After the symphony

Yesterday, I went to hear a performance of the Phoenix Symphony and Chorus singing the Brahms Requiem. Since I’ve sung the work before, I had more of a sense of the mechanics of the music, so I could better listen for the interpretive aspects of the performance.

My impression was that the choir was quite well-prepared. The choral sound was very good – never heavy or clouded with excessive vibrato or other signs of maudlin emotionalism that tend to creep into Romantic period music. The large group of singers was able to produce an excellent balanced and blended choral sound that I felt was very appropriate. The forte sections of the work were appropriately strong without being screamy, and were powerful enough that I felt as though the men were not sacrificing finesse for the sake of singing with balls. (Although toward the end of the work, I could tell the men especially were beginning to tire as the intonation and tone quality began to suffer toward the end of the work.)

I wasn’t that pleased with Michael Christie’s interpretation, though. The tempo felt too fast and the orchestra seemed to be somewhat lacking in interpretive richness. The orchestra felt too much like a cursory presentation of notes and sonorities – simply getting through the music. I also thought that his conducting must be very difficult for the choir to follow since he wasn’t necessarily offering a clear beat pattern and was standing at quite some distance from them. Of course, this isn’t unusual when singing with an orchestra, and the various cutoffs and attacks didn’t seem to suffer for it (again, the choir was well-prepared), but I wonder how frustrated I would be if it were me up there.

Sometimes I get the impression that the symphony sounds under-rehearsed since there doesn’t seem to be a lot of polish to it. But Christie is a young conductor – around my age – and certainly a talented and well-spoken man. He seems to be bringing a lot to the group, although I’m not sure nuance is on that list.

At any rate, after the performance I ran into an old friend of mine from college, who greeted me warmly. I had tried to keep in contact with her and her husband, although it was difficult for me to do that since they’ve tended to move around a lot. She said something to me about my being her “first gay”, which I found somewhat sweet and bewildering at the same time. She didn’t mean it offensively, of course, but I don’t know how I feel about being somebody’s “gay friend”, even being the first. Not that it’s surprising. If you’re going to be involved in music or the arts in any way, I think you’re going to run into a lot of gay men. Stereotypical, but true.

I’ve been doing much better about trying to stay in touch with people – so hopefully I’ll be able to run into her again. She knows a few other colleagues I see during the week, so I don’t think it will be that difficult in this case.

The whole situation reminded me of my need to connect with people from my former life, back when I was more idealistic and generally more fulfilled (aside from much adolescent romantic angst and my ongoing existential depression/anxiety). My college days were some of the best days of my life – and I want to understand both that those times are over while still retaining the kernel of who I was back then. I’ve been able to do that to some degree with my current social circle, but staying connected with some of these old friends could be an indispensable part of the whole picture of some of the new directions I’m trying to take.

Where your ministry leads you

This past Sunday when I was dutifully singing at St. Augustine’s, I ran across a flyer that one of the ladies sitting next to me had in her choir folder. On it was a whole list of practical tips and other thoughts for people who are doing music ministry in one way or another.

One quotation in particular stuck out to me:

When your ministry leads you to music, it has led you astray. When the ministry leads you to the Lord, it has brought you home.

I decided tonight to look it up online to see if I could find it and its source. Usually places offering a little bit of wisdom often have much more stored up and hidden away.

[What I found was a blog entry, so I link to it here for your further browsing, although the blog author admits that he’s plagiarizing, so I don’t know the original source of the quotation:
http://kevinloh.blogspot.com/2005/04/minstry-of-music.html ]

To me, this quotation embodies a subtle truth that I think people who work in the church or feel any sort of calling to ministry may seem to miss. For pastors, it may becoming too bogged down on the details of trying to run a church (a job pastors really shouldn’t be doing if at all possible, since their job is religiously-oriented, not organizationally-oriented) or trying impossibly to meet every person’s spiritual needs and keep everybody happy.

We may be able to speak to ourselves with a lot of high-sounding rhetoric about what we are called to do, how we hear God speaking to us, listening to the Spirit, etc., and that’s all well and good – in theory. But in reality, I think that in many cases, our ministry leads us to these mechanics.

Even people who might not be doing ministry as a vocation (professionally) get trapped in these ways of thinking – because their ministry leads them to allegiance to a particular church, pastor, denomination, theology, polity, etc. If your ministry leads you to any of these things, it has led you astray – I think that’s a fair way to put it.

