Random Reflections

03 March 2008 @ 08:38 am

Shopping with Dad

The last few Saturdays I’ve taken my dad shopping – for groceries, for shoes, for a haircut. My dad moves slowly these days and there is nothing efficient about heading with him to the grocery store. I love efficiency – in fact I have a tendency to be downright egotistical about my ability to do things quickly. So these expeditions require me to move into a different time zone ... the time zone inhabited by a body that is slowly betraying my dad. I get the things he can no longer reach, lift the heavy items, check with my mom by cell phone with any questions, help him into the car, carry the bags up to the condo, and put things away. It is a slow process.

My dad was born into a Navy family and he followed the family tradition by going to the Naval Academy and serving for several years in the Navy. He graduated in 1946 and got married the summer after graduation.

My dad and I met for the first time when I was eleven months old. He was posted to Korea when my mom was seven months pregnant and his thirteen-month deployment included the first eleven months of my life. According to family lore, I regularly cried when strange men said hell0. My mom frequently

showed me a picture of my dad. When he arrived home it was love at first sight on both sides!

My dad taught me to hammer and saw, to prune apricot trees, to plant and harvest vegetables and to bake bread. He taught me to say “thank you” when I received a compliment on my flute playing, even if I, the perfectionist, was not entirely pleased with my performance. He taught me those basic military precepts – RHIP (rank hath its privileges) and RHIR (rank hath its responsibility).

My dad’s unwavering honesty set a high standard for my life.

His love and support for all of my endeavors gave me the self-confidence to believe that I could do whatever I chose in life. My love of numbers and mathematics comes from my dad.

Of course there are a few less positive traits too – the quick temper, the tendency to eat too fast .....

With this lifetime of memories, I am trying to slow down and savor the slow pace. It is good to have time to talk and to share. And if it takes a couple of hours to buy the groceries, that is just fine.

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27 January 2008 @ 09:31 pm

Holy Hospitality

January 15, 2008

Hospitality is a word that has been on my mind a lot in the last ten days as I have travelled in India with a group of Drew students. We’ve been led by Professor Wesley Ariarajah, a true practitioner of hospitality. His experience and reputation as someone who can discuss and negotiate difficult topics with genuine care and concern for others is legendary. So we have been greeted warmly and treated well on his behalf.

A few days ago we had two encounters in the morning that pushed me to really think about the notion of hospitality. Late in the morning we listened to a lecture on globalization and its negative effects on the poorest of the poor. As part of the presentation, the speaker showed us a video that portrayed the USA in an extremely negative light. It was satiric and flippant but clearly conveyed the message that US foreign policy, especially under Bush, has been destructive.

In many ways, this seemed like inhospitality – mocking ones guests – with little or no discussion of the piece amongst us. Yet in other ways it struck me as a deeply honest act, a willingness to let us see how we are viewed by many around the globe. The action has sparked a lot of thoughtful discussion amongst the group – some people upset at the simplistic portrayal, others pointing out that our own news media regularly portray people in other nations in simplistic, stereotyped ways. While I wouldn’t classify the act as “hospitality,” I definitely appreciate the courage of the speaker.

This session followed upon the most amazing experience of the journey for me. We met that morning with the retired metropolitan of the Mar Thoma Church, His Grace the Most Rev. Dr. Philipose Mar Chrysostom Mar Thoma. Chrysostom (as others seemed to call him) is ninety years old. He joined us on the second floor porch of his residence on a beautiful Monday morning. One of his assistants had already welcomed us. As the bishop joined us, I was expecting him to speak for a while and then ask if we had questions. Instead, after a few preliminary remarks, he looked at the students and asked, “What do you mean that we are all one?” Clearly this was not a rhetorical question – he expected an answer. One student bravely stepped up to the task. He responded with yet another question. Soon the students began edging closer and closer to be sure they could hear the questions and his occasional pearls of wisdom.

He shared with us that he had eaten the prasad that his personal assistant, a Hindu, had brought back from a pilgrimage. He had been criticized by some in the church for this. Did God love this Hindu as much as he loves Christians? Does God love the person in jail as much as he loves Wesley Ariarajah? With these and many other questions he probed at the issues with which our students have been grappling. Occasionally he gave answers (“God doesn’t love anyone more than anyone else”) but more often he drew out reflections by posing questions.

We had met a real guru, a truly holy man, with a playful sense of humor and a deep understanding of the spiritual issues raised for Christian seminarians. He too them seriously and engaged them at a deep level. He told parables to elicit responses. This is true hospitality – to enter into deep dialogue with another and to share from the soul.

As we crowded around to take pictures afterwards, I knew that I was not alone in hoping that the picture will remind me of his powerful spiritual presence.

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05 January 2008 @ 02:46 pm

Music - Universal Language?

Jim and I got into the taxi and handed our taxi driver yet another name of an obscure location for a Carnatic music concert. We headed off to the right section of Chennai with the driver still mumbling the name of the hall as if constant incantation of the name would make it materialize. (Of course, two days earlier, he had deposited us at the wrong hall and then had to find the right one!) As we approached the appropriate section of the city, he pulled the cab over, avoiding puddles left by the heavy rain earlier in the day, and summoned a bystander. Brandishing the notecard with the name YGP Auditorium on it, he asked for more directions. The bystander looked blank but took the card over to ask yet more people. Receiving their collective wisdom, without ever getting out of the car himself, the driver grunted and headed further down the street. We had successfully arrived!

