Monday Morning Music Ministry

8-24-26

This is the time of year when children, and parents, are getting ready for “back to school” prep and good-byes. Elementary school, home schooling curricula, college, and various send-offs to trade schools and military deployments.

Perhaps parents share similar emotions to their kids’. Oh, the jokes are that parents feel relief to see the kids leave home so they might savor some peace and quiet. And it is a cliché that children can’t wait to leave home, whether for summer camp or college.

Regarding parents’ feelings, which are much closer to my present state of dignified decrepitude, I have shared a song by Suzy Bogguss before, and to which I listen every year around this time. It is called “Letting Go,” and relates a parent’s point of view when the family’s daughter prepares to leave for college:

She’ll take the painting in the hallway,
The one she did in junior high.
And that old lamp up in the attic,
She’ll need some light to study by.

Mother sits down at the table,
So many things she’d like to do:
Spend more time out in the garden,
She can get those books read too.

She’s had 18 years
To get ready for this day.
She should be past the tears;
She cries some, anyway.

Oh, letting go – There’s nothing in her way now.
There’s room enough to fly.
And even though she’s spent her whole life waiting,
It’s never easy letting go…

Confession time: I came across this song (written by Suzy’s husband Doug Crider and her drummer Matt Rollings) about the time my eldest was preparing for her freshman year… at a college about half an hour away. Yet it was traumatic for me. And I still shed a tear when I hear it (and watch the music video Suzy produced), despite the fact that my youngest child finished college some 25 years ago.

That is to say, the emotions are the same. Or they should be, when family relationships, generational bonds, parent-child connections, familial ties are concerned. Neither geographical distance nor passage of time should weaken, much less cancel, these precious relations.

Things happen, of course, in families. There are common warnings these days about toxic topics at Thanksgiving dinners (if families still gather, that is): you know – “avoid religion, politics, Trump…” Sometimes an obscure misunderstanding can cause a daughter to cut off all communication with her father despite his crying himself to sleep many nights, and grandchildren deprived of knowing him. Sometimes a child is “too busy” with a career and lets her parents become strangers, perhaps until it is something “too late” to retrieve. Or a hundred other impediments – minor or major, or factors that are deep or evanescent – that can destroy the concept, the reality, of family.

Even contemporary ruptures like ones I have listed cannot dissolve the bonds of affection between parents and children, nor soften the heartaches of separation. We parents are not like birds who push their offspring out of the nest, to fly on their own. Nature’s examples seem cold… but birds are meant to fly; parents are tasked with encouraging their young; life’s cycles are not optional, but imperative.

Yes, the “empty nest” is inevitable. In fact a necessary and vital role for parents to manage. But that fact makes the situation no less tender.

The Bible has much to say – of course – about families and the bonds of responsibilities, heritage, and love between parents and children. Parents make uncountable and often subtle sacrifices for their children; and children absorb uncountable traits and values from their parents. Sometimes “too late” – my father used to paraphrase Mark Twain as often as many Bible verses, that when he was 20 he thought his own father was the dumbest man on earth, and when he was 30 he was surprised to realize how much his father had learned in 10 years.

Back to Scripture:

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6)

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. (I Peter 4:8)

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” – which is the first commandment with a promise – “so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.” Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:1-4)

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. (Psalm 127:3)

Bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. (Colossians 3:13)

Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. (I John 3:18)

“Letting go” is part of God’s ordained cycle of life, so parents must take satisfaction that their roles are being fulfilled. Life and death are parts of the Great Adventure, and so is nurturing children, and sending them into the world.

But all the same… It’s never easy Letting Go.

Category: Family, Healing, Life

Tagged: Doug Crider, empty nest, Mark Twain, Matt Rollings, Suzy Bogguss

Copyright © 2010 Rick Marschall
Designed by Mark McCorkell
Reworked by Norm Carlevato

6-19-23

It will not surprise those who know me that I went through a rebellious streak in my younger days. I remember it well – it lasted 15 or 20 minutes back in the…

No – of course, no. Anyone with a pulse experiences certain changes. Winston Churchill supposedly said that anyone in his 20s who is not a liberal has no heart; and anyone older who is not a conservative has no brains. Well, I was never a liberal, but I get his point. We do evolve… because the world around us revolves.

