In Praise of Praise

A neighbor's daffodils

A friendly email exchange with a regular reader of this blog about last week’s reference to “How Great Thou Art” prompts me to share again this post about praise music from 2012. 

Attending the Sunday evening praise service of MCC San Francisco, my partner turned to me and said, “For this service, you’re gonna need a lot more rhythm!” I had just moved there to serve as interim pastor, and the clapping and swaying and emotional singing had not been a regular feature of my worship experience.

A visit to the service a year earlier had alienated me. “What if I’m in pain when I come to the service?” I judgmentally thought, “I wouldn’t fit in with all these happy people.”

Sharing that thought with the former pastor, the Rev. Jim Mitulski (one of the world’s finest preachers), he corrected, “We started that service to give voice to all of our feelings facing the AIDS crisis in the Castro.” He explained it was the old gospel songs and Taize style chants that expressed the range of their emotions, from lament and longing to hope and faith. One might compare the similar range of the Psalms.

I’ve just finished reading a book by a progressive Christian who expresses many insights I cherish, but who suggests we praise to “flatter” God to get what we want. That may be true for some, but not for me, and not for most, I would say.

Rather, we praise to be uplifted into God’s realm, to feel and to be embraced by something larger than ourselves—spiritual community, planet earth, the cosmos and all that is within it. The expanding universe calls for our own expansion. Spiritual ecstasy, like sexual ecstasy, gets us out of our selves, literally “out of stasis,” out of the status quo.

Just like prayer, praise is the place, not of God’s transformation, but of our own! To paraphrase the spiritual, “It’s not you but me, O Lord, standing in the need of praise.” In her book, Suffering, the late German theologian Dorothee Sölle affirms that collective “lament, petition, expressions of hope” empower those who suffer to address wrongs, comparing workers’ protests to liturgies, particularly the Psalms.

I come from traditions—both Baptist and Presbyterian—suspicious of the charismatic expressions of worship. Even the simple act of lifting our hands and faces upward—ironically, the praying posture of the Jews and Christians of biblical times—seemed indecorous in our more somber and earnest worship.

There is “bad” praise music, of course—uninspired, unpoetic, musically dull, and theologically untenable for progressive Christians. But even the theologically questionable ones, if inspired and poetic and musically interesting, may be fun to sing. Just don’t take them literally (just like scripture!).

I introduced a new song with just the right theology at an annual Kirkridge men’s retreat I co-led, but when we faltered at its difficulty, someone started singing “Jesus Loves Me,” and it became the reprise of the weekend.

My preference is for Gregorian chants, and songs and chants from Taize and Iona, and John Michael Talbot songs, as well as spirituals, sambas, salsas, and freedom songs. But I also still hum and sing the old gospel songs and staid hymns as well. Just ask our dog, Hobbes.

I was invited to be among the contributors to Ashes to Rainbows: A Queer Lenten Devotional that includes meditations for Ash Wednesday, the Sundays of Lent, and the days of Holy Week. Go to: https://justiceunbound.org/queerlent/

Related post: The Sound of Eden

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I will be co-leading “Beside Still Waters: A Contemplative Retreat” with Debra Weir April 27-May 1, 2020 at Sacred Heart Monastery in Cullman, Alabama. It is open to the public, and some limited scholarships are available. Three readable texts are recommended to prepare but are not required to have been read by opening day. Here is the link: https://app.certain.com/profile/form/index.cfm?PKformID=0x3039640abcd

Copyright © 2012 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. I welcome the use of Progressive Christian Reflections as contemporary readings in worship, discussion starters, or other non-profit purposes.  My hope is that you will also browse the archive (right column on the site) to use previous reflections in your daily or occasional meditation.

Where Ladybugs Come to Die

Wade and I have moved back into my house in the Ormewood Park neighborhood of Atlanta, two blocks from where we lived before.

This is the home that received a house blessing from my church, was graced by two visits of my mom from California, witnessed the end of one relationship and the beginning of my present one, was blessed by two loveable and loving golden retriever/Labs, Calvin and Hobbes, and offered hospitality to overnight guests such as John McNeill, Henri Nouwen, Erin Swenson, and Rick Ufford-Chase, then the Presbyterian General Assembly Moderator. This house also hosted parties, including a reception for MCC friends visiting Atlanta for General Conference.

The year I served MCC San Francisco, it sheltered my friend Jim Mitulski whenever he came to Atlanta while serving as MCC’s regional elder, becoming also an office for him and administrative assistant Ritchie Crownfield.

During that time I jokingly called it an MCC “safe house” because of the occasional MCC pastor or denominational leader who stayed here when visiting the city. At MCC gatherings I would sometimes have people tell me with a smile that they had stayed in my “cute little house.”

This house then welcomed my former partner in recovery and subsequently others in transitional periods of their lives. All “loved” the home it provided them.

I longed to return, not so much because of the house itself, but because of its placement overlooking a green ravine and creek with long-lived tall trees, which I see from my home office windows whenever I look up from my laptop as I write this. Sitting on its small deck to do my morning prayers feels like being on retreat.

But I had forgotten about the ladybugs.

As a child, the only bug of which I was neither afraid nor annoyed was the ladybug.* It was small and cute and round and red and landed unthreateningly on me or a plant or surface. It would not be until I was an adult that I learned how beneficial they are to the environment, happily consuming plant-devouring aphids. I also learned that, possibly for that reason, they are considered lucky or a good omen.

Every time a ladybug has landed on me throughout my life, I have smiled.

As I moved some boxes into the attic space off our master bedroom, I remembered about the ladybugs. Just as Tippi Hedren discovered birds in a similarly tight space in Hitchcock’s The Birds, I found dozens of far-less-threatening ladybugs—all dead. I remembered that this was, for some unknown reason, the place where ladybugs come to die.

A few make it inside the house itself. By our bathroom sink I have turned more than one ladybug off its back and onto its feet in a vain attempt to prolong its tiny life. Adjusting the pillows on our bed, I have been careful not to hurt the occasional ladybug crawling on our headboard. But I have given up opening window screens to free ladybugs who find their way inside.

Maybe it’s the sky-blue color of our house that attracts them. Maybe it’s the warmth in colder months and the coolness in hotter months.

Maybe it’s the same thing that attracts us and all who have found hospitality here, a welcome to be what they are and a welcome to become what they will be. Maybe they come here to die because they know they will be left alone; they will not be squished or sprayed or swatted or shooed.

They only make us smile, but not without regard for their passing.

Didn’t Jesus say something about ladybugs? “Not one shall fall to the ground without God knowing”?

*I didn’t realize then that butterflies were “bugs”!

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Copyright © 2017 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.