This event was the final Carnatic music concert of our visit to Chennai. The artist Sowmya was performing as part of the annual music festival. We first met Sowmya several years ago at Drew when my colleague Karen Pechilis sponsored her in concert. We were looking forward to hearing her perform again.

The world of Carnatic music, the venerable classical tradition of South India, has had an appeal for me ever since I first learned about it as part of a course I taught on "Music of the Whole Earth." On a visit to Chennai in 1996 I had succeeded in turning Jim into a fan also. Now 12 years and several concerts in New Jersey later, we were back in Chennai for a few days of "the season" where one can spend all day, everyday, going to concerts. Sowmya was our sixth artist in the last four days.

I had spent time during the day reading reviews in the local newspapers of concerts we hadn't heard. I read about the performers who lacked the right spirit of bhakti (devotion), the ones whose voices weren't good in the upper register, the ones who had beautifully negotiated the svaras, etc. The reviews had only reminded me of how ignorant I really am about this vast tradition. The music is both composed and improvised, essentially devotional and vocal although also performed instrumentally, traditional yet always changing, bound by complex rules yet open to the creative spark. The repertoire is handed down from guru to student, much of it in Telugu, not the language of this region which is Tamil. The music is an integral part of the Hindu devotional tradition. The concert stage is both performing venue and sacred worship space.

As Sowmya started her first piece, humming a few key notes of the raga to tune to the electronic drone and moved to explore the raga (scale) of the piece, I reflected on the variety of meanings in music. Due to the nature of music, it is hard to pin down specific meanings - that is the beauty of the art form! But that doesn't mean that we all understand it equally well. I've listened to just enough Carnatic music by now to know that without detailed study and a knowledge of the texts I am grasping only a small portion of the meaning of this performance.

There is no written program at a Carnatic music concert. The performer just sings and the cognoscenti happily turn in their little books to find the piece if they don't already know it. Sometimes the performer will make a verbal announcement of the title, raga and tala (rhythmic pattern) but that is more the exception than the rule. You are just supposed to know!

Each raga comprises a part of the world view - more than just a set of notes, it implies a particular mood or emotion and a complex set of musical figurations. My ear is too untutored to identify the raga but I nevertheless thoroughly enjoy the exploration of the raga that can be as short as a few seconds or as long as 15 minutes in the performance of a piece. Sowmya and her accompanying violinist explorerd the raga, starting low in the range, working up through the important notes to the highest notes and then descending to the very lowest notes before settling back on the fundamental tone. Through this process she conveys to the audience the complex synergy of devotional feeling and musical expertise.

You may wonder just what draws me to this music that I only dimly understand. I love the different ragas. I love the way in which the performers shape a concert experience. The same piece can last for five minutes, if played straight through as composed, or for forty-five if the performers insert all of the types of improvisation. The mridangam (double-headed drum) offers an amazing rhythmic counterpoint to the basic tala pattern that performer and audience members "keep" with hand clapping and waving. While many of the pieces are in the 8-beat "adi" tala, three, five and seven note talas are also part of the repertoire, lending some wonderful assymetry to the rhythms. The musicians often come together just for the concert. They rely on their own knowledge of the shared repertoire to create something new when they come together. And the sounds are wonderful.

Music - a universal language? Not really. While I can imbue the music with my own understanding, steeped in years of the European classical tradition, I am aware that when it comes to understanding Carnatic music I'm at the basic linguistic datge of "buenos dias" and "que paso?"! I am humbled by the beauty of this tradition and the integrity of its practitioners. I am ever more grateful for the variety of musical languages that allow for the compelx expression of unique cultures around the globe.

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01 January 2008 @ 11:15 am

A New Year in the Neighborhood

Twelve years ago I slipped out of our hotel room in Chennai at six am, unable to sleep any longer. As I walked through the neighborhood near the hotel I was drawn by the sounds of music near a temple. There, processing through the streets, was a small group of bhajan singers making their way through the neighborhood. I had my video camera with me and captured their singing of these Hindu devotional hymns in the early morning hours.

This morning Jim and I left the hotel at 5:50am to revisit the same area. Wes topped at one of the neighborhood temples which had recorded music playing, took off our sandals, and entered into the temple precincts. We were warmly greeted and invited to walk among the shrines. People entered in increasing numbers over the next hour, walking clockwise around each shrine. Where a priest was present, people surged forward to receive a blessing. As we watched, the darkness grew lighter and the vibrant colors of the statues emerged.

As we left the temple we stood outside taking pictures of the temples, of the beautiful kolama on the pavements, and of the awakening street life. (Kolama are geometric patterns made of rice flowers which Indians make outside their homes in the morning to ward off evil spirits) Still looking for our bhajan singers, we asked a man on the street if any groups would be singing. His face lit up and he cordially invited us to follow him into an open room. Here a group of about eight men and women were already seated, singing bhajans. We sat on mats on the floor joining where possible in call and response sections of the singing.

After about ten minutes, the group rose to head out into the streets singing. We were invite to come along, leaving our sandals behind and heading out barefoot into the streets. Others joined us including a man we both recognized from our video of 1996. As we walked along singing people (mainly women) came out from their houses and apartments to make an offering for the poor. They poured rice into a bag carried by the leader, then walked all around the group of singers back to the leader to receive a small amount of something (coconut?) that he gave them in return. Sometimes they also offered money which he handed back to another singer to take care of.

