The Rector's Message for the Week of August 9, 2020

Dear Friends

Next week I will share further plans for the reopening of the Church on Sunday for worship and a message from our Interim Head of School, Amy Francisco, about the Choir School and its new Academic Year.

But first, I want to pay tribute to Peter Nadosy.  Peter has been the Chairman of our Investment Committee for many years and has faithfully executed his duties with great diligence, working closely with Cambridge Associates in the management of the parish’s portfolio.  Peter will be ably succeeded by Edie Morrill as Chair, and Matthew Ailey as Vice-Chair.  This is an important piece of work, for our investments support the mission of the Church and also meets most of the financial cost of the Choir School, which, as I said last week, changes children’s lives.

Many of the ancient choral foundations in England seem to be struggling with justifying the expense of their music programs.  Here in the United States, we know the value of music in the life of the church.  Music lifts the soul and allows us to deepen our spiritual journey.  Saint Augustine is attributed as saying “The one who sings prays twice.”  We know that singing is directly associated with the creativity of God.  Through the scriptures, and through history, whole genres of musical forms have made connections with communities of people and their stories – Folk songs, African-American Spirituals, Gospel, Jazz – these are all forms rooted in community-life and, often, protest.  Let us also remember the songs of protest in the Hebrew Scriptures; the Psalms contain powerful themes, with songs against injustice, genocide, exile, evil, and despotism, with the remembrance of liberation from oppression, particularly the Exodus.  Singing helps us remember the story of our faith, and it gives the story a melody that is easy to pass on.  Remember when the Tribes of Israel passed through the Red Sea and arrived safely on dry land, with the Egyptians, who had formerly enslaved them, finally vanquished?  Miriam took a timbrel in her hand and put the story immediately into song.  That song appears in several psalms and has been passed down through many generations.

Folk songs are very particular to the country and the culture where they originated.  They are rooted in the story of peoples’ lives and it is the music that allows that story to be re-told with the same dramatic force.  Yes, the one who sings prays twice.

Marty Haugen puts it very beautifully when he said:

“This is the first reason we sing. We sing to remember who and whose we are. The leader of prayer, the one who reads, and especially the one who sings, must know more than the notes. She must know the stories of our faith as well as the stories of her own community, and she must know how they are brought together in worship.” ^[1]

He said that during a keynote address at a conference for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 1998.  In that address, he reflected several times on how singing is rooted in the story-telling of so many cultures.

When I was a boy at school in England during the 1960’s, my middle school was all boys and each week my class would gather around the piano in our music teacher’s classroom to sing English, Irish, and Scottish folk songs. I don’t remember singing any Welsh ones, only hymns!  In particular, I have powerful memories of singing English sea-shanty’s from the 18th century.  I can hear my children saying “Dad you are so old!” because they never sang any of those songs when they went to school.  But, do you know, I am glad I did.  Here is a rather ‘geeky’ confession: When I was a chorister, I used to read the preface to the English Hymnal during boring sermons in church.  That preface is of an age, but what an age!  Ralph Vaughan Williams, one of the editors of the English Hymnal, said that it was important to bring the melodies of the folk songs of the British Isles into the Hymnal so that they could never be forgotten.  What a prophetic statement and thank goodness he did; they are still there.  Melodies allow us to remember and to go deeper into the story.  Marty Haugen, in that address to the Lutheran Conference, also shared this story about folk song in Africa:

“A friend of mine, Sowah Mensah, is an ethnomusicologist from Ghana. He says that in Ghana everyone would seem to be a musician by our definition. Everyone sings (and dances) at public gatherings, and most everyone is adept at adding harmonies and improvising. I asked him if there weren’t individuals who had special recognition as artists in the community. He said they were the people whom you went to when your life was in crisis–when your marriage was in trouble, when you were cut off from the community, when you felt lost and alone. I told him that in America, an artist or musician tends to be the last person you go to for advice about relationships (with the possible exception of a politician). Sowah said that the artist is the one who knows all the songs of the community–the songs of their history, the songs of their relationship and the songs of their vision. In his words, “The musician sings the song to you and ‘re-members’ you back into the community.”

Oh, how we need to re-discover the act of re-membering in the Western world.  And that, my friends, is exactly why we need to uphold our Choir School and the heritage that came to us from T. Tertius Noble.  Soon, we will be asking you to consider our annual appeal for 2021.  More than ever we need your support.  In helping choristers to learn to sing, you actively promote the re-membering of our story.  You keep it alive and for another generation.  How can you put a price on that?

Affectionately,

Your Priest and Pastor