It’s a convicting message, really – and I’m pretty sure that my frustration with the Church lately has a lot more to do with my own misplaced focus than it does on anything anyone or any group in the Church has done or not done.

Please Get Over Yourselves.

I feel like I’ve had a few bursts of insight that may or may not be accurate: so I offer them to you for your feedback, comments, etc . . .

At work, it seems like I’m hearing more and more about infighting in the Anglican world on all levels: local, national, and global. And what I’m saying here isn’t new to anybody in the know when it comes to current politics in the Anglican world. I’ve heard of people in local churches struggling as they are breaking apart into quarrelsome factions, sometimes even hearing talk of people within churches who are actively recruiting members to break away from their home churches and denominations. I’ve heard and read about dioceses in the Episcopal Church that are considering removing themselves from our expression of Anglicanism in America and aligning themselves with other branches in Africa or elsewhere. Further, I’ve also read about meetings of the Bishops of the Episcopal Church to craft carefully-worded responses to the wider Anglican Church in the debates about how much to include gays and lesbians in the everyday life of the church.

Based on all of this, I have several observations:

• The “organized” of organized religion means religion that is politicized. Or, put another way, the Church (big C) is political in its very essence, and cannot be otherwise. And I mean political in the inescapable pejorative sense of the world. This may seem self evident to many, but this is a realization that is impacting me profoundly.
• Because the Church is political, a great deal, if not most of its resources are spent dealing with political issues. We spend most of our time working to strengthen and perpetuate the Church, in its local and global expressions, as a corporate system. The Church spends a lot of time trying to keep itself going, defending itself from “heresies” within and from attacks from the outside. This corporate system is, in theory, organized to accomplish God’s work in the world.
• The Church does not stop to ask itself whether it is the best system to carry out the Great Commission or accomplish spiritual work. This is an axiom that remains largely unquestioned except by a few iconoclastic and influential thinkers. It may even be heresy for anyone who cares about these things to question this. If the church is mainly focused on keeping itself going, it doesn’t have time to ask itself this question in a serious way.
• Because the Church is so political, it becomes a magnet for people who have twisted psychological needs to feed their own egos through power, control, or other forms of dominance. I have seen this again and again in all types of churches in all types of places. People who are unhealthy attempt to manipulate elaborate systems in order to rise in prominence. In most cases these are not ideologues, but opportunists, whose first concern is not the welfare of God’s people, concern for the outcast or oppressed, or evangelical zeal for those who are broken and struggling without a saving knowledge of God.

And I think the point here is that if we, in the local church, are constantly talking about and concerning ourselves and others with national politics, we help to foster this negatively political environment in our own local church lives. Said another way, if we get people all worked up about national church politics, this creates more division and dissention on the local level and teaches people that this is what is important in the church – how much time we spend arguing and posturing for political gain.

A priest I respect a great deal has told me plainly and publicly that I am very jaded. As I’ve mentioned before, that hurts a great deal to hear that, because it’s true. But if you are honest about what you see, I don’t think this attitude is unreasonable.

Now, I’m not saying this simply to complain and wring my hands. I’m saying this because the situation can be solved if we take a few important steps.

First, let’s not get people in our local churches all worked up about these national Episcopal Church issues. For those who want to know about it, those of us in leadership positions should stay well informed and be able to answer questions intelligently and helpfully, creating genuine and deep understanding of both surface issues and deeper realities. But constantly offering people news about the latest bishop who said this or the latest bishop who complains about that when otherwise typical people in the pews don’t hear about it (and don’t give a hoot) just creates more reasons for people to focus their energies on arguing.

Second, people who are saying that the Episcopal Church needs to stop arguing about gays, sex, and whatever else need to practice what they preach. This means that conservatives need to stop getting themselves bent out of shape about the gays and just let it go. This also means that we who are gay and lesbian need to understand that the Church will never do or teach everything that we want it to teach. Religion is not supposed to make us focus more on ourselves. It’s not about us and about what we want. It’s about what God wants.

Third, a compelling, attractive faith that draws people closer to God understands the difference between essentials and nonessentials, and is passionate about the former while largely taking no formal position on the latter. Transform the arguments over liturgical minutiae and worship music styles into civil discussion over a cup of coffee or a glass of beer.

Fourth, leave your egos at home and get over yourselves. It’s not about you, and it’s not about me either.