People shared greetings as we walked along - clearly they knew each other and looked forward to this ritual. Meanwhile the singing continued throughout, the lead passing from one singer to another in no discernible order. The "sruti box" provided an electronic drone pitch and one singer also played the finger cymbals. Of course bicycles, motorbikese, and cars honked and passed, the group grudingly moving over just enough for the vehicle to drive by. We stopped at three different temples in the neighborhood, chanting as we moved forward to touch the fire, and to receive ghee, coconut milk, herbs and red powder. We were clearly welcome, almost obligated to participate.

After an hour of wending our way around the block, we re-entered the hall and sta ourselves in front of the shrine. One of the singers, a priest, offered puja as the singing continued. Then the group shared a hot steaming drink (coffee and coconut milk?) and prasad, the food offering.

We were of course mindful of all the advice to westerners traveling in India and tried to accept the warm hospitality without actually ingesting anything. When the priest pours any of the liquids into the hands of people, they drink some and then put the rest on their hair. We tried to lift it to our lips but not drink and then dump it on our hair. (I did this successfully enough that Jim thought I had actually drunk some but I hadn't!) We returned to the hotel around 9am, our foreheads smudged with red powder and grayish powder, our hair filled with ghee and our feet filthy. The new year has clearly gotten off to an auspicious start!

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31 December 2007 @ 06:53 pm

All it takes is love

From Bangalore, India
December 30, 2007

The sights and sounds were a veritable feast for the senses - a pavilion decked with garlands of flowers, women in their finest saris, the sounds of a priest chanting in Sanskrit, the double-reed nagaswaram and the drum blasting

from the back of the hall, people talking and moving about -- and in and amongst it all two people exchanged vows in a Hindu ritual uniting Madhu Rao, a Brahmin caste Hindu and Sharon Jacob, a Christian from a distinguished Indian Methodist family. Sharon is a student in the PhD program at Drew University and Jim and I were lucky enough to be her guest at the wedding.

For an observer, the ritual actions carried most of the meaning of the ceremony. The vows -- in Sanskrit -- could only be heard by those in the wedding party. But visually one could see the parents blessing each other; one could see the great variety of ritual actions uniting Sharon and Madhu; one could see other family members come forward. And throughout one heard the loud sounds of the

instrumental ensemble intensifying at particularly critical moments to call down the blessings of the gods.

But the real beauty of this ceremony was in the love displayed by both Madhu's and Sharon's parents through their participation in the ceremony. Many young people are not so lucky when they announce that they are marrying outside of their religious group. Some parents cut off communications entirely. But Sharon and Madhu are lucky - their parents allowed their love of their children to overcome the societal boundaries that separated them.

Sharon's parents were as unfamiliar with this Hindu ritual as we were. Yet they participated fully in the ceremony as invited by the priest. Her dad donned the traditional dhoti for the occasion. They put aside their own disappointment that Sharon didn't marry a Christian. They have put off telling the relatives until after the fact, knowing that they are apt to set off a firestorm of criticism.

For Madhu's parents it surely must have been equally agonizing. Bramins are the highest of the caste groups. Intermarriage with a lower caste usually means that the couple is considered to be of the lower caste. Christians are "outside" of the caste structure but such marriages are frowned upon. Yet Madhu's parents also put aside their pride to support their son. They were the epitome of graciousness and hospitality.

My ears and eyes and heart carry a wonderful vision of how love can overcome the barriers that we create in the name of religion. Madhu and Sharon - may you love each other so well that your lives will be a testimony to the generosity of spirit shown by your parents. They have loved you well.

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02 December 2007 @ 08:12 pm

An Advent Journey

The signs have been there the last week – comments about Advent in the chapel at Drew, thoughts of finding my advent wreath, and even the first Sunday of Advent this snowy December morning. But nothing says “advent” to me quite like Advent Lessons and Carols, a service that poetically expresses some of humanity’s deepest longings – the longing for justice, for peace, for love, and for light. In a time of world strife, anger, poverty, and factionalism, only the deep poetic and musical religious traditions can bring me a sense that the promise of the Christ child is real.

This year at St. Peter’s Church in Morristown, the Early Music Schola (of which I am a part) sang from the balcony and the girls’ choir sang from the front choir stalls. We interpolated the Gregorian “O” antiphons in chant with scripture readings and anthems and hymns. The balcony offers a spectacular view of the whole of the church yet at the same time feels just a bit removed. And perhaps that is a perfect image of my own feelings in surveying the girls’ choir at a distance.

For seventeen years I conducted that choir – recruited choristers, built it into a group of fifty girls ages eight to thirteen, who came together regularly to share in the making of music. Those girls gave me a precious gift – the gift of their love and trust – and I reciprocated. It has been over five years since I stepped down as director but the sound of unison girls’ voices has not lost its power to move me. Tonight I listened to a beautiful rendition of the opening solo of Simon Lindley’s Ave Maria. to the power and joy of Richard Gieseke’s Rejoice in the Lord Always, and several other beautiful pieces. Memories flooded through me – girls who sang that solo, eager singers and reluctant ones, attentive choristers and spacey ones, all but one of them young women now, dispersed in many places but still tied together from the comraderie of singing.

Ironically, it was the last anthem, a piece that I have never conducted, that brought to mind the one chorister who is no longer alive – Emily Failla. Emily died in July of 2006 in a rock climbing accident. She was 24 years old. And although I never taught her this song and as far as I know she never sang this song, the text and the music express her so beautifully that in some sense she taught me this song.

