Monday Morning Music Ministry

9-1-25

There they were. Grim-faced and angry. Raced to their marks before the cameras. Not to console but to scold. The first to lecture was Gov. Tim Walz. Lord, hasn’t this community suffered enough already…?

Nevertheless he told that community, and the world, what we are supposed to think about the Morning Massacre at the Annunciation School. And ourselves, don’t you know. Then followed, seriatum, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey; the school principal; the police chief; and the city’s archbishop Bernard Hebda. They spoke against violence and assured us that their “hearts were broken.” Even Pope Leo, in a letter written by the Vatican Secretary of State, wanted us to know about his shock too.

We were also chastised about prejudice and hate. Not so much about the emotions that motivated the shooter, no; but any negative feelings toward the shooter, a member of the amorphous transgender “community.” The killer whose feelings we are supposed to respect reportedly had barricaded the school’s doors and shot repeatedly into the chapel through its stained-glass windows. The children and a few elderly adults were at Mass. Suddenly there were blood stains amidst the stained glass.

But you would be forgiven if you thought the local leaders regarded the shooter as the victim. In fact he had not merely gotten up on the wrong side of bed that morning. He had, inevitably, prepared a manifesto; he carried three weapons; he scrawled hate-filled messages on his magazines like “For the children” and “Kill Donald Trump.” In their sociology lessons the assembled politicians and officials managed, with all other factors addressed and avoided, earnestly to scrub God from the discussion.

The air was filled with obfuscation even as the guns’ smoke cleared. As always. During the day Mayor Frey, like a wind-up toy, called for gun control. Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar decried “leaders more concerned with appeasing the gun lobby than keeping our children safe.” Others mocked those who shared their “thoughts and prayers,” not because that could be a routine cliche – but properly is a minimal response – but asserting the futility of prayer itself. Jen Psaki, Biden’s old press flak, from afar, was one of several who even mocked those who prayed in the midst of their grief. Rather, “action” (somehow not a routine cliche) and “praying with your feet” became the memes of the day.

The Catholic school’s principal, who had the opportunity to minister to the hearts of his children and the larger community, said there is “nothing about today that can fill us with hope,” overlooking the many souls who survived, the myriad acts of heroism, the maturity of the little children who protected each other. Let a little child lead him, and teach the man what hope can be.

Worse than the deficient response from politicians and officials was the message from Pope Leo; that is, what he did not say. It was the same thing that all the assembled people did not say: there was not one statement, written or spoken, that offered a prayer. Not an appeal to God, nor a painful thanks to God for signs of mercy that morning. Not even a perfunctory, generic prayer from the clergy or a speaker who has a personal faith. This, unfortunately, is the hallmark of our contemporary culture – no faith, or fear to express faith. Sympathy for a deranged sexually confused murder, more than for his victims. Values of faith locked out of the debate, just as the killer constructed barricades at the chapel doors.

My friend Hope Flinchbaugh wrote to me after the massacre: The children had faith. The children were in prayer when attacked, and testified they prayed during the attack. Did you hear the testimony of one adult who gathered the children into the gym? A reporter asked him how he brought the children to focus together immediately in the gym. He replied, we sang a song that we sing frequently here. Then he repeated the lyrics of the entire song on the news clip:

Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary

Pure and holy, tried and true.

With thanksgiving I’ll be a LIVING

Sanctuary for You…

No one is more alive right now than the two children who are now in Heaven.

Perhaps if God had not been locked out of schools two generations ago, so to speak, the Annunciation massacre would not have taken place. Not that Jesus would have stood in the schoolhouse door – but maybe the shooter himself would have experienced prayer and public expressions of faith as part of his upbringing, and had different impulses.

The gunsmoke cleared and the officials finished their TV moments. Then came the realization that nobody prayed that morning. Except the murdered little children and their classmates.

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Click: Lord Prepare Me To Be A Sanctuary

9-23-13

A theme song of cynics – there are many; many cynics and many are their themes – is the famous sentiment written by Shakespeare: “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones” (Julius Caesar, Act 3, i). But the hopeful among us must see that this is honored in the breach, that the exception proves the rule. We must not merely be convinced that fights for righteousness and honor and creative expression are worth the fight in this difficult life… but that the fight ITSELF, not only the goal, is worthy.

Cynicism is challenged by uncountable examples of service and sacrifice by kind souls, by acts of charity, a word whose original meaning is “love.” Challenged in the over-arching sense by the work of weary toilers in the fields who sometimes are bent but never broken. And in the very personal examples of artists who die without ever knowing the effect their work eventually has on other people. There are stories we all know from history.

