Tossed About With Many A Conflict

 meditation has a way of bringing back memories, especially of those events and actions in our lives that we regret.  often as i meditate, some past hurt or mistake comes to the surface, and i relive it as if it had just happened.  i suppose it is our minds trying to distract us from the present moment, asserting itself to take control again.  our mind may be saying, "i'm in control, i won't let you enjoy the present because you're leaving me out."  at those times, i am suddenly reminded that my mind isn't "me."  these thoughts, these stories are not who i am, nor am i the same person who made those past mistakes or endured those past hurts.

how do we forgive ourselves for the past?  one way may be to realize that the past has a way of taking us over that far exceeds its real importance.  when i think of some way i should have acted better in the distant past, i have to remind myself that those who were most affected by my actions or words have probably long forgotten them.  what i did or said is likely to have had a far greater effect on me, plunging me into fits of regret and despair that still haunt my mind, while they shrugged it off and moved on without little or no thought.  i am reminded of my paternal grandmother who worried constantly about ways she had injured others, enduring countless headaches and sleepless nights wishing she could take back her actions or words.  yet i can't think of a single time that she ever was mean to me or any other person.  her faults were of her own making and were invisible to those around her, but they tormented her throughout her life.

these minds of ours can be terrible things, conjuring up torments that we inflict on ourselves and, if we allow it, on others.  it is all too easy to let our minds create scapegoats to alleviate our suffering, blaming the machinations of our minds on some "other" who can take the blame.  we can't admit that it is we who create our own suffering and refuse to let it go.  our lives are filled with "if onlies," when what we need to do is to realize that this present moment is perfect, as good as it gets, and relish each breath that gives us life.  so many of the evils of the world result from our inability to accept life on its own terms, to realize that we all make mistakes, and to move on from those mistakes.  we must not let the dark corners of our minds control us.  we must learn to say no to our mind's attempts to take us away from our present enjoyment and to lure us to a past that everyone but us has forgotten.

may we let go of the past, learning what lessons we can from it without allowing it to make us miserable in the present.  may we realize that the little "i" of our minds is not the focus of everyone else's reality, that we magnify our own importance in the overall scheme of things.  may we understand that our minds are not who we are.  may we learn to love ourselves so that we can truly love others.  shalom.

Soon to Faithful Servants Cometh Rest

in the usa, most of us have little knowledge of our ancestors.  perhaps because we are such a young country.  many of us who are interested in those who came before us can only trace our families back a few generations.  in my case, i know back to my ancestors who lived in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  on my father's side of the family, both the paternal and maternal branches of the family tree had similar histories.  my paternal forebears were from pennsylvania, while those on my paternal grandmother's side started from maryland.  both moved down the east coast and across the gulf south generation by generation before finally settling in arkansas where i was born and still reside.  my grandmother's kin arrived here in the mid-nineteenth century, while my grandfather's parents came in the late nineteenth century.  on my mother's side of the family, all of her ancestors started in central north carolina, coming to southern arkansas not too long after president jefferson's louisiana purchase.

my family history is fairly typical of the american experience, as young men and women left the more settled parts of the young country to move west.  i'm not certain what motivated the ancestors on my father's side of the family to first move south before heading west into arkansas, where they halted their westward migration.  i know that my paternal grandmother's people were farmers, for the most part, while my paternal grandfather's family were lumbermen.  perhaps all of them were seeking cheaper tracts of land to pursue their vocations and were lured on by reports from other family members and friends who had gone before them, finally finding in arkansas the opportunities they had not found in other locales.

on my mother's side, we have a fairly detailed history of my great-great-grandfather leaving his home in north carolina with his family and a number of their possessions, which to my shame included several slaves.  this entourage moved directly to a part of southern arkansas where several relations had already settled.  the county in which they lived is still full of our relatives, and many of those who have passed are buried in a family cemetery near the county seat.  i don't know as much about my grandmother's family, except that they settled in a community in southwestern arkansas where a number of families from their area of north carolina had settlted.  the community's center was the mars hill baptist church, and many of my forebears are buried in the church cemetery there.

the women in my maternal grandmother's family seem to have been plucky bunch.  i knew my great-grandmother well, because she lived well into her nineties and helped raise my mother and her siblings while my grandparents ran their mom-and-pop grocery store.  my great-grandmother was born sometime during or at the end of the civil war in pine bluff, arkansas, where her mother had moved with her husband.  he seems to have been quite a character, sometimes described in family stories as a doctor and at other times as an itinerant musician.  probably he was a peddler of snake oil and attracted potential customers by playing the fiddle.  apparently, he came through my great-great-grandmother's rural community, and she fell in love with him, leaving her home and moving with him to pine bluff in central arkansas.  one night when he was out carousing, she loaded up my great-grandmother and her siblings along with all the possessions that she could on an open wagon and left him to return to her family in the southwestern part of the state.  she took her maiden name back, and my great-grandmother never saw her father again.  like her mother, my great-grandmother raised a large family on her own.  my great-grandfather suddenly passed away leaving her to keep her family fed and to hold onto the family farm during the difficult period that followed the end of reconstruction in the former confederate states, a task at which she succeeded with a great deal of grit.