Make me a light to lighten the world,

Make me a star to lighten the darkness,

Make me so bright with your living word,

That I may shine with your love. (Philip Wilby. © Chester Music Ltd.)

Emily just let the light shine through her and all of us who knew her felt that love. And that is why it is still so hard to let her go.

To all of my choir daughters – each of you carries that spark of divinity within you. May you make the world a brighter place this Advent and always. And may you know that your presence in my life - as eager little girls, as changing adolescents, and now as young adults – continues to bring me great joy. So stay in touch.

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13 November 2007 @ 09:56 pm

Honoring Jack Spong

How shall we love thee, holy hidden Being

if we love not the world which thou hast made?

Bind us in thine own love for better seeing

thy Word made flesh, and in a manger laid:

thy kingdom come, O Lord, thy will be done.

---- Laurence Housman

Last Sunday afternoon I headed to the Bickford Theatre with my parents and husband for a showing of “A Pebble in My Shoe: The Life and Times of John Shelby Spong.” The lobby was teeming with Episcopalians who gathered for the production and I immediately ran into Drew students, friends from neighboring churches, and plenty of people from my home church, St. Peter’s in Morristown. The play, written by Colin Cox and based on Spong’s autobiography, offers a marvelous window into the political and religious changes in the US over the last 70 years through the personal narrative of Spong’s life. Since I’ve had the good fortune to know Jack and Christine Spong over the last thirty years, it also encouraged my own reflections on that journey.

Christine (not-yet-Spong) was one of the first and most important people that I met at St. Peter’s in 1977. She was in charge of the church school. It was to Christine that I entrusted each of my children when I took them to the nursery and headed off to sing in the choir each Sunday. Nothing ever fazed her – not even my son Jonathan who refused to walk on sand or snow until about age 4!

Jack became bishop in the year we moved to Morristown. My first real memory of him was a district service held at St. Peter’s. The choir sang and he preached. I knew we weren’t in Illinois any longer and rejoiced! He and Joan lived in the neighborhood and Jack was a frequent sight jogging by the house.

In the aftermath of the play, however, I’ve been thinking about the causes he has worked for so tirelessly – the eradication of racism, the ordination of women, the ordination of gay and lesbian people, I am inherently an optimist and I like to believe that we’ve made progress. But some days, when I look at the church, I have my real doubts. But I do believe, as Jack was quoted as saying in the play, that talking about something aloud is the first step to dismantling prejudices. So....

I’m going to suggest here that St. Peter’s Episcopal Church could honor Jack Spong’s legacy in a truly meaningful way by being open to the possibility of calling a rector who is not a heterosexual white male. Yes, yes – of course we want to choose the very best candidate. And we have had many excellent assistants who have been people of color or women or gay or some combination. But I don’t believe that we have been willing to confront our own mental images about “the rector.” So I call upon my comrades on the vestry to have a truly open discussion about this issue. I don’t want to be part of a body that still posts signs, even if they are in invisible ink, that say “whites only” or “men only” or “straights only.”

Naming our library the Jack and Christine Spong Library is a tribute to two people who have done much to shape St. Peter’s Church and the Diocese of Newark. Holding a truly open search for rector would honor that legacy in a faithful and meaningful way.

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28 October 2007 @ 09:03 pm

Imago Dei

As I headed into choir rehearsal this morning, I knew we were in for some hard work. We were singing two challenging pieces that are new in our repertoire. The mood was serious and people were already humming through the Herbert Howells Te Deum that was going to be part of the Morning Prayer service.

Then I picked up the bulletin and glanced at the hymns:

“O worship the King”

“Fight the good fight”

“Lead on, O King eternal”

This was clearly going to be one of those Sundays when I spent a good part of the service wondering if it is truly possible to be a Christian and a feminist and a lover of Anglican music. Admittedly most people in my congregation don’t spend a lot of time stressing over these particular issues but I do because I really think they matter.

The Latin term, imago dei, means literally the image of God. (I was slightly reassured as I pondered this topic to realize that the word imago is feminine in Latin!) Theologically it refers to the concept that we are made in the image of God and that therefore we can see something of God in each other. The “image of God” has such a nice ring to it until I start thinking about all those images of God that predominate in the Episcopal liturgy. Many of them grow out of patriarchal and hierarchical societal values. I counted and in an hour-long service today we said or sang Father 12 times, Lord 30 times, Son 6 times, King 10 times and kingdom 5 times. To be perfectly fair there were some other images there too – judge, shield, defender, Ancient of Days, Guide. But the images of God that are most prevalent are male. And frankly, on some level they leave me wondering whether or not I am made in the image of God.

I work in an academic community and I have experienced many worship services that have worked to offer other wonderful images for God. I know there are church communities, including one down the street from my church, that make this a priority in their liturgical life. But here is the culture clash for me – I love the traditional hymnody of the church and I am passionate about Anglican choral music. It touches me on a very deep spiritual level. And so I stay and “fight the good fight” and continue to try to find ways to work within the tradition.

Those hymns that I mentioned with the patriarchal, hierarchical and pugilistic words in their titles have some beautiful verses. For example, here is the middle verse of “Lead on O King eternal:”

Lead on, O King eternal, till sin’s fierce war shall cease,

and holiness shall whisper the sweet amen of peace;

for not with swords loud clashing, nor roll of stirring drums,

but deeds of love and mercy, the heavenly kingdom comes.

