Concert time

River Singers put on a concert yesterday afternoon for the first time since December 2019 - 2 1/2 years! It was smaller than our former concerts, and everyone - singers and audience - was masked and vaccinated. We held it in a very well-ventilated place with four air purifiers running. But it was still very satisfying to be singing for a live audience, and we also live-streamed it, and we had people watching from all over the world. So that was cool! I think Ellen and I both felt good doing it, and felt good about the concert itself. Kathy Bullock was a guest leader, and she met with us two evenings esrlier this week to rehearse four songs that she brought to the repertoire. One of them, composed just a month ago, celebrated Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. I had a very brief solo in one, and Ellen and I each had a duet in another. So there's life in the old dog yet! We did get the unfortunate news today that one of our choral members tested positive for COVID late last night after the concert. She tested negative beforehand, but then felt a little sick later and tested again with a different result. We'll hope all our protocols protected everyone. John and Cynthia were there - way in the back in front of an open window, so I doubt that they were at all at risk. When we got home I got a text from Margaret, Jerome's daughter, that he was in the hospital. He was once again in a lot of pain, and experiencing dizziness and faintness. It turns out that he had been taking a lot of ibuprofin on an emoty stomach, and had developed an ulcer. When I got the message, he was about to be taken to Concord, NH to a hospital where they could do more sophisticated pain management, so I went right down, and got there five minutes before the EMTs came in with a stretcher to load him into an ambulance and take him to Concord. I had a chance to just talk a minute and say a prayer with him. I was glad for that much.

Rehearsing before the concert

Our song circle before we go upstairs - I usually lead There Are Angels Hov'ring 'Round

Waiting for the chorus to come in - I'm on a stool at the far left. We are in the Westminster-West Congregational Church.

Singing our first number - One More Time. These images are from our live stream. ******************************************* You can see the whole concert at https://www.facebook.com/events/528622072048995/?ref=newsfeed.

Dakha-Brakha Band

Last night was quite something! The Dakha-Brakha Band, a Ukrainian quartet of singers and musicians - drums, accordians, cello, etc., was amazing. Very gifted and professional, but also very passionate and rowdy. It was a multimedia experience with lights, strobes, and a huge backscreen with moving images that accompanied the music. One of the most powerful was a long sequence of a mournful, despairing music, and a backdrop of drone images of destruction in Ukrainian cities. The whole experience was an assault on the senses, more than one could take in fully. The other thing was that when we arrived, we discovered that there were no seats. It was a standing room only performance. There were a few folding chairs for people who had paid for reserved seats - something that was not evident when John got the tickets (we had nothing to do with getting the tickets) - but everyone else had to stand. FORTUNATLY, my stool, that I use at River Singers, was in the car. It sort of lives in the car. So we got that. Ellen found an unused folding chair, so we sat right up front, right next the the railing separating us from the band - best seats in the house! Hundreds were jammed in and there were only scattered masks (we were wearing masks and some people around us were). So God only knows what we were exposed to. So - an amazing experience, but with some troubling aspects. I would say it was worth it - it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences. If you want to see this band, just go on YouTube and enter their name as a search. Lots of videos there. I actually took some great videos myself, but there is no way to share them on this blog.

The Dakha-Brakha Band

Who Knew?

I just finished reading an article which caught my eye because of my recent engagement with Eastern Orthodoxy (I celebrated Orthodox Easter in the Dummerston Church a week ago - April 24th). The article was in The Christian Century, a magazine I subscribe to and read regularly. It always has interesting articles. This one was by one of my favorite authors, Philip Jenkins, who regulrly writes about the "global church." The article was titled "Byzantine and Catholic," and is about a branch of th Christian Church we hear little about, though perhaps bit more lately - an Eastern European branch which is Byzantine in its culture and liturgy, but Roman Catholic in its allegiance to the Pope. The biggest branch of this tradition is the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which has 5 million members. A much smaller branch, but very similar in culture and liturgy, is the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church, which in the U.S. is called the Byzantine Catholic Church. This branch has only 400,000 members world-wide, but one of its churches in the U.S., St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church in the Greenfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh, is well-known in some circles because it was the church in which Andy Warhol, the artist, grew up. His immigrant family, the Warholas, from Ruthenia, south of the Carpathian mountains in Slovakia, were faithful members of the church, and Warhol himself - who knew this? - was a devout Catholic all his life - in his own way. His life style was anathema to his church, but he went to church regularly, some say every day, especially in his later years. He did not take Communion, but he considered himself a Catholic and visited Pope John II in April, 1980. Some art critics say his art was profoundly affected by the icons he viewed regularly in his childhood, and he produced a lot of "religious art," including over 100 variations on DaVinci's The Last Supper. All this and more is the subject of a current showing at the Brooklyn Museum: Andy Warhol: Revelation (until June, 2022). And of course, we are aware of another "who knew?" feature of Warhol's life, his friendship with artist Jamie Wyeth, which we have seen evidences of in the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, ME. So, we can say, Andy Warhol was a complicated guy!