I suppose, if “rebellion” has a cousin, I have always been a contrarian.

Back in my high-school days I did go through a cynical stage. Recently I recalled to a friend that when I was a high-school junior I memorized about a third of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, as beautiful but as cynical, worldly, and secular a group of quatrains one could find under this inverted bowl we call the sky. (Oddly, I then rattled off several dozens of them, despite not having thought of them in decades. “Oddly,” because half the time I go to the supermarket these days I forget what the heck I needed to buy…)

But during that mildly cynical phase of my life, it was time go off to college. I was allowing skepticism to creep into my faith, and I wanted to discuss it with my father. Our conversation is vivid in my “mind” because it was a Saturday afternoon, and he was flat on his back, a captive audience, fixing something under his bathroom sink.

“And why are you telling me this?” he asked.

Now I realize that I really wanted him to talk me out of my doubts, but I shared the other reason: “I have these thoughts on my own. I don’t want you think down the road that college filled my head with these ideas.”

Did he get angry? Did he laugh at my youthful foolishness? Did he sit up and reason with me?

No, no, and no. He hardly moved an inch, except to tighten the valve or something. “Oh, it’s a phase,” said. “You’ll grow out of it.”

I almost felt offended. Years later, I identified with Elaine Benes: “Don’t you care if I go to hell?” But at that moment, I asked, “Dad… Don’t you believe in Jesus?”That’s when he sat up.

“Of course I do. You know that. I believe you do, too, but if you don’t test your faith it won’t grow stronger. I’m not worried. I trust God, and I trust you.”

He asked if anything triggered my doubts. There was one book I recently had read, a disputed Mark Twain book that was anti-God, not funny, and featured a character named Satan. He had begun The Mysterious Stranger three times through his life, its final version (perhaps doctored by someone else after he died) written after his daughter’s death when Twain was more cynical than he routinely was.

I told Dad about the Mark Twain book. Then he chuckled. Despite my processing of its valid challenges to Scripture, Dad said, “I think you’re safe.”

Then he went back to the monkey wrench. And I went back to… my thoughts. I think I was insulted that he didn’t go full-bore and call the Scriptural Rescue Squad. We used to debate everything – politics, philosophy, literature, classical music. Why not this, I thought.

He trusted me.

And he let me know that God trusted me. Now, you might think that was a risky strategy. But it was a winning strategy. I felt respected; honored; trusted. That trust meant more, and stayed with me, than a weekend full of arguments, than a briefcase full of tracts, than weekly calls, tracking my behavior.

When it comes to it, our Heavenly Father trusts us too. He has revealed His Truth; He has sent teachers and prophets; He even sent His Son to die so that we might live.

He loved us first, before we loved Him.

In fact, He trusted us before we trusted Him.

Does that inspire love, and trust, in you?

Remember, on Father’s Day, that we should honor… love… and trust… our Heavenly Father too.

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Click: Like Father, Like Son

1-11-16

Solomon, who seldom got things wrong, wrote, “There is nothing new under the sun,” in Ecclesiastes. The French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” – the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The subject of such aphorisms, and much of the world’s wise sayings, is not, say, the weather, or taste in fashion. It is human nature.

We humans, most of us, have shinier toys, and live in somewhat more comfortable homes, than of generations ago; and eat more food, or in more variety, than did our ancestors.

Yet we still bash each other’s heads in at every opportunity: the last century was the bloodiest in world history. We still get sick and die, and in general terms plagues and poxes merely have been replaced by heart conditions and cancers. And stress, and psychological disorders, and addictions – the demons of the 21st century.

We complain about the same things that the ancients did. I am reminded that Mark Twain said, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody ever does anything about it.” It is probably true that the early Egyptians and Chinese and Athenians and Romans and Persians and Mayans complained about their bosses, spouses, landlords, scheduled events, children, shoddy footwear, and mothers-in-law.

And when human nature got more serious about things… well, there always has been cheating and jealousy and theft and lying and murder. Pride and arrogance. And, more constant than any of these things, brokenness, hurt, the need for forgiveness. The need for a Savior.