We need more of those deeds of love and mercy and I’m not sure all of these images of battle and kings and judging fathers is going to get us there. I think that we need to find the imago dei through some of the many other images of God that poets and pastors have given us. I think we need some feminine force in our divine.

Christianity grows out of patriarchal cultures and traditions. Even through those lenses there is a picture of Jesus as a man who valued the lowly and the downtrodden, the loving and the humble, and women of all sorts. I cling to the hope that the church in the 21^st century will lift up images of God that will lead us to create a more egalitarian society without Lords and Kings – one that more resembles the realm of God as Jesus described it.

In the meantime, I will probably continue being a little obnoxious when my identity as a feminist Christian Episcopalian musician just feels oxymoronic!

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22 October 2007 @ 09:26 pm

Spin Class

I’m sitting at the computer basking in the afterglow of a great spin class. For those of you who haven’t experienced that particular form of exercise, a spin class involves three things I detest – loud music, group exercise, and someone yelling instructions at you. It is 45 minutes of great aerobic exercise on a particular type of exercise bike that allows you to change the resistance and to ride in both sitting and standing positions. By the end of the class, I am completely drenched in sweat. My heart rate has been up to 85% of its maximum for a good share of that time. By the time I get home, take a bath, and eat dinner (fixed by my wonderful spouse!), all those good endorphins have kicked in.

As I was spinning tonight, I thought about the way that life sometimes feels a bit like the spinning of a roulette wheel – the high points and the low moments of life appearing a bit randomly. This past week has seen some of both. Last Friday I learned that Brian Fleury, the athletic director at the Delbarton School, had lost his 20-year battle with Hodgkins Lymphoma at the age of 39. “Fleur,” as my son Jonathan always called him, was an icon in the local sports world. I knew him initially just from reading the sports pages of the local paper. An immensely gifted athlete in high school, he went on to play college baseball. It was during college that he was initially stricken with the cancer. I got to know him better when Jon enrolled at Delbarton in 1995. Like many other students, Jon idolized Mr. Fleury. He was a great English teacher and a fabulous coach. But most of all he was a shining example to all of those teenage boys of true courage and masculinity. He openly adored his wife and his son Timmy. He blogged from his hospital bed when his treatments kept him from being around people. He fought his nausea to be on the baseball field coaching. We saw him regularly at Delbarton hockey games. A few words from Mr. Fleury could calm down any unruly behavior from the student rooting section. And he fought this disease for so long that, at some level, I wanted to believe he would keep winning the fight. I am grateful for his presence in my life and in Jonathan’s life. Many people who live twice as long don’t have nearly the influence as he did. And hopefully he is now indeed in a place “where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting.”

Interspersed with that news was the joy of a flying visit from my daughter Meg who came from Oakland, CA to be a bridesmaid in her friend Sarah’s wedding. Sarah and Meg have been friends since kindergarten. Even after Sarah moved away in third grade, they have kept in touch.

We often refer to Sarah affectionately as “our other daughter” so it was wonderful to witness her marriage to a man who so evidently adores her. The groom, a native of Tunisia, has a truly international background and the wedding was bilingual in French and English with conversations happening in several other languages at the reception. It was full of life and vitality and the hopes of young people as they make a lifetime commitment to each other.

So how does this all relate to a spin class? The physical exercise offers my mind space to process the thoughts and emotions and the sweat carries away toxins, leaving me better able to accept the balance of the cycles of life and death that are an ever present part of existence. It helps me regain my equilibrium. Not bad for 45 minutes of pedaling.

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10 October 2007 @ 08:14 am

The Naked Sounds of Music

Last night I had the extraordinary experience of hearing Chirgilchin, a group of Tuvan throat singers, perform in Drew’s Concert Hall. These singers have mastered the art of producing multiple vocal sounds at the same time through the use of overtones. Or as the program notes describe it: “In Tuva, legends about the origins of throat-singing claim that humankind learned to sing in such a way long ago. The very first throat-singers, it is said, sought to duplicate natural sounds whose timbres, or tonal colors, are rich in harmonics, such as gurgling water and swishing winds.” But perhaps the most amazing thing about this concert to me was what went wrong.

We were comfortably seated in the beautiful hall and warmly welcomed by Norman Lowrey, Professor of Music, and a composer who has spent his life working at the intersection of the sounds of nature and the sounds of music. We listened in amazement to the first number. And then Professor Garyth Nair appeared to explain that the group had agreed to allow him to project a computerized image of their music as they sang and played. Professor Nair is well-known in the study of the physics of sound production and we were all waiting in anticipation.

And then ... the power went out. All over campus and a good share of Madison. The emergency lights, powered by a generator, went on in the concert hall. And here is the amazing thing – the performers didn’t need any electricity! Their voices and their instruments were unamplified. And they proceeded to perform the entire concert for us. Anyone who was there would tell you that it was an astounding and intimate experience to be in the concert hall with sparse lighting and the musicians. No microphones or amplifiers or lighting effects.

Years ago I read a study that showed that people had come to prefer the sound of an amplified voice to an unamplified one. That study always made me sad because I love the richness and diversity of sounds that the human voice can produce. As a director of a choir of third-eighth grade girls for many years, I know that I knew my singers by their voices as well as I knew them by their looks and their personalities. Each voice is a distinguishing mark, an aural fingerprint. And in its bare, naked, unamplified form, the voice reveals its character.