We think of van Gogh; of Poe; of the composer Schubert and the novelist John Kennedy Toole… and of Eva Cassidy.

Some serious critics have called Eva the greatest American vocalist. Do you ask, “Who?” Her relatively sparse playlist has swept record charts around the world. Some of the era’s greatest singers and producers have attested to her uniqueness. The acclaim and sales have all come years after she died. Eva was born in Washington DC in 1963. Self- (and dad-) taught on several instruments, she listened to the great performers of several genres she rapidly mastered herself: blues, jazz, gospel, country, pop standards.

Eva played in several clubs in the Washington area. A college town, DC is replete with jazz clubs, music venues, performance clubs. As a student there myself in ancient times, I was privileged to enjoy, in places like the Cellar Door, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, and Randy Scruggs before they were nationally famous. Later, Eva Cassidy attracted a local following and made a few CDs, but her fame was fairly restricted to the District. Pros and record execs who heard her music were astonished, but many of them simply did not know in which category to place her. All of them later regretted their short-sightedness. Her voice was angelic (if angels were to sing the blues); her interpretations were miraculously emotional; her guitar style was unique.

When she was 30 she had a malignant tumor removed from her neck. Three years later she was dead, the melanoma having survived within her body, spread to bones and lungs. After her diagnosis (three to five months to live, no hope of survival) she returned once more to her stage of choice, DC’s Blues Alley, and sang “What a Wonderful World.” That choice, as much as hearing her music, confirms what a wonderful person, not merely a musical talent, Eva Cassidy was.

But it was five full years after her death before the world really heard about her, and heard her. A stray CD made its way the BBC Radio studios in London. Airplay on a morning show lit up the proverbial switchboard. Fast-forward this story to Number One on British record charts; five CDs in the Top 150; continuing presence in England and Ireland, especially, but also Germany, Scandinavia, Switzerland, and Australia… and, finally, America; and sales exceeding 10-million CDs.

It is easy to lapse (thusly) into numbers and statistics. But it was Eva Cassidy’s astonishing talent, and her effect on listeners, that is the story. She had a gift for making mundane lyrics special, for discovering spiritual nuances in standard love songs, for making happy tunes blues-y and turning sad ballads hopeful.

That her “success” is posthumous is ironic at least. Yet once we take account of life’s vicissitudes, we should take heart. The good that we may do DOES live on “after our bones are interred.” When we do the Lord’s work, sharing hope and sunshine, we are eager to see the “seeds” we plant take root and bloom. But we don’t always know if, or when, it will happen. Mostly, we cannot know. As servants of the Word, it really is the Holy Spirit’s job to “close the deals,” and we should resist the temptation of pride if we are too concerned with the seeds we plant. We can plant those seeds; we can even cultivate; but only God can make life grow.

In fact there is a legitimate spiritual satisfaction in not knowing these details. When writers, artists, singers, songwriters, poets, and all people graced with God’s creativity set their works out (as it were) like baby Moses in a basket, among the reeds and into unknown waters, we don’t know who will discover them. But, trusting the God whom we serve by serving our fellow men and women, untold numbers of people, and their families after them, may be profoundly touched. Even if one person’s spirit responds, we have done our jobs.

If we, any of us, exercise the talents wherewith we have been graced, if we see our lives as parts of the cultural continuum of civilization, just as we are woven with the scarlet threads of redemption, then some of us might be the next van Goghs, Poes, Schuberts, Tooles, and Eva Cassidys. And be content that the value is in the working and the works, not the accolades of the world. And the rest of us? We can feel blessed that we are witnesses of these great talents.

Remember the Yogi Berra quotation, “It ain’t over till it’s over”? Memo to Yogi: sometimes it only BEGINS when it’s “over.” The theme song of THAT truth is sung by Eva Cassidy.

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One of the only videos of Eva Cassidy singing is an amateur camcorder capture of her and her guitar at Blues Alley. It often brings tears to viewers’ eyes for the unique interpretation and commonly untapped meanings from a pop standard previously considered without spiritual depth. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” was recorded the year of Eva’s death, 1996. I commend this performance to you, and its compelling whisper to your soul: “Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream, really do come true. … If happy little bluebirds fly above the rainbow, why, oh why, can’t I?” When Eva sang, she made it a spiritually rhetorical question: We can.

Click: Somewhere Over the Rainbow