God provided that Savior, and He inspired love and forgiveness, sacrifice and charity; all in precious scant supply now as forever, thanks, once again, to the fact of human nature.

Recently it occurred to me that we have scarcely progressed from the essential afflictions of our distant ancestors in another important manner. I love these revelations, because I maintain that the human race requires periodic lessons in humility. In important things, and in the many trivial things that are the mortar of the important things. These wake-up calls can even be amusing, but are wake-up calls nonetheless.

Many of us consider the “cult of celebrity” a normative cancer. You know: movie stars, singers, and sport stars vs heroes. Skewed standards. Truly this is a contemporary phenomenon, because protean antecedents of our times’ celebrities – painters, composers, poets, artists – often dedicated their work to God and were fulfilled by serving Him. “Less of me; more of Him.” In researching my biography of Johann Sebastian Bach, I continually was struck by how utterly humble he was about his work, his accomplishments, his “celebrity,” in contradistinction to his God.

When we think we in America have been liberated from the trappings of royalty, repressive social and economic systems, and checks against free thought, is when we swindle ourselves most extravagantly, however. A very common denominator illustrates this the best.

We frequently hear complaints from, say, sports fans about ticket prices and athletes’ salaries. In the proverbial next breath the same fans often admire those salaries (“hey, if the owners didn’t have the money, they couldn’t pay it, right?”). Of course, owners – just like shop or factory bosses faced with higher labor costs – pass it along to the consumers. In sports, fans themselves pay those obscene players’ salaries by accepting higher prices for cars and candy bars and shaving creams that sponsor the games. Ticket prices for cold, hard seats. And stratospheric fees, parking costs, merchandise, and absurd prices for hot dogs, popcorn, and drinks.

The same with concert tickets, apparel festooned with logos, and advertised items hawked by celebrities paid millions to sell them to us gullible consumers. Little different than “tributes” paid to robber barons in the Middle Ages. Except that we willingly put these exalted peoples’ feet on our heads. We have thrown off royalty – oh, yeah? look at the faces on supermarket tabloids. We do them honor; we practically worship them. Plus ça change…

Compounding our foolishness, we are supremely inconsistent. Half of the people in America grouse about oil company profits – usually citing income, not profits – and ignoring research, development, costs of operation and such. In contrast, I have heard nobody offer anything other than admiring whistles over George Lucas’s $4-billion sale of the Star Wars franchise. Who do we think is funding that crazy purchase?

Neither any resentment, ever, of the rapid and mammoth wealth accumulated by Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. “Oh, but they made things that people need.” Yes. Like… oil products and gasoline?

Why do people hate – yes, hate – the CEOs whom Michael Moore tells us to hate – “oh! those big houses!” – but have no problems with actors being paid $20-million and more per film? Most of the money paid at the gas pump goes to government taxes, not the gasoline or research or development or executives’ salaries. And a portion of every movie ticket is obeisance to the glamorous stars. In effect, a celebrity tax. Few complaints.

These are only a few reality-checks about our value systems. And, as I said, some reminders that human nature has not changed that much.

Returning to the spiritual aspect of our lives, more important than any of this. We think we have graduated from a society where highwaymen once lurked behind trees, whereas a multitude of internet pirates lurk behind our computer screens today. Wall-street cheats. Our jails more crowded than ever. Nothing new under the sun.

No, in God’s world we need to remember the old days, good or bad, by better or worse standards.

But there were times in human history when the vast majority of artists and writers and scientists acknowledged God as behind everything, the Maker and Redeemer. And they sought to honor Him in all they did. Common people toiled and sometimes suffered, but always consoled themselves in the ministrations of the Holy Spirit. Communities were built around churches, and the Word was central to everyone’s lives. Prayers were lifted daily – often continually throughout the day – and church attendance was weekly, or sometimes daily. Jesus was at the center of peoples’ lives, in all classes, in villages, towns, and cities.

But we know better in the 21st century. We are smarter – smart enough to dismiss God from our lives. We are happier – at least we pay more for things that promise to make us happy. We live more comfortable lives – if we would slow down for a moment to enjoy them once in a while. Our religion, as a society, is something we are so comfortable with that we don’t feel the need to “force” it on others… even our children.