I wonder if as a culture we have gotten so used to amplified sound that we speak to others and hear others in amplified form, needing to make everything a statement for the stage instead of taking the time for face to face quiet conversation. I know that I am often guilty of moving something to a polemic tone before really listening to others.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus assures us that the sheep and the shepherd know each others voices. How well do we really know each others voices? How often do we hear only the amplification and not the real sound of the voice? The soft beauty of the stringed instruments we heard last night, the range of vocal sounds from galloping horses to whistling breezes were a gift. I hope that I can remember to turn off the power and listen to the real sounds of others voices. And I hope that Garyth Nair succeeds in getting a printout of the acoustic footprint of the sounds I heard because I am immensely curious to see it!

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01 October 2007 @ 10:05 pm

Gratitude and Grace

This morning I had breakfast with my friend Diane. She wished me happy birthday and told me to express her gratitude to my mom and dad for having me! It got me started thinking about gratitude – especially my own gratitude for the many, many gifts I’ve been given in life.

The Latin gratus meaning pleasing, agreeable, thankful, or beloved is usually given as the root of our English word gratitude. It is related to gratia – grace, favor, mercy. My name, Anne, means full of grace – something I never understood as a child with scraped knees from my all too ungraceful escapades on the playground!

So today I thought I would just share a list of “gratitudes” that come to mind.

I am grateful for:

my parents for their wise counsel and amazing love
my husband for his love and support and wonderful sense of humor
my siblings who understand what it means to be “a Bagnall”
my children who have taught me so much about life, learning, and love
deeply satisfying work and smart, articulate colleagues
music in its myriad forms and styles
the variety and beauty of the universe
friends old and new
those who disagree with me and challenge me to grow

For these and all the many blessings in my life, I will continually sing praises.

And yet to whom will I sing those praises? To whom am I grateful? Do I really believe in a God who would choose blessings in such abundance for me and extreme poverty or abuse or great physical difficulties for another? I remember a speaker at Drew, bound to her wheelchair, who talked at length about the phrase “there but for the grace of God go I.” Was she really supposed to believe that it was God’s will that she be confined to a wheelchair?

This week I will be grading papers from my hymnology class reflecting on the theological meanings in selected hymn texts from the 19^th century. I can see by the titles that several students have chosen to write on :”All things bright and beautiful.” It is a delightful hymn with a joyful tune and will be sung this week in many places for the blessing of animals in conjunction with the feast of St. Francis. And yet in my mind there is always the counterpoint of the Monty Python spoof which begins:

All things dull and ugly,
All creatures short and squat,
All things rude and nasty,
The Lord God made the lot.

Each little snake that poisons,
Each little wasp that stings,
He made their brutish venom,
He made their horrid wings

Or the words of Appalachian folk singer Kate Long who has written a wonderful song that mocks the prosperity gospel. The song is titled “I ain’t got much money (so what did I do wrong?)”

All of these counterpoints remind me that gratitude is only a start, that what is called for is an ability to experience the divine in the difficult places in life and to work to make changes where human systems imprison some.

The motto of Drew University, etched over the door of Seminary Hall, reminds us “Freely you have received, freely give.” Gratitude needs to be an active verb.

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23 September 2007 @ 09:05 pm

The Tortoise, The Hare, and Leadership

“Without a vision the people perish” (Proverbs 29: 18a)

Good leadership – what is it? How can we recognize it? How can we teach it? How can I “be” it? These are questions that are often on my mind as I serve in a leadership role in a theological school that is attempting to educate people who will become religious leaders, both lay and ordained. So as I headed off for a bike ride on this gorgeous early autumn day, I began to ponder the lessons of bike riding for leadership.

As I noted in an earlier blog, I like to describe my bike riding as combining the worst of the tortoise and the hare – I’m slow AND I stop a lot. That’s a somewhat facile way that I express the psychological work I’ve done to enjoy an activity that I am frankly not very good at. It’s an unsual ride when I manage to average even 10 miles per hour. I consider it highly unlikely that I will ever ride a “century” – a 100 miles or even a “metric” century - 100 kilometers - in a single day. I walk my bike up steep hills. And I am, by nature, very competitive. It sometimes makes me down right angry that my husband Jim always arrives every place ahead of me, reminding me all too much of the way that my older brother was always ahead of me as a child! For Jim it is not a race; it is not about who gets there first. It is about who notices the amazing aromas coming from the wildflowers or spots the tree that is just beginning to turn red or finds the blue heron. And, over time and about 1100 miles on my trusty bike, I’ve come to absorb that lesson. It is precisely because I ride slowly and stop frequently that I can enjoy my surroundings.

When I reflect on six years of leadership experience at the Theological School, I realize that I’ve learned many of the same lessons. By nature and upbringing, I love a fast-paced conversation, quick answers, and moving ahead to the next item. I’m generally confident that my ideas are good and will help move us to the desired outcome. But I work with a wonderfully smart, diverse, thoughtful, and articulate group of faculty colleagues. Their ideas constantly challenge me to look at situations from new angles. By the time we have finished discussing a topic in a faculty meeting, we often seem farther away from a solution rather than nearer to one. I have learned from my wise boss, Maxine Beach, that often it is better to refer it back to a committee and let it reappear at the next meeting, re-formed and reflecting the comments from all of the faculty. So often this process, this stopping to take the time to listen to each other, engenders a much better solution than any individual proposal. I’ve learned that stopping the process can be an effective way to eventually reach the goal.

