Nestled in the Woods

Ingredients:
2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
1 cup pumpkin pie mix (already sweetened)
1 cup skim milk
2 eggs
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup chopped English or California Walnuts
1/2 cup raisins

Grease loaf pans with solid shortening within 1/2 inch of rim
Preheat oven to 350 F
In large mixing bowl combine 1 cup of the flour with brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices; work with fingers until fine and meal-like texture;
add pumpkin pie mix, milk, eggs, and oil; beat with mixer on low setting until well mixed; increase to high speed for 2 minutes; add remaining flour and mix well; add nuts and raisins;
bake in 1 9x5x3″ loaf pan 50-60 minutes, or 4 mini loaf pans 40 minutes; cool on rack for 10 minutes; remove from pans.

“Soar Above the Yesterdays” is “print ready” and can currently be purchase on the BookSurge website: http://w

Thousands of volumes
Millions of verses
 line the shelves
 of libraries
 book stores
 stacked away in attics

Poems of autumn
 scents…
 spicy wild flowers
 decaying leaves
 apples
 pumpkin pie
 sights… 
  golden rod
  purple iron weed 
  joe pye
  birds
  packed for a trip south
 sounds… 
  turkeys chirp in the woods
  crackling fires
  tractors turning tufts of summer down
 savors… 
  grapes
  new potatoes
  cider
 sensations…
  chill after summer sweats
  noses tickled by ragweed pollen

What about the country festivals?
What about the craft fairs?
Need I elaborate?
All these images…
 overdone
 sometimes trite
 
Autumn rather may suggest
 that winter
snaps at its heels
Lucy says,
“Time flies when you’re having fun.”
“As if you could kill time without injuring
eternity,” opines Thoreau.

What remains to place in store
 for children
 of a later year?
Will they know
 that we have
 walked our season?

Those million verses
 nostalgic
 sentimental
no harm to fill our senses
 with the memories
 with the images
They are our own
 to savor and enjoy

Yet…
 values
  tucked in
  next to the pumpkin pie
 beliefs
  shared
  on a walk down memory lane
 encouragement
  sprinkled with the sparks
  at fireside…
These a greater legacy
 for seasons yet to come

As a three year old I had learned to play quietly off in a corner and not disturb adults as they visited, whether they were working or talking together.  I could make play out of the simplest objects, including Mother’s hairpins. 

The church ladies had gathered together to roll bandages for a leper colony in Africa.  As they settled in, I was quietly taking my hairpin ladies through common activities.  One hairpin lady needed to go to her “kitchen”, which happened to be located in the nearby electrical outlet.  My comfortable world was suddenly disrupted, and my screams brought Mother and her bandage rollers running.  I was rescued and guided toward a safer activity, and the hairpins returned to their original home in Mother’s bureau.

            There is always someone who wants to try something new in a comfortable world.  Sometimes it works, but most often the innovation ends with a screaming defeat, drawing concerned other to the rescue.  But how often do we scold the one who has tried innovation and fails, rather that rallying around them and encouraging them to seek better ways to accomplish their goals?  And if they eventually succeed, do we sit back in our own comfortable world and condemn them for change?

Comfort may confine an infant in a walker, disabling him from exploring possibilities; tradition may trap us into a snare of thinking that old ways are the only ways; familiarity may fetter us with bindings that restrain us from extending hands to others who need us.

Certainly, is no more wrong to enjoy comfort, carry on traditions, or maintain familiar associations than it is to affect changes.  All are equally valid.  On the other hand, when diversity divides over non-essentials, unity is disrupted and wrong ensues.  Further, when innovation crosses the line away from established rules, laws, ethics, or principles, separation is necessary.

Within today’s Church divisiveness over worship style is obscuring the vision of the Church.  Traditions are being trashed on the one hand, and an introduction of a new familiarity is alienating those who hold tenaciously to what some would suggest are five hundred years of tradition.  Somewhere along the line transcendence in worship that rises above the culture has been lost.  Both the traditionalist and the innovator are guilty of creating conflict whereas unity is supposed to be a characteristic of the Church of Jesus Christ.  Compromise is attempted as leaders suggest blending tradition and innovation.  This is missing the point.  One has only to look at a vibrant church—one where people are being changed and where the impact is felt in the community—to see that culture does not dictate this change.  These changes are a result of God’s intervention and not man’s.  The Church is vibrant, not because of her method, but because of her ministry.  Outreach proceeds from the Word of God, praise in word and song, community, sacrifice, and blessing upon the world about us.  These elements comprise true worship in a transcendent form that stabilizes the church community in a way that they can join hands to reach out and evangelize the culture, rather than the culture “evangelizing” the church.