Maybe the French got it wrong. The more things change, it might be that the worse they become. Is there anything new under the sun? Well… we still need a Savior.

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Some people think that the greatest creation of Franz Josef Haydn was not one of his 104 symphonies; or a string quartet, the genre he molded; or the mighty oratorio The Creation. Here is his Mass For Troubled Times, an astonishing, stirring, church piece, one of 14 masses he wrote. We live in troubled times, no less than his 1800 Vienna. Let it minister to you – traditional Latin words, in Kyrie; Gloria; Qui Tollis; Credo; Quoniam; Sanctus; Et Incantus Est; Et Resurrexit; Sanctus; Benedictus; Agnus Dei; Dona Nobis Pacem. Conducted by Grete Pedersen in a magnificent Oslo church.

Click: Mass for Troubled Times

6-20-11

Theodore Roosevelt, about whom I currently am writing a biography, began his own autobiography – the story of a crowded life and successful careers – with the sentence “My father was the best man I ever knew.”

Surely, no man could desire a better epitaph. Such an assessment by one’s children is worth more to one’s soul than material success or inventories of accumulations. Even the plaudits of peers or hoped-for “posterity” are fickle and, in the end, worthless. Fathers who have earned the loving respect of children do not need such things; and without the sincere regard of one’s children, other things seem meaningless.

These are universal truths. It matters little whether you meditate on them from the perspective of being a father or being a son or daughter; whether your father has passed on or is still with you. I believe I can say without fear of contradiction that if you are reading this, you have a father. And let’s say that you cannot quite quote Theodore Roosevelt about your own dad, think for a second about words attributed to Mark Twain: “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to be around him. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

There is, in the Bible, a concept called the “Scarlet Thread of Redemption,” where the person, and the work, of Christ, is seen in countless prophecies, references, allusions, allegories, types, numerologies, before His coming, apart from His immediate incarnation. So it is – or should be – with our families, and our fathers. We cannot be free of examples and influences, words and advice. We cannot even escape what every generation of human history but our own has believed in: bloodlines, tendencies, inherited talents. “We are our fathers’ children” is meant to convey the inevitable patrimonies we inherit.

In the rare and sorry cases where fathers are not the role models we wish for – like some Dickens characters – it is still wise for us to learn and know about our families’ pasts. For correction, for reproach, as curatives. In my own case, I can state a variation on TR’s tribute: my own father was the best friend I ever had. Every project I do, I wonder how he would like it; every week, I start to reach for the phone to share something he would find interesting. But he has been gone for more than a dozen years.

But this is not about my father, or me as a father; or your father; or – stick with me – even on Father’s Day, any mortal fathers. God did not put any qualifiers on the Commandment. “Honor your father and your mother.” Nothing about “if” this or that; or “after” they have proven themselves. Think of another famous Father in the Bible – remember when God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac: a father should sacrifice his son??? God intervened, of course, when Abraham showed his obedience, and then our minds rush forward – along the Golden Thread of Fatherhood – and realize that we had a picture of our Heavenly Father willing to sacrifice for the sake of history’s children, all of us, uncountable numbers except to Him, “for He so loved the world.”

As good a man, as good a friend, as we have in this world; or try ourselves to be, or ever hope to be, is nothing compared to the love of Father God. In this regard, every day of the year should be FATHER’S Day. And at the end of our days, if our children can say (doubly paraphrasing), “Well done, good and faithful father,” then we are blessed indeed.

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I have chosen a memorable and beautiful song, “Going Home,” to illustrate this message. It has been a Negro spiritual, hymn, and folk song; its tune is taken from, of all things, Antonin Dvorak’s 9th Symphony (which, in turn, had relied on American folk melodies). Clearly, it sings of death… but in the context of that precious tradition I spoke of, of family-generations not being separate things, but close parts. One day we shall not only share eternal life, but be reunited with mother and father who, the song says, “are waiting there; expecting us.” The performance is by the astonishingly impressive London boys’ choir called Libera. This will move you.

Click: Going Home