There do come times when the relaxed, stopping at every beautiful spot approach to bike riding doesn’t work. Maybe it is getting dark or I need to be home for something. At times like this, I just need to pedal as quickly as I can. Leadership has its moments like that too – times when a decision has to be made and I’m the person who must make it. Those can be hard and lonely moments. But I think leaders are often tempted to create hard and lonely moments when there really could be time for consultation and discussion before making the decision.

We often seek leaders who will bring a vision into our communities – whether business, academic, or ecclesial. But the vision is usually there nascent in the community, waiting to be born by the leader who has the patience of a mid-wife and the knowledge that the process cannot be hurried, that it will unfold in its own time. When I became associate academic dean, I was trying to have the steadiness of the tortoise and the speed and efficiency of the hare. I hope that as I have worked and learned in this position, I have come to appreciate the value of stopping to appreciate the views of those around me and the wisdom I will find in listening to others.

I close with the middle verse of a favorite ancient Celtic hymn – “Be thou my vision” – that I hope will keep me focused on the important vision.

Be thou my wisdom and thou my true word;

I ever with thee and thou with me Lord;

thou and thou only, first in my heart,

great God of heaven, my treasure thou art.

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17 September 2007 @ 08:20 pm

Delete, Delete, Delete

As I sat in the room with a group of senior women administrators of theological schools, one woman looked up and said, “Have any of you ever tried just deleting your whole email inbox and saying it was a virus?” This was clearly one of her fondest fantasies!

I have thought back on this many times when I am confronted with an overrun inbox. Usually I have “read” all of the contents – well at least glanced at them to see how important they are – but I know that countless sins of omission lurk in and amongst the many email messages that have piled up. The recommendation I haven’t yet written; the statistics that someone else needs; the important news sent by an alum; the messages from my on-line class; and all of those messages on which someone has copied me because they think a dean’s name might get action. These are the things that spring to mind as I wake up in the middle of the night or drive along the highway.

At the moment the ranks of messages have swelled to over 600 and I am contemplating the best course of action to efficiently reduce their numbers. I’ve decided to aim for a net reduction of 100 per day this week, letting me arrive at the weekend with a slim inbox. But how to achieve this as new messages roll in at the rate of 70 – 100 a day. I have three different techniques for doing this:

1) line them up in chronological order and try to be sure I’ve answered at least all of the messages that have come in during the last day. This technique is useful if I have a spare 15 minutes in the office before the next meeting but slow when it comes to emptying out the type of accumulation I’m facing now.

2) Sort them by subject matter so that the big conglomerations of group discussions about a meeting or presentation can all get taken care of together. This technique I find useful on occasion but not for the major method.

3) Sort them by person and pick a point in the alphabet and start working your way down. This is my favorite technique and the one I’ve found to be fastest! If it is a series of emails from the same person, I can figure out which ones to save and which ones to delete, staying on the same topic.

I think this may be the modern equivalent of weeding the garden. A good, healthy inbox will sprout messages as fast as you can pluck them out. I’ll try to imagine that I’m smelling the fresh soil and enjoying the sun on my back as I head to the inbox to do battle!

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09 September 2007 @ 09:03 am

Renewal

Renewal

New every morning is the love

Our wakening and uprising prove;

Through sleep and darkness safely brought,

Restored to life and power and thought.

(John Keble)

Recently the Drew technology staff re-designed the basic startup page for those of us who live and work on campus.(home.drew.edu) They have worked hard to make a one page entry point for most of the commonly used sites. So why did I feel so grumpy the day it came up? Why did this slight design change have me complaining to fellow staff members? And why did they too share this grumpy feeling?

If you were to ask me if I wanted my life to stay exactly the same, day after day, I would definitely say no. I think of myself as someone who embraces new experiences. And yet ... any disruption to the regular routine of my life – the route I drive to work, the chance to do the crossword puzzle before heading to work, the configuration of my computer – all of those things irritate me.

Why is this on my mind? Our interim rector at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Morristown is trying to get us to think about this as a congregation. And he is accomplishing this by changing things. And some members of the congregation are reacting with all of the irritation and frustration and grumpiness that I’ve described above. Start the procession from a different place? Use the free-standing altar instead of the beautiful high altar at the 11:15 service? The resulting conversations have had little to do with theological issues and everything to do with our own personal likes and dislikes. And they have often assumed that those personal likes and dislikes should be the basis on which we make decisions.

It happens that one of the hymns I have been singing this week in my morning devotions is John Keble’s hymn “New every morning is the love.” Keble, a leader of the Oxford movement and poet, penned this hymn as part of his volume of poems entitled The Christian Year. They speak of that miracle of our re-birth each morning, a re-birth that we perhaps all too often rush through as we consume some caffeine and get on the road for another day of work.

So I’ve been pondering the difference between that wonderful sense of the newness of the day or the season or the academic year and that seeming fear we have of change. I’ve printed the full text of the hymn below but I think the third verse may give us a clue – “If on our daily course our mind be set to hallow all we find, new treasures still, of countless price, God will provide for sacrifice.” Can we see each of these experiences of change as a chance to experience the holy?