as i think of what my ancestors accomplished and of their courage in leaving their settled lives in the eastern usa, i am filled with admiration for them.  they were imperfect people who participated in the social ills of their day.  at the same time, they were devoted to their families and willing to endure great hardships to provide more opportunities for their children and grandchildren.  it must have been very difficult to carve out a living in a new place that was largely wilderness.  i am grateful to them for having such courage and for passing their legacy down to me and their other descendants.

may we honor those who have gone before us and seek to learn more about them.  may we learn from their accomplishments and from their mistakes.  may we seek to pass on our heritage to our children.  may we value the knowledge of our past as we seek to live in the present.  shalom.

Until Next Week

 i will be traveling for the next couple of days, so i will not post on this blog until i have returned home.  my next blog post should appear on tuesday, march 23.  may you be filled with lovingkindness and compassion, may you be well, may you be peaceful and at ease, may you be happy.  shalom.

It Is As Though the Whole Creation Cried

 my brother-in-law, who lives in the same town as my wife and i, is one of the organists at the church to which we belong.  under normal circumstances, he plays on alternate months, with another musician playing during the months in which he does not play.  the other organist has had major surgery, so my brother-in-law is having to play every sunday until she recovers.  because of the pandemic, the church no longer sings congregational hymns.  the only music in the service is a prelude before the service begins and a postlude at the end.  few people listen to either, as the congregation talks through his prelude music and leaves during his postlude, talking as they exit the building.  he spends hours preparing these two pieces of music, and it seems insulting that few people pay much attention to his playing.

in contrast,  in the church for which i have been playing twice a month for several months now, a typical service has continued through the pandemic.  the congregation sings hymns and responses through their masks.  i find it worrying that they have continued to sing together, since we've been told by the health experts that communal singing is one way the covid virus is easily spread.  the congregation is spaced out in the large room in which we worship, and no one in this congregation has been infected with the virus.  the service begins before the prelude is played, and the congregation is invited to listen to the prelude music as a way of preparing for worshiping together.  the hymns seem to have been carefully selected to emphasize the content of the scripture lessons that are read in the service.  it is obvious that the people of the church find the musical content of the service to be important to them, as they relish the music that we make together.  to my surprise, last sunday the liturgist who was leading the service invited the congregation to sit and listen to the postlude after the benediction before exiting the room.  most people did as she requested, and i felt that the music i provided was valued by those who were present.

the different approaches to music in the church that is represented in the actions of these two congregations has caused me to spend some time thinking about the role of music in worship.  in the first church, a great deal of time is spent with various people speaking.  there are two homilies delivered by lay leaders, one which introduces the offering and one which leads up to communion.  there are announcements made by another layperson.  the minister preaches a sermon which is often rather lengthy, as well as leading a long pastoral prayer and several shorter prayers at various points in the service.  in normal times, there would be music during the collection of the offering and during the serving of communion, but because of health concerns, offering plates and communion plates are not distributed, eliminating the the need for music at those points in the service.  the singing of hymns had already been minimized, with only three included in the service and those were shortened by the omission of some of the stanzas.  since covid struck, hymns have been eliminated altogether.  because there is no choir during the pandemic, there is no anthem as there would normally have been.  instead a soloist will sometimes sing a piece of "special music."  no one who participates in this church's services seems to have missed the elimination of most of the music in the service.  i suspect that the role of music in the normal services had been so curtailed even before the pandemic that the congregation is largely insensitive to the beauty and meaning that well-chosen music could bring to their worship.

in the church for which i have been playing, the congregation regards the singing of hymns, responses, and other songs as essential to worship.  they listen attentively to the prelude music and ask that i play a piece of music at the point in the service where the choir would have sung an anthem in pre-covid times.  most people continue listening during the postlude, even when they are not requested to do so.  after the service, several people inevitably come to tell me how much they appreciate the music that i have played.  i always leave feeling that my role in the service is vital to the congregation's experience of worship.  there is a careful balance between individual leadership as the congregation listens and congregational participation in corporate acts of worship, including singing and reading various portions of the service aloud together.  the elements of the service have been carefully planned so that the message of the scripture lessons is reflected in all aspects of the service.  there is never a sense that those who worship together as simply "going through the motions."

because music is so important to my own experience of worship, i am reluctant to return to my own church's services.  the diminished role of music, especially regarding the hymns, before covid was disturbing to me, and now it seems that the place of music in the service is even more curtailed.  i have suggested to my brother-in-law that hymns could be played at the appropriate points in the service as the congregation reads the words even if the church leaders believe that it is unsafe to sing aloud, but he says there is not enough time in the service since those who speak have lengthened what they are saying to such an extent during the modified service.  perhaps my wife and i will attend the church for which i now play when we return to every-sunday worship since music seems to be so much more important to that congregation.

may we be careful to find balance in all that we do, including how we worship.  may we recognize the power of music to express what would otherwise be inexpressible.  may the appreciation of beauty be important to us in our daily lives, and may we express ourselves through whatever artistic media is within our capabilities.  shalom.

