UCC Jazz Vespers Service  7/10/11

Reflections on Jazz And The Spirit:

When I was first asked to do this Jazz Vespers, I was struck by how awkward it first appeared to me- yet the challenge was intriguing! I was asked to try to link my research into new inclusive definitions of The Spirit, and the need for a spiritual transformation of church and culture to… Jazz?

How could that be possible?

Well, after mulling it over in prayer and reflection, and after reading what noted jazz musicians have said about the core and vitality of jazz, I feel that there are certain valuable parallels that can be made…

To paraphrase the famous saxophonist Charlie Parker who defined music in these words: ["Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you do not live it, it won’t come out of your horn. [Society, and the rules of our culture] teach you that there are definite boundary lines to your music. But, man, there are no boundary lines to art [or the Spirit.]”

The unconventional, and controversial qualities of the Holy Spirit can be connected to and be descriptive of the fierce, dynamic flow of notes and feelings we can find in jazz. Both resist limitations of form, and the strictures of polite conformity.

 Ray Brown concurs when he defines jazz this way:

“Jazz, is to me, a complete lifestyle. Its bigger than a word. It’s a much bigger force than something that you can say.

It is something you have to feel. It is something you have to live.” And Charles Hayden puts it this way: “I want [people who listen to my music] to come away with an ability to discover the music that lives inside them. “

Jazz might well represent the dynamism of the Spirit in the work and art of life because it is transformative, and while it can appear intense or chaotic, it flows purposefully to its internal harmonics that seem to blend into the music of the universe itself.

Jazz and The Spirit can both be summarized here as being too prophetic to control, too mystical to be harnessed, and too transformative to lend any sense of safe security to the listeners or to those who can perceive the deeper resonance and rhythms of life that each represents. It is emotionally passionate and it is thoughtfully reflective… It is lively, and it is pensive… Jazz is one of the rare art forms that can embrace the many dimensions and facets of the human paradox, and allow its many expressions to have a resonant voice of its own…

 The depth psychologist who best understands these challenging metaphors and their potential meanings was Carl Jung, who gave us this observation:

“The action of the Holy Spirit does not meet us in the atmosphere of a normal bourgeois (or proletarian!) sheltered regular life, but only in the insecurity outside of the human economy, in the infinite spaces where one is alone with the providentia Dei. (Divine Providence) We must never forget that Christ was an innovator and a revolutionary, executed with criminals. The reformers and great religious geniuses were heretics. It is there that you find the footprints of the Holy Spirit, and no one asks for the Spirit to work in them or guide their life without having to pay a high price“ (Jung, 1975b, paragraph 1539).

It could be said, that our very origins at the time of the Creation were instilled with the harmony of the Spheres, and like the rhythms in jazz, possess a incessant melodic freedom that express relentless creativity and an abounding, abiding grace in that brings life into being…

Jazz is like the creative Spirit.  It is a musical style that gives birth to a flowing expression of human inspiration, one that is often intuitive, and containing just such a multifaceted harmonic structure that gives each note its vitality, expression, and purpose as a part of the gracious, flowing whole.

Like no other genre of music and composition, there is no one right way, and even missed notes can lend a human value and credence to the remarkable creative flow and its impressionistic force. It is a vital form of music- essentially creative and ultimately expressive of its own free and gracious forms. It will not be fenced or controlled by tradition, nor will it be limited by our personal expectations. Each time it can be brand new; each time the creative and gracious energies of sound can shape our hearing and our knowing in ways that open up our feelings, and broadcast our sentiments- placing them in a new frame of reference, for all to hear, for all to grasp and know intimately, and then to share universally.

From this and other such allied points of reasoning, I would boldly conclude that the Spirit, as the dynamis of God, is a constant, ever present, unfolding reality, [Playing the jazz of the universe and it is heard with our hearts as well as our ears...]

As such, it is the Spirit that has the capacity to assist humanity in shaping the understanding of its history, and it is Spirit that will positively prepare us for its future.

However, it is our participation that is needed. It is up to every person to pay attention! It is required of us to learn how to listen, and then how to reverently and responsibly act on Spirit’s behalf. Given our indispensable gift of free will, and the awesome ethical responsibility to use it for the greater good, it becomes our core task to take the Spirit’s message of wholeness, integrity, and salvation seriously. We are to learn how best to apply those gracious, challenging, and transformative experiences and insights in our lives.

Then it is up to us personally, reinforced by our churches and spiritual communities, to share it broadly among us and across our world culture. From this melodic impulses, we can move consciously together towards an inclusive, peaceful, and compassionate future.

On Blood, Soul, Spirit, and Life;

On the Grace of Giving Blood and Sharing Our Humanity

Last week, there was a blood drive at my local shopping mall..

The night before, as I was listening to the news, they announced the fact that only 50 % of all the people who are eligible to give blood ever do so-

So I glibly thought to myself: So giving blood is a lot like listening to PBS:

Many people benefit from it, but few truly support it!