I joined my colleague Ginny Samuel in Ocean Grove this weekend for a retreat with 16 students from Drew, many of them just beginning their theological education. Ginny challenged us to see the holy in everything, to find God-connections in everything we see. She sent them each off with $5.00 into the renowned Ocean Grove flea market and asked them to come back an hour later with some object in which they could see something of God. We were a pretty strange looking lot as we gathered on the beach for communion – sea shells, buttons, ear rings, a carpentry set, a bare wooden picture frame and other items appeared as each person shared his/her item and how it reflected God’s presence. The beauty of the lives and thoughts of each person hallowed that space and time.

I hope for my congregation that we will find a way to talk with each other across our differences of opinion. I hope that we will find God in our conversations with each other and in renewed insights about our worship life. I hope that each of us can experience the love of God deeply – so deeply that it casts out our fear of change and our anger at those who dare to threaten our spiritual lives by introducing new ways of doing things. Or in the verse of the hymn, that we will learn “to live more nearly as we pray.”

And I have to confess that after a week of playing this hymn with two different tunes – one from The Hymnal 1940 and the other from The Hymnal (1982) – I much prefer the tune from the “old” hymnal! At least I know them both well now and can make that decision in a much more informed manner.

New every morning is the love

Our wakening and uprising prove;

Through sleep and darkness safely brought,

Restored to life and power and thought.

New mercies each returning day

Around us hover while we pray;

New perils past, new sins forgiv’n,

New thoughts of God, new hopes of heav’n.

If on our daily course our mind

Be set to hallow all we find,

New treasures still of countless price,

God will provide for sacrifice.

Old friends, old scenes will lovelier be,

As more of heav’n in ech we see;

Some soft’ning gleam of love and prayer

Shall dawn on every cross and care.

The trivial round, the common task,

Will furnish all we ought to ask;

Room to deny ourselves – a road

To bring us daily nearer God.

Only, O Lord, in they dear love,

Fit us for perfect rest above;

And help us, this and every day,

To leave more nearly as we pray.

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02 September 2007 @ 05:04 pm

The Perfect Ride

All week I had been looking forward to a chance for a long bike ride. Perfect weather was in the forecast. I had spent long, long hours at work orienting new students. And then Saturday morning dawned. It was a perfect day. But as the time came to get ready to ride, my body and mind were a bit reluctant. Wouldn’t it be more relaxing to stay at home? To do nothing? It is a bit the way I feel about the beginning of a new school semester – I plan for it and look forward to it but then there is some real inertia to overcome as it gets started! Fortunately, I pushed ahead and by 8:10 am Jim and I were on the road for one of our favorite rides.

Heading out of Morristown on James St., the air was cool and crisp, the sunshine bright. We saw wildflowers blooming by the side of the road. We saw an oak tree with leaves already turned bright red. I like to say that my bike riding combines the worst of the tortoise and the hare – I am slow and I stop a lot! Jim and I have several places that we usually stop on this ride for various reasons. One of those places is next to the Presbyterian Church in New Vernon, a historic frame church dating from 1834. The road is uphill leading to the church and continues on to the first significant hill of the ride.

One of the things I’ve learned about bike riding is that it is not necessarily easier to ride over flat terrain than hilly terrain. Of course riding up the hill is hard work, even when I crank it down to the lowest gear, but the exhilarating thrill of riding down the hill more than compensates. When the terrain is flat, you always have to pedal – no coasting! Perhaps that’s not a bad metaphor for life as well. The tough times often lead us through to times of wonderful new self-knowledge and then we can be really grateful for some “flat” time when we just absorb the changes.

And indeed, after climbing the hill in New Vernon, one gets to do a lot of coasting towards Basking Ridge, through beautiful countryside. We love to stop at the Passaic River [which seems to show up everywhere in New Jersey!] and watch the water for a while before heading up the big hill into Basking Ridge. By this point we have ridden about 8 miles and are ready for a stop at “Basking in Java” for a muffin and tea or coffee along with the Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle which I’ve carefully brought along. We finish about half of it before pushing on towards the Great Swamp. This is the flat portion of the trip, punctuated by a section of gravel road that gives Jim fits because he has a racing bike.

The next stopping place? A bridge over the Great Swamp where our favorite blue heron lives. And she was there, perfectly poised in amongst the grasses. It was amazing how well she can blend in. There is so much beauty in this wildlife refuge, a place saved through the hard work of many people who banded together in the 1960’s to save it from being turned into an airport. What a gift to the rest of us! It’s a place that rewards sitting quietly and just watching nature unfold at its pace before you.

From there it is about another 7 miles home through more of the swamp, New Vernon, and back up James St. for a total ride of 21 miles with lots of time for stopping and looking at things along the way.

I couldn’t help reflecting on the way in which our semester is a bit like this bike ride. The excitement starting out as we meet new people and are exposed to new ideas. The uphill stretches as the work gets tougher and mid-terms loom. The chance to take a bit of a breather during reading week comes just about the point in the semester that Basking in Java comes in the ride! Then the sort of flat part of the semester, the part where sometimes it all seems a bit routine until all of a sudden Thanksgiving is here like the blue heron. More ups and downs until the end of the semester. Riding up a hill it is easy to start thinking that you will never get to the top. But if you can just focus on moving forward, even if it means getting off the bike and walking, you do eventually get to the top with new vistas spreading before you.

For an academic, September really is the beginning of the year. So Happy New Year and enjoy the ride. Stop and watch for the frogs in the swamp or the wildflowers along the way.

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