Andy Warhol's home church in Pittsburgh, PA

Interior of the St. John Chrysostom Church

Scene from the Brooklyn Museum

Warhol's version of The Last Supper

Another scene from the Brooklyn Museum showing: artifacts from Warhol's childhood

Jamie Wyeth's portrait of Andy Warhol (1976)****************************************** Later today we will have a taste of Eastern European culture - we are going to Holyoke, MA to a concert by Dakha-Brakha, a Ukrainian band from Kiev. We are going with John and Cynthia. Should be pretty interesting!!

A Hallowell Sing

This evening we again did something we have not done for some time: we made a Hallowell presentation at a Hospice Volunteers Training Session. Hallowell is a part of the larger Hospice organization, and it is important that volunteers - the people who actually sit at the bedsides of people who are dying - know about Hallowell and what we offer - namely, coming in sort of anonymously and singing quiet songs at the bedside, often with family members gathered around, and often with the hospice volunteer being included in that gathering. So five of us, Ellen, Peter, Mary Alice, Connie and myself, went to a place I had never been before, the fourth floor of Holton Hall, on the campus of what was formerly a famous School for the Deaf in Brattleboro - the Austine School - but after the Austine School closed, was taken over by the Winston-Prouty Center, a school for special education. Hospice was using a very attractive conference room in Holton Hall for their training sessions. It was a group of maybe 14 people, some of whom were known to me, but mostly were strsangers. They were all women; I guess Hospice volunteers are mostly women. Connie was our leader, and after we sang an opening song - I'll Fly Away, she led off by saying a bit about how Hallowell got started twenty years ago, and how we operate in general terms. Then each of us introduced ourselves and shared a particular Hallowell experience. I described a sing 14-15 years ago which has remained vivid to me, which took place in a very humble little trailor, where an older woman was lying. on a couch, unresponsive, covered only by a sleeping bag thrown over her; her daughter was there, a friend, two big dogs and 3-4 young men, pretty rough-looking, drinking beer, probably grandsons. It was sort of noisy when we went in, the dogs were very active, but when we began to sing, things quieted down, the dogs became still, the guys quit talking, and after a bit a very special hush came over that trailor, something that felt very special, actually sacred. Later, when we came out into a dark, cold, clear night, I said to Ellen, "I feel as though I have just been in the stable with the animals and the shepherds." We felt so privileged having been invited into that space, a place we otherwise would probably never have been able to go. A lot of Hallowell sings feel that way! Then after we sang another song - How Could Anyone Ever Tell You - we did a role-playing of an actual sing. One of the women volunteered to be the client - the person who is dying - and she lay down on a chaise lounge, and was covered with blankets. Another person played the role of the Hospice volunteer, sitting at her bedside, and then our group started humming Plovi Barko, as we often do, and came into the room and knelt around her bedside and sang quietly, and then just as quietly went out, still humming. We've done this on other occasions like this one, and it always moves people, often to tears. So we felt we were able to give them a good sense of who we are and what we do. And again, we are so privileged!

The conference room in Holton Hall where we met tonight

The view of Brattleboro from the 4th Floor of Holton Hall (through the screen!)

Holton Hall as it was when it was the main building of the Austine School

A really full weekend!