Traditions may serve as a mold, whereas innovation may provide illumination, décor, or enrichment to what is forged by the mold.  The Church is an organism that needs the mold of truth and the means to perpetuate that truth.  To remain in the mold is like remaining in a walker after we have learned to walk.  The imprint of the mold is upon the Church, but the innovations paint it, illuminate it, and enrich it in ways that reach beyond the past and embrace the future.

Embracing either the culture or clinging to the past are both counterproductive.  Change is inevitable but must not have a life of its own.  Tradition is only as good as the product it preserves.  The Church is timeless because God’s Word is timeless.  God does not change and neither does His message.  Tradition and innovation must recognize their purpose which is never contrary to that timelessness that transcends culture.  Transcendence includes a stability—a liturgy, perhaps—that rises above the common thought and diverse opinion. 

As either gray-headed traditionalists or trendy innovators, what are we doing to provide that screaming spark to demonstrate God’s strength and power to the children of tomorrow?

Rhythm

I sit at a traffic light and feel a rhythmic thump at the back of my car.  My eyes automatically fall to the dashboard to see if a warning light is telling me that my car has developed a fatal flaw.  The thumping becomes louder and moves up the side of the car to my left.  The thump becomes sound.  It is “beat” music coming from the car in the left lane.  Thank you, Lord, my car isn’t dying.  Rhythm…beat.  The music is incidental.

Rhythm is part of our human make-up.  My physician expects to hear a consistent lub-dub when he places the stethoscope on my chest.  I notice when my heart skips a beat or when my heart dances six or eight asynchronous beats in a row.  I have eight ticking clocks in my house.  I do not consciously hear their tick-tocks unless one should stop.  The silence is noticeable.  Back to my car: the windshield wipers are supposed to go back and forth at regular intervals…rhythmic.  In fact, I get irritated when I switch them to delay for any length of time, especially if they aren’t synchronized with the back window wiper.  Rhythm is an essential part of our progression through the element of time and space.  Rhythm is necessary in music.

Rhythm is the basic element in music, directing the duration of tones.  The stress or accent is placed on certain tones.  Although the progression of rhythm in western music theory has become more and more complex over the last nine centuries since the 1100’s, it has basically remained unchanged in form until the last half of the twentieth century.  At that time the concept of “polyrhythm”, common in West African and Indian history, became more and more common in more modern times with music from The Beatles on up to current popular music. “Polyrhythm is the simultaneous use of several rhythmic patterns whose accents do not coincide” (Wikipedia).

Part of what makes a hymn tune easy to sing and stick in the singer’s mind is the consistent rhythm. Rhythm is a good thing.  Melodies in which the rhythm patterns change may be pleasant to hear, when sung or played as a musical offering; however, to ask a congregation to sing this dysrhythmic hymn, let alone remembering it afterwards, is expecting more than their capabilities.  Another innovation in modern music is to write music that the rhythm changes in the melody line.  Modern composers of Church music, in an attempt to modernize a boring tune from the past, take the words and rework them into tunes often that truly express the emotion of the original poem.  Unfortunately, when mixed rhythms are used in these re-worked hymns—four  beats, changed to one beat, up to three beats, and then back to four—the focus is drawn away from the words in search of the rhythm. 

Melodies do not need to follow clock-like rhythm and can be very boring when they do.  Neither is it necessary for the harmony to follow along at the same rhythm as the melody.  J.S. Bach demonstrates this in his many counterpoint compositions.  The basic rhythmic beat, however, is there, subtly undergirding and binding the melody and harmony.  A rhythm that is consistent throughout a hymn may not be remembered or even noticed for itself.  Rather, the rhythm facilitates singing and recall.

I’ve noticed that a current trend in some musical accompaniment is to accentuate the rhythm and even eliminate the written harmony.  This disturbs me, because I am now conscious of the rhythm rather than the flow of the words. Words are the most important element of hymnology, whether it is chanted in ancient cadences, sung a cappella, or harmonized and accompanied by multiple instruments. In spite of the importance of the basic rhythmic beat, to lose its subtlety and accentuate it is to lose the impact of those words.

Back in my car again, I switch on the radio and push “seek” to find some melody that I can sing along in rhythm with my heart beat…my windshield wipers…the rolling of my tires.  I don’t know a lot about music, but what I have learned in these three short studies has helped me to understand my disturbed reaction to contemporary Church music.