Later that evening, the thought of giving blood became more important to me- maybe it was the crime show I was watching, and maybe it was the haunting announcement about the devastating winter weather back in the Northeast, where I cam from, that grabbed my conscience by the throat and said…. ” You know, its really been a long time since you gave, so what’s wrong with you? Its time!

Without belaboring the long and secure safety process, which I was grateful for, and the extended time it took for me to show up and find a vacancy (all wonderful delays!) It was a pensive and reflective experience.

I looked on the process of giving blood much the way you would give someone food to eat… ( no, there are no Twilight, or True Blood, or vampire references in this story!) What came to me is that the giving of one’s blood is an act of deep compassion and sincere humanity, for you are providing a life giving, and a life sustaining gift to some unknown person in a yet to be determined situation or health crisis. It was altruism at its best- as there is no reward for the act… other than a cookie or maybe a tee shirt… but the reward and the lasting value of giving is a rare soulful commitment to human good and survival when all around us, or so it seems, there is an incessant chatter of a culture of greed and self preoccupation, so such caring stands out as a noble and truly compassionate act.

Now, I am far from someone who would be designated as being heroic, but I do hold fiercely to my beliefs about the necessity for personal growth, for dramatic and necessary lifestyle changes, and to heed the mounting imperative for social and economic transformation. While I could not foresee the how and when of this personal gift, it did feel like it was the least I could do to stem the almost inevitable course of human suffering- and particularly personal and poignant for me was hearing all those stories about winter’s deprivations and struggles… Only a few glimpses of the snow plows and the shivering, quickly brought back to me wearisome commutes to school and work, many years of shoveling all that snow, and being exhausted by winter’s demands.

Turning to our Western religious history, culture, and theology, the importance of blood began to occupy my thoughts… And I have to wonder if those ancient notions still held a modicum of truth and still can provide us with some valuable insights for our giving, for our sense of connection and compassion today.

For the ancient Hebrews, the blood was the conduit of life… Not just as blood cells, but as the storehouse or as the way one’s soul is kept alive and flowing… The Hebrew word, Nephesh, becomes a central teaching here. The Nephesh, or the soul, or the essence of one’s humanity was believed to be contained and carried through our blood. So along with the loss of blood that would signal the end of our physical human lives, there would be the loss of our soul, our identity, our vitality, our consciousness and our conscience, all that truly sustains and gives meaning to our lives. Additionally, For the ancient Hebrews, there was no other place the soul goes after death; There was no Heaven or Hell as eschatological concepts, as places where a soul would go after one’s physical death. Those more metaphysical, fanciful, and elaborate concepts brought in from Zoroastrian beliefs later in the Prophetic period and were introduced during the time known as the Babylonian Captivity. In the pre-scientific and in the primitive world of knowledge, all there was for the discarded body and the now useless inert soul was the “garbage heap, the dump, or Gehanna- the inert place that the lifeless soul goes to and spends its undetermined undefined time being there… When Alexander and Greek philosophy and metaphysics came along, there was the idea or the notion of an immortal or eternal soul, and later with Plato, and then again with Neo-Platonist theological reference points, there was more exploration and understanding developed and accepted as they postulated that the soul went somewhere, and with adaptations to Christianity and its theological ancestors, what was believed and then taught was that it was an eternal soul that was always connected to God… Unless, of course, it was sent to Hell!

Thanks to modern medicine and psychology, we understand that the flow of our blood does contain the crucial elements of physical life and that blood and lymph also contain the emotions, energies, and all the chemical aspects of our humanity that allow us to feel, react, cope, strive, and deal with the many aspects and experiences of our lives. The vitality and health of our blood responds to everything: From a personal feeling, to a systemic infection- blood keeps us alive and involved in the many processes and experiences that states that we can agree with our ancient Hebrew sisters and brothers- that the blood does define what it means to live, and to be alive. So, from that general view, the ancient Hebrews were very close to modern truths. As for carrying the soul, in this short essay, I cannot tackle that, but it is safe to say that since the blood carries our hormones and all the chemistry of our emotions, much of what gives purpose and meaning to our behavior and our lives does indeed flow and live in our blood!

So, when a person chooses to give blood to the unknown stranger, what can that mean? We are reasonably sure of what it means when we are asked to give blood to a family member, because that is linked to our affections and to our sense of family and fidelity… but what of the stranger?

Would it be such a far ethical stretch to say caring for the stranger is another fundamental religious and compassionate imperative? An act equal to treating our neighbor as ourselves (presuming in this detached and aloof world that we even know our neighbor’s name!) Could we call the love of the stranger through universal and unknown acts of human compassion to be the 3rd Great Commandment?

Charity which originally was a word synonymous with love, brings our the best in our humanity and fosters the greatest peace promoting caring connections in our world. If only our country’s political policies would export as much charity as it does weapons, maybe the world could become a more peaceful place? Whether you tithe, whether you give whatever you can, or whenever you volunteer through a church or some social service group, in those acts, the blood of the common life is shared, and the unselfish love of your neighbor in one’s life can be found, and we can bear witness to a profound grace as being seen in action…

So yes, give blood- Please! But know that as St. Francis reminds us, for our soul’s sake, however to care for the stranger, that it is more blessed to give than receive… And know that our whole lives, not just our temporary feelings of happiness, might well depend on it! So Be It!