This past weekend had a lot going on - more than has been the case for us for quite a long time. Friday. evening, we went over to Keene, to Antioch University New England, where my son, John, works. His colleague and friend, Gopal Krishnamurthy, was offering sort of a "happening," that John invited us to. It was held outdoors, and about a dozen people showed up for it. We had no idea what to expect, except that Gopal is a very interesting and creative person. And indeed, it was a very interesting time. We were initially divided into three groups. one using sound to communicate with one another (speaking or singing or whatever); one using paper and pen to communicate (no speech) and one using movements (no speech). We were instructed to observe something, focus on it, and then communicate with others what we had experienced. I focused on the wind, which was quite robust, and communicated with the group by singing a song: "Where does the wind come from, does anybody know?" All of this led to a discussion of what it means to be a teacher, how to communicate with students, how to free students to pursue their questions, not just the teacher's questions. Gopal is an expert in transformative education, and he gave us a lot to think about!

Gopal Krishnamurthy

The group gathering at AUNE

Gopal working at his computer outside

Doing thought exercises in a big circle - John and Cynthia are on the right.*********************************** Saturday we sang in a small choir at a memorial celebration for Ambrose Brown, the 14-year-old son of James and Rebecca Brown, at the Dummerston Church. There is a very touching story here. Almost twenty years ago, James and Rebecca had a daughter, Sophie, who was born with a very rare genetic condition that severely limited her growth. She died after just three years. They were uncertain about having another child, but were counseled that it was highy unlikely that they would have a second child with this very rare condition. But Ambrose did have it. They took on the challenge of parenting this child. Ambrose lived 14 years - a long life for someone with his limitations. He required an immense amount of care, and they had many caregivers. But it was a 24/7 demand. Ambrose, by all accounts, was a magical child. James and Rebecca wanted the service to be a celebration of his remarkable life, and it was. The hundreds of stuffed animals he had been given filled the church, dominated by Sesame Street characters. Ambrose's favorite was Kermit the Frog. Sam Farwell sang, "It isn't easy being green," which was perfect. Mary Westbrook-Geha sang and played many Sesame Street songs, and also sang Billy Joel's Lullabye which also was perfect. The choir sang Over the Rainbow in a very bluesey arrangement, which was perfect. Our pastor, Shawn, gave a beautiful reflection on Ecclesiastes - "For everything there is a season." Several caregivers spoke lovingly about Ambrose, and James found the courage to speak at length about his son. It was a very moving servIce; everything it should have been, which is amazing in itself.

Sam rehearsing It Isn't Easy Being Green, - you csn see the stuffed animals filling the available spaces.

A close-up of the animals on the organ

Ambrose Brown (2008-2022) After the funeral there was a wonderful reception which was held downstairs - but we were a bit concerned with the fact that most people were unmasked and we already had been upstairs with people (the choir was all masked but most of the congregation was not), so we didn't stay with the reception very long. I was supposed to see Jerome to see if I could help with shopping but when I went by his place, he was sleeping, so I said I would do it next week. Sunday was full to the brim - I preached in Dummerston in the morning, attended an ordination in the afternoon and a book study group in the evening. The morning service was based on John 21 - which includes a sort of confrontation between Peter and the Risen Christ, a confrontation I called a "Final Exam." That was the theme of the sermon, and the children's story had the theme of "Exponential Love," and my prop for that story was a chess board. I used the old story of the man who sort of tricked a wealthy Persian King into acquiring his beautifully decorated chess board by agreeing to put a grain of rice on square one, two on square two, four on square three, eight on square four and so on through all 64 squares, doubling the amount each time. The king was naive mathematically - the amount of rice adds up to more rice than has been grown in the entire history of the world! My point was that God's love could grow in the same way - hug two people, they each hug two people, and on and on it grows!

Jesus and Peter

The Exponential Chessboard ************************************ After church, there was a coffee hour using left-overs from the funeral, and we played it safe and took our food outside and sat by the pond with John and Cynthia: very nice. It was a beautiful day for sitting by the pond.

Sitting by the pond ********************************* We talked so long, we just had time to stop by the house for some things and drove to West Dover for the ordination of Jeremy Kirk, another small choir, and a very lively service. There was a great turnout for that, and I got to process with a group of clergy. The reception there was all held outside, and inside everyone was masked.

A group portrait of the people at Jeremy's ordination from the Guilford Church. Jeremy was a Member in Discernment at GCC for eight years as he prepared for ordination.************************************** We just had time to get to the book study and Mary Alice Amidon's at 6:30p.m. - a group of about 6-7 women. There were two books we had read, Martin Buber's I and Thou and Colm Toibin's Testament of Mary. People found Buber pretty tough sledding, but we managed to wrest some meaning from it - some more than others. The Testament of Mary was quite stunning - we didn't read it, we listened to it on Audible, with Meryl Streep reading. We felt it was a very realistic portrayal of Mary's inner thughts and struggle with being the mother of Jesus - but it is pretty unorthodox! We could have discussed it more than we had time for. So, a very interesting weekend. But tiring - I slept late this morning!