If the Music's from the Heart

 from the time i was a small child, there were two things of which i was certain: that i wanted to be a teacher and that i wanted to make music.  i don't know what it was about teaching that caught my imagination.  somehow deep in my soul, i could imagine nothing more important than teaching and that was what my life's work was to be.  i loved learning and was thrilled when i began school and was taught to read.  i was a voracious reader, devouring everything i could lay my hands on.  i read the encyclopedia on the shelves of our living room, i read every hardy boys book and every science fiction book i could secure.  when i went to stay with my grandparents in the larger town where my mother grew up, my favorite places to go were the library and the bookstore downtown.  i spent hours in both.  our school library was my refuge every chance i got to go there, and during the summers i visited our little town library frequently to check out new books and  to return ones i had finished.  reading was my favorite subject in school, and i was one of those nerdy kids who loved to write book reports or give them orally.

i was fascinated by the music that the pianist at our little church played, and, when i started school at the age of five, i begged my mother to let me begin piano lessons.   we were fortunate in our little school that there was a piano teacher who operated a studio on the school campus.  we could be excused from class for our piano lessons.  most of the children in our school lived on farms far from the school in town, and having a piano teacher at the school enabled them to take lessons, something that would have been difficult otherwise.  many students took advantage of the opportunity, so miss sigel, the piano teacher, had her schedule filled with lessons from 7:30 in the morning until 5:00 or 5:30 each school day.  my mother wouldn't let me begin lessons when i started first grade because she thought i was too young.  she promised that, if i still wanted to take lessons when i reached second grade, i could begin.  as the end of the summer between first and second grades came, i reminded my mother of her promise, and she enrolled me in miss sigel's schedule of lessons.  she and my father went to the town where my grandparents lived and bought a piano for the living room, and i was set for my new adventure.

i now had a new love in my life that took up part of my spare time, so practicing the piano and reading were about all i did outside the school day, other than my household chores and my homework.  i did watch that new invention, the home television, but until i was in junior high there wasn't much on until the evening.  sometimes in the late afternoons, all the kids in my neighborhood would come to our house to watch old cowboy movies, since ours was the only home with a tv.  they couldn't come, though, until i had finished my piano practice.  in the evenings when my family watched tv, i would go to the piano and play during the commercials.  sometimes my dad would have to tell me that the program had begun again, so i had to stop playing in order from them to hear what was being said.  my dad often remarked that i couldn't pass a piano without stopping to play, and he was right.  playing the piano came to be part of who i was, just as reading had been from the time i learned to read in first grade.

in eighth grade, our school district hired a band director, so we were offered the opportunity to learn to play a band instrument.  i joined the first class of students, choosing to play the clarinet.  from then on, i had two instruments to practice, along with keeping up my school work and reading as much as time would allow.  by the time i reached my junior year in high school, i knew that i would become a music teacher, combining my love for music with my intention to teach.  i pursued my education in the remainder of high school and in college with teaching music as my goal.

in college, i began studying a new instrument: the organ.  a new avenue of musical expression and new musical literature were now part of my life.  i loved playing the organ, and my zeal for playing it surpassed my love for playing the piano and the clarinet.  after graduating from college, i was able to supplement my wages as a public school teacher with work as an organist for churches in the towns where we lived.  throughout most of my adult life, i have been a church musician and continue to work as one a couple of sundays a month now that i am well into my seventies.  

playing the organ is something of a dying art in our country.  few people are willing to put in the hours of preparation and go to the expense of lessons and music that are required to become skilled players when the wages are so abysmal.  in the small town where we live, there are four of us who are proficient organists, three of us in our seventies and the fourth in her eighties.  when we are no longer able to play, the instruments in the four churches that have them will sit idle, most likely.

i've never regretted the choices i made as a child that propelled me through life.  few are so fortunate to have been able to carry their childhood joys throughout their lives, earning their livings by pursuing them.  my teaching career has enabled me to have a handsome retirement with more income in retirement than i had when i was working, and my ability to play the organ supplements my retirement income while allowing me to continue my love of making music that others seem to enjoy.

may we count ourselves lucky indeed when the things we love doing support us and our families.  may we be grateful that life can bring us such joy.  may we encourage others to do what they enjoy most and seek ways to use their passions to develop careers.  may we never give in to a humdrum existence that steals the happiness of life from us.  shalom.