By John R. Guthrie

“Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and . . . they tumbled in, howling

and screeching.”   From Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins best selling “Left Behind” series.

 For the uninitiated, “Rapture” might sound like another club drug, say Ecstasy with an extra side chain tacked on. But really, it’s about Jesus, a big, bad-ass Jesus who’s into serious, eternal, torture for those who either didn’t hear about him, didn’t care, or dissed him in some way. This version of Jesus is a creature who will roast you like a marshmallow if you get on the wrong side of him. He will do this on a sort of divine life support so that you have neither the benefit of opiates nor of a merciful death. And this includes everybody, young or old, good or bad, who has a different belief system: most Catholics, Methodists, all Hindus, unconverted Jews, including those who died at Auschwitz or Dachau, agnostics, secularists, atheists (perhaps the most clearheaded of us all), the Muslim and Hindu victims of the recent Tsunamis in Asia, all are resurrected and beamed down, landing in the bright and hungry flames of the everlasting fires of hell.

To read more on a complex of superstitions worthy of a Paleolithic hunter, naked, painted blue, and dancing around an open fire, Google “Rapture.” You’llfind more mind rot on the “premillenial dispensationalism” that forms the basis for the Rapture than you thought possible. Sometime quite soon, we are told, all those who believe in this particular brand of Christian loose-screwism, those who have “accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior,” the “born-again” will be beamed up. Of those taken up, all their worldly possessions will be left behind. This includes, apparently, dentures, artificial hip joints, big hair wigs, breast implants, toupees, body piercing jewelry, trusses for inguinal hernias, pessaries for prolapsed uteri and other such appurtenances.

… The scariest thing about this involves the fact that people, particularly fundamentalists, create God in their own image. A torture-minded God indicates a torture-minded person, as events at Guantanamo and elsewhere, events inspired by leadership at the highest levels indicate.  

Of course, Christian groups have been predicting the imminent end of the world since shortly after the time of Jesus. And of course, for the last 2,000 years, the prophets of imminent Armageddon are batting zero. Leon Festinger’s 1956 book, When Prophecy Fails, provides an interesting perspective on this:

“A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.

“We have all experienced the futility of trying to change a strong conviction,

especially if the convinced person has some investment in his belief. We are familiar with the variety of ingenious defenses with which people protect their convictions, managing to keep them unscathed through the most devastating attacks.” But man’s resourcefulness goes beyond simply protecting a belief. Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart; suppose further that he has a commitment to this belief, that he has taken irrevocable actions because of it. Finally, suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong. What will happen?

The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before. Indeed, he may even show a new fervor about convincing and converting other people to his view.

 Believing in current Rapture theology might be considered simply a matter of personal choice, … except that the affairs of the Middle East are of great importance to these believers. … They assert, are coming into play in our time. Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson, for instance, believes that the Six-Day War of 1967 was the kick-off event for the Second Coming of Jesus. The return of all the Jews to Israel is important enough that one group of Christians, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, seeks to help the Second Coming along by raising millions to return them. The restoration of Jewish control of the Temple Mount and the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple on the Dome of the Rock is a precondition for the Rapture. The Dome of the Rock is also the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam; thus this concept provides another excuse for war. Premillennial Christians find themselves, despite the example of a loving savior, in the position of encouraging West Bank settlement by Jews and hoping thus to foment the war that will be the fulfillment of their understanding of biblical prophecy. And there is other political spin-off. To take one example, James Watt, former Secretary of the interior, noted that there was no need for environmental concern, because when the last tree is cut, “Christ will return.”

 A Gallup Poll indicated recently that some 44% of U. S. citizens believe in the Premillennial Rapture. This puts America, with this genre of religious belief, or superstition, more in keeping with that of Pakistan or Nigeria than other Western industrialized societies. To paraphrase one of my favorite theologians, Willie Nelson’s song, “Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?” What, my Rapture-obsessed friends, ever happened to “God is Love”?

(Reprinted, with permission, from The Chickasaw Plum – Volume II – Number 1 – January 2005.)

As this might apply to congregations like ours, the body or the shell that houses the life and soul of the community is its building- its sacred space- where we gather to express our message of liberal religion through our style of common worship, outreach, service, and education to our members, their families, and to the larger community. Using Rule 1, this building requires our expression to become alive with the liberal spirit; we have to learn to accept, value, respect, and find pleasure in opening up its use and sharing its space more fully with each other and our surrounding population. In that regard, there is little good reason why it is not used fully every day and every night of the week by some cause, enterprise or group that is in accord with our values and beliefs.

 “[The only thing you can count on for certain is that all the lessons you specifically need to learn will be presented to you during your lifetime-- whether you choose to listen, learn, and heed those lessons is entirely up to you. ]“

in the book itself, Dr. Carter-Scott adds the qualities of openness, choice, fairness, and grace.