Ecclesiastical Council

Last evening we held an Ecclesiastical Council via Zoom - a first for me, certainly, and maybe a first, period. What is an Ecclesiastical Council? In the system of governance in the church to which I belong - the United Church of Christ, which has its roots in the Congregational Church, important decisions concerning the ministry are made not by a Bishop, or by a group of clergy, but by a kind of town meeting, a group composed of both clergy and lay people, which gathers to be informed about the facts of the situation, and then takes a vote. In this case, the decision was whether to ordain a man who has been preparing for ordination for many years and had completed all aspects of that period of preparation. In the United Church of Christ, there are four "levels" so to speak of church organization: (1) the local church, in my case, the Guilford Community Church; (2) the Association, which is a fellowship of UCC churches within a fairly small geographical area - in my case, Windham County and the southern half of Windsor County to the north - about 18 churches in all; (3) the Conference, which in my case is the Vermont Conference, a state-wide fellowship of about 130 churches or so; (4) the Synod - a nationwide fellowship of UCC churches - app. 4800 churches or so. The process of ordination takes place at levels (2) and (3). A local church cannot ordain someone on their own. The national denomination is not involved except that it publishes a Manual of Ministr which lays out the guidelines to be followed by the Conference and the Association. Jeremy Kirk, the man who was seeking ordination, became a member of the Guilford Church almost ten years ago, and became what is called a "Member in Discernment" - i.e., someone seeking to be ordained - about 8 years ago. You have to go through a lot of hoops to become an ordained minister. The basic one is "being called," - i.e., having a strong inner feeling that God is speaking to you, encouraging you to become a minister. That can take many forms. In Jeremy's case, he was raised a Roman Catholic, and the earliest call he felt was as an altar boy, wanting to be priest. Later he went to Gonzaga University, and looked up to his Jesuit teachers and wanted to be one of them. You need a local congregation to support this sense of an inner calling - a group of people who get to know you well enough to be able to say with confidence that that sense of calling is genuine. The Guilford Church provided that. But that is not enough. You have to have a seminary education, or its equivalent. That means most commonly getting a Master's in Divinity Degree (MDiv). In Jeremy's case he got a Master's in Theology at Union Theological Seminary, and went on to get a Ph.D. - he had more than needed, but was also missing some specific components of the MDiv, like Clinical Pastoral Education. Today you also have to undergo a thorough psychological evaluation (which costs over $1500!) and also go through a criminal background check (because of clergy child abuse issues, mostly). The capstone to all that is to write and deliver an "Ordination Paper," which lays out your personal "faith journey" and discusses in some detail what you believe - and an outline for you to follow is usually provided, which the candidate can follow slavishly, or with some freedom to be creative. The Conference oversees that process - an older minister is usually assigned the candidate as a mentor, who guides her or him through the process, and the candidate eventually presents that paper to the Conference Committee on Ministerial Standing and Standards (MSSC), a group of 8-10 people from around the state, clergy and lay, who review the entire process with the candidate, make sure all the "i's" are dotted, so to speak, hear the paper, ask questions, and then vote on whether to recommend the candidate to the Association for actual ordination. There were a lot of bumps along the way for Jeremy, many of them unnecessary bureaucratic glitches. It took him eight years to get all his "i's" dotted. But he patiently followed the process and along the way became the pastor of a church (West Dover Congregational Church) - you do not have to be ordained to be a pastor, at least for a while. I was the pastor of little Presbyterian Church in Missouri while I was still in college - just 18 years old! Jeremy is 44 years old. So, what we were doing last evening was carrying out the next step in the process. This might seem redundant - why have another group evaluate Jeremy after he has already gotten the approval of the Conference MMSC? Well, that is rooted in history. In colonial days, there was no state Conference, just the more local Association (our Association was formed in 1791!). The Association oversaw the entire ordination process. The Ecclesiastical Council is a vestige of that older system. Before the Association actually ordains someone, they want to hear his story, hear his faith, and have a chance to ask questions. That is what happened last evening. For the Council to be valid, there had to be a quorum. There needed to be at least eight churches represented, and at least 20 persons in attendance - that is stated in our Association ByLaws. We actually had over 10 churches represented and close to 40 people "present." But because of the pandemic, it was not in-person. Actually, it probably could have been - the ordination will be in person, but everyone will be masked and presumably vaccinated. But we were playing it safe. So it all happened on Zoom. It was a good session. I ended up taking minutes - the usual person, called the Registrar - was not able to be there. So I was "Clerk, pro tem." His paper had been sent out in advance, so he didn't have to read it in its entirety. He summarized it and there were questions. Here is a bit from my minutes: The questions ranged from "what do you find most attractive and most challenging about the UCC?" to "What do you say to someone whose child has just died?" to "what do you believe about substitutionary atonement and the seeming privilege of the human species?" to "Explain your Niebuhr-inspired preference for "self-acceptance" over "self-improvement," to "What is your personal spiritual practice and discipline," to "How is being ordained and no longer having to be a student going to affect your ministry," to "How do you communicate theology to children?" to "Do you need to wear a clerical collar and what does that mean?" mJeremy gave thoughtful replies to all these questions. The vote to ordain him was unanimous. I gave the closing prayer and we all congratulated Jeremy and "went out into the night" so to speak. A good experience. His ordination service will be this coming Sunday afternoon in West Dover. Ellen and I plan to be there.

