Month: May 2020

Choral music has always been an important part of my spiritual journey.  It was music – hymn singing, and when I discovered it, choral singing – which enriched my life when I joined the United Church of Christ.  In times of trial, singing has been what kept me going.  Now, as we find ourselves in a place where singing in crowds may be (likely is) dangerous, there is still strength and power in that music.  I may not sing in a choir, I may not sing in a congregation, but I can still sing in my heart.

These days, most often I listen to YouTube videos of the Oasis Chorale.  One in particular, their rendition of “We Are Not Alone” is enormously moving.  The song begins with a solo; the choir responds with the chorus, “we are not alone, God is with us”.  I’ve posted a link to this song before; this time the link is to a shorter version by a smaller portion of the chorale.

We are not alone.  Think about that.  We are not alone, for God is with us.  I know I’m not the only member of our church who lives alone.  We hear, almost daily, of people who are alone in nursing homes, alone – dying – in the hospital.  We know there are those who are alone in their apartments, without the money to pay their bills next month.

But the song reminds us that, in an essential way, we are not alone.  God is with us.  What does that mean?  It means that when we are feeling most alone (and even if someone is with you, you can feel alone), you still have God.  When you’re sitting in the waiting room at St. Luke’s, not sure about the test you just had, you are not sitting there alone, for God is with you.  If you’ve listened to the music, you’ll hear it in your head, reminding you that you are not alone.  The music carries the words, gives them power, helps us remember them.  That’s why I love choral music and hymn singing.  When I’m down, when I’m alone – the music is always there.

This week, I want to urge you to take the time to click on this link, to listen again to the chorale sing, and as you listen, hold in your hearts the sense that the song includes you in its “we”.  For we are not alone; God is with us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQtjlInSK3g

Easter blessings, Pastor Virginia

I Peter 1:22  love one another as if your lives depended on it.  (Eugene Peterson, The Message translation)

I think this sentence, and in this translation, is becoming my new favorite Bible quote. That’s because it so clearly gets to what I think is the core and center of our Christian faith.  We are here, our purpose in life is, to love one another.  We are not given life to make money; we make money to have more resources to love one another.  We are not powerful that we might be important; we are here to use what power we have to help the powerless – because we love one another.

This was brought home to me this morning in an odd way.  I began the morning by watching the worship service from Dornoch Cathedral in Dornoch, Scotland.  The pastor, the Rt. Rev. Susan Brown, of the Church of Scotland, was talking about the centrality of love, even in the midst of pandemic.  And then the vagaries of web browsing brought me to the funeral eulogy Andrew Cuomo offered for his father, NY Governor Mario Cuomo.  Not one to mince words, Andrew Cuomo made it clear that every single thing his father did, he did because he believed that the central tenet of the Christian faith was that we must love one another.  And then I took part in the Livestreaming of Old South Church in Boston’s Sunday service and got yet another serving of love.

It struck me so powerfully – sandwiched between two good sermons was this powerful testimony  by a lay person that the lives of the people of New York State had been changed, bettered by a man who profoundly believed that it is our job to love one another.  It’s not just a pastor’s platitude.  This was a report from the trenches by someone who knows what he’s talking about. Love makes a difference.  Love saves lives.  Love makes life worth living.

Easter blessings, Pastor Virginia

John 10:1-10  (verse 4)  When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.

Tomorrow is Good Shepherd Sunday in the church calendar.  We read the 23^rd Psalm, and the Gospel story is about Jesus as the Good Shepherd.  In this tough pandemic time, I’ve been thinking about what it is to be a shepherd, because, you know, it’s not all nice days on the moors, just us and the sheep. . .  The sheep want to go left, but the good grass is to the right, and all the sheep begin to demonstrate and yell and scream, because they have a right to go left. . .   Or the sheep can’t wait to get home to the sheepfold, but if we let them run amok, they’ll run over one another, and someone (many someones) will end up dead or injured.  And it’s the job of shepherds to prevent that from happening.

It’s easy enough to see how our governors – Gov. Baker, especially – are functioning as shepherds right now, but we too have our shepherding tasks.  Because, despite the metaphor, we’re really not sheep.  But we do want to get back together; we want to see one another, we want to give and receive hugs.  We want to sit down and hear a sermon, hear our own music, sing together, and afterwards – share a cup of coffee with the friends we miss so much.

But it’s not going to happen – yet.  And we have to be shepherds to one another, to help keep us on track, so that it can happen.  Around my neighborhood, more people are out and about.  There’s more traffic on the streets.  The local ice cream stand has opened and people are lining up for cones.  You can’t eat ice cream with a mask on, you know.  The only safe way is the thoughtful way – just how will we do this, how will we handle that?

I’m paying close attention to my colleagues and to the experts, remembering always two things – first, this has never happened this way before, so advice may and should change rapidly as we gather more knowledge.  And second, if we allow our urge to be together to push us too quickly, we could all die.  That’s a sobering thought.

There’s a lot of inflammatory stuff out there on the internet these days.  People are frustrated and angry, and some folks – particularly folks who struggle with the concept of vaccinations – distrust all mainstream medical experts.  Be careful about what you read or listen to; do your best to insure that you’re listening to the best experts for  our place and time.  That’s why I listen most closely to the medical folks around the governors for Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New York.  And remember that as they learn more, their advice will evolve to deal with today’s challenges.

Here’s an example of how knowledge and suggestions are evolving.  First we were urged to sanitize hymnals between services.  Then someone suggested that instead, we should print the hymns out in the bulletins.  And now, the best suggestion is that we shouldn’t sing together, because singing projects air so far out in front of our faces that if one of us has the covid coming on, we could all be infected.

Each of us is a shepherd for our own community, whether you see your community is our church, Wareham, or your household.  We all have to make our decisions on how to be in the world based on the best knowledge we have right now.  We have to keep up with what’s being discovered.  We have to pay attention to the way our world is changing every day.

Easter blessings, Pastor Virginia