Music that makes community

Elizabeth and I went to a wonderful workshop last week.  It's called Music That Makes Community.  It's offered about four times a year by the All Saints Company.  Their goal is to foster group singing with paperless music as a way to build community.  I had their songbook, Music By Heart, already, but it's hard to start with just - paper.  The workshop gave us an intensive introduction to leading group singing, to writing our own songs (!), to using music more freely in worship.  So basically we sang for two days.  Awesome.


We composed songs this way: people chose Bible verses and put them on the wall.  We picked one and made up a tune for it.  Easy!  My verse was, "I will make their waters clear, and their streams to flow like oil" (Ezek. 32:14).  Just one line.  I wanted it to sound like water running, and so I made a tune.  I felt silly, with just one simple line.  Other people went first, with beautiful harmonies and parts.  I didn't want to share.  But I did.  The next thing I knew, they were singing it as a round.  I had composed a round, and I didn't even know it!  And it was beautiful.

I learned in a deep, new way that communities are smarter, more gifted, than the individuals in them.  They are more gifted than the most gifted individuals alone.  If I can trust the community, miracles will happen.

Now we're home, and I'm thinking about how and where to use what I've learned.  I'm heading off next week to a meeting of the Executive Council Committee on the Status of Women (say that three times fast!), and we will do some there.  Then I come home to lead a retreat for women, and we'll do some there.  And I'm really nervous.  Singing in our churches is so drenched with performance, with organs, with paper, I'm afraid that others won't let themselves fall into the joy and ease of singing just to sing.

But I'm doing it.  Nothing could be worse than not trying.  Then we're guaranteed not to change.

So sing your own song today.  Today, as part of your time with the Bible, pick a verse and make up a tune for it.  Sing it in the shower, in the car, in - church!

I'm trying to learn how to record my song.  When I do, I'll post it here.  I'd love to hear yours, if you make them.  Until then, sing to God a new song!

Standing at my own empty tomb

Today is special for me.  On August 8, 1985, I took my last drink.  I was 28 years old.  Today, I've been sober half of my life.  I can only begin to describe the gratitude and wonder I feel.

When I stopped, I wasn't fully convinced I was an alcoholic.  I did know a few things, though.  I knew that I was from an alcoholic family.  I had watched my father struggle to go to work, be part of the family, hold up his end of life while alcohol ate at him.

I knew I was miserable.  I had dropped out of graduate school and was working at the local Kmart.  That left me plenty of room to drink, but it wasn't much of a life.  I had a partner, who had just stopped drinking.  I had no idea how to make and keep friends, how to feel a part of things.

What made me show up that day was the realization that if I didn't change my life I would end up like my father.  I would not be lucky enough to die young.  I was facing another 50 years of isolation and misery.  Whether I worked at Kmart or the university, I would be alone and desperate.  And I wanted to be happy.

I didn't believe in God.  All I knew was that people in the rooms I went to were happy and loving, and I was not.  I wanted what they had.  So I did what they said to do.  I got on my knees, and prayed to whatever it was.  Gradually I was able to see where I had been carried, where I had been saved from myself.  And one day, in my room, I felt God's energy of love and peace flow through me.  I knew that was God, and it knew me.

That was a long time ago.  But from that beginning, I have found a life so rich, so powerful, so joyful that no words suffice.  Eucharistic prayers come closest.  Icons of the Transfiguration, of Jesus filled with light, come close.

Every day I give "glory to God whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine."  And every day I offer myself to that God, to work with me and through me and on me.

And now I know, no matter how good it is, it will get better if I keep going.

It gets better.  Really.

Thanks be to God for all of you who carried me at every stage - to Bob, Skip, Kaile, Pam, Fran, Anne, Suki, the Daytop kids, and all of you who carry the message every day.  You saved, you save, my life.