A screen shot of our Zoom Ecclesiastical Council yesterday evening. There were a few more people on a second screen.*********************

Jeremy Kirk standing in the pews at the West Dover Church

Robb Hamm, Moderator of the Association

Giving the closing prayer on Zoom

Today's exploration of the Eastern Orthodox faith

Today, I led the service at the Dummerston Church. Pastor Shawn is on a 2-week vacation. This is Easter Sunday in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and that provided me with my theme. I made a connection with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, wondering what it was like celebrating Easter today in Ukraine, surrounded as they are by destruction and death. I also explored one of the central concepts of Orthodox theology, the holiness of God, an aspect of faith which I feel is neglected in much of Protestant Christianity. One is confronted with God's holiness the moment one sets foot in an Orthodox Cathedral and, to quote from my sermon, one confronts a vast domed sanctuary which creates a sense of eternity, of the heavenly realm. The chanting, the incredibly sonorous music of the choir, the incense, the icons on the walls, the processions of priests, elaborately clothed in other-worldly garb, the vast dome with a mosaic of Christ Pantocrator--Christ the Cosmic Ruler, mosaics of angels and all the saints gathered about the Lord in eternal worship--it is an unforgettable experience which inspires awe in the worshipper.

Christ Pantocrator, a mosaic commonly found in the dome of an Orthodox cathedral.********************************* The scriptures that were read emphasized the dual nature of the holy which is expressed in Hebrew by the word qodesh. The holy is powerfully dangerous and also calls forth a feeling of ecstasy. In II Samuel 6, David and the people are moved to "make merry, sing and dance and play instruments" in the presence of the Ark of the Covenant which contains God's holiness, but when Uzzah reaches out his hand to steady the ark when the cart carrying it tips, he is struck dead on the spot as though he had touched a 10,000 volt bare wire. I compared this experience with one Shirley and I had decades ago when we were driving through Arkansas to visit Betsey and we were hit by a violent storm, a turquoise wall streching from earth to heaven racing across the countryside at breakneck speed. To be engulfed by that storm was frightening and exhilerating at the same time. Annie DIllard catches this duality when she writes in Teaching a Stone to Talk "does anyone have the foggiest idea of what sort of POWER we blithely invoke in our worship? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT..It is madness to be wearing hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets! Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares! They should lash us to our pews. For someday God may just draw us out to where we can never return." I got a lot of really positive comments on the sermon, which was gratifying. The service was also enhanced by a quartet (Eliza, Ellen, Sam Farwell and myself) singing two pieces from the Orthodox liturgy, Tebe Poyem and Mnohaya Lita, which is a Ukrainian blessing for long life. (Both can be found on YouTube). John and Cynthia were in church and brought me home while Ellen went to pick up Brendon to take him "antiquing" - something he loves to do. So I am having a lovely afternoon at home by the fire.

An artist's depiction of Uzzah and the Ark of the Covenant