and Wine (2003), I skipped ahead a bit and read all the poetry.  At the beginning of Lent, the poem I've quoted here really didn't make much sense to me.  I'm not a person who is often moved by poetry (which you might find strange since I spend a good deal of my life singing various forms of poetry), but this morning in the early hours as I sat with me tea, relaxing that last few precious minutes before the rush of Easter Sunday was upon me, this poem meant a great deal to me. …
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Time to testify once more…

The last thing that I should be doing is sitting at the computer writing, but I have to eat my sandwich and drink my last cup of tea before tonight's performance anyway, so here it goes. I have written before that Lent as a season has been a very different experience for me than in past years.  And, as I approach our remembrance of Good Friday this difference continues.  For the five years before tonight, each Good Friday, we have offered a Good Friday concert...sacred music meant to guide worship or to simply inspire, depending on your beliefs.  Most of the pieces have been Baroque or Classical in compositional style,…
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The Promise of the Passion

Yes, it is Holy Week.  Yes, it is a week of rehearsing and praying and worshipping and making a lot of music for me. And yes, since it is Holy Week, it is time for our 6th (can you believe it), Music for Good Friday program.  This year, we are performing Carl Heinrich Graun's Der Tod Jesu (The Death of Jesus), premiered in 1755.  If you are interested, below are the program notes for this Friday's performance. The Music for Good Friday program, which has been so gratefully housed and supported by my beloved Calvary Baptist Church, has been a workshop for me in so many ways -- a chance…
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That precocious child…

There is nothing to bring on a little journey of introspection like being trapped in the house while a new roof is installed, particularly if you live in a flat roof row house like ours (where the last four attempts at fixing the roof were installed one on top of the other).  Real work is pretty much impossible with the tap-tap-pound-pound-rip sounds that have been over my head all day. But I did have a few minutes (between ka-thumps) to put a few pieces of a puzzle together, a puzzle that has been increasingly worrisome to me for the past couple of months.  Most of what I figured out I'll keep…
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Unfolding, defined…

Today, I'm branching out a little bit...I've had the opportunity to read Dr. David G. Benner's book, Spirituality and the Awakening Self (2012) as a participant in the Patheos Book Club.  In return for receiving a copy of the book, I've agreed to share my impressions of the work and to let Patheos include a link to my thoughts.   To those who have not found my blog before, welcome.  And now, my humble thoughts on Dr. Benner's latest volume. For most of my life, I have struggled with the ideas of spiritual formation, change, transformation, awakening, and mysticism -- I struggled with these concepts and their place in my life and  in…
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Those little God moments…

For the past 48 hours, I have been in Atlanta attending a conference called "The Singing Church," sponsored by the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.  In these past 48 hours, I have sung more church music than I ever imagined possible, I have experienced more different types of liturgy than I imagined existed, and I have had a chance to listen to and meet some people whose books have guided my thoughts and my learning and my transformation over the past three years. I have participated in five separate worship services, sung to guitar, piano, organ, drum, and hung (Korean string instrument that is a little like a…
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A turn of the season…

I must admit that I have not been as engaged this Lenten season as usual.  In fact, I have been struggling with Lent in a very different way and that has been unsettling for me.  I was concerned that the rituals had become too ritualized, that the newness of walking through the liturgical calendar had worn off, that maybe the deep richness of the past few seasons of Lenten observance had been manufactured on my part and this nothingness and discomfort was what really happened for me in the spring.  Oh yes, I've been applying myself to my study, turning my thoughts to repentance, etc. and etc., but I have clearly…
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