This Week At St. Matthew's Pampa March 21, 2010

"O God, whom saints and angels delight to worship in heaven: Be ever present with your servants who seek through art and music to perfect the praises offered by your people on earth; grant to them even now glimpses of your beauty, and make them worthy at length to behold it unveiled for 'evermore; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen"

To me, art in worship is an absolute necessity. Each week I sit and ponder and ponder to find appropriate words to place here. I consider myself to be a true "renaissance man" but there are a few "sacred places" in my life that cannot be altered. Art and beauty in worship are two immovable facets of my very being.

I love Deep Elum in Dallas. It has become an eclectic haven for young people in their early 20's. The music, clothes, atmosphere and general mayhem is fascinating to watch. Several of my favorite restaurants are down there and the neighborhood also attracts a very unique group of people. I love the diversity, energy and sheer "bohemian" style of it all.

I have heard practically every contemporary artist you can think of. I love the music of this planet in all of it's enormous variety and complexity.

But, there is one place that is my particular "cosmic fortress", church. There has to be one place where I can "be" , where I can focus on reality, where I am able to stay "centered" in my consciousness. This wide wonderful world is full of energy - and there will always be folks who rant against this or that. Keep me away from them. I am just wired differently and admit it. We are here on this earth for such a short time. I know that some folks will gripe, complain and see nothing but terror, horror and fear. Other folks will only see beauty, love and hope. We all have to somehow coexist.

I posses one of the largest organ music libraries imaginable and will not live long enough to use it all. However, since I have become an Anglican, I have been able to focus my energies and time and affection on the most beautiful and most inspired music I possess. As I have said, I am drawn to the music of right brain musicians like myself. It is a level of musical apprehension that is like no other medium. But, occasionally I will render some left brain music for my dear friends who need it. <grin>

The subject of art and music are in a tailspin these days. We are approaching the literal end of a cosmic cycle in 2012. It is not the end of the world, good grief! We are seeing the demise of every institution that has held humanity together for the last several hundred years. This seems to be some sort of "mythological secret". Literalists are basically unable to see the world as it really is - in all of it's diversity and ongoing complexity. Most of my life has been spent in the company of literalists. One of my favorite stories is of staff meetings at FBC Dallas - we would spend hours and hours "pitching"new ideas to "win the lost", create a new program or find new ways to "grow" our individual "programs". We would often throw out hundreds of ideas to just get folks in the door! Our modus operandi was based on the fact that we constantly discussed the symptoms rather that the problem. On occasion I would actually say, at the end of a meeting, "now that we have wasted all this time discussing a whole lot of symptoms, can we discuss the problem next week". The problem was this, we actually believed that is was OUR responsibility to SAVE people. And we probably lured a whole lot of left brain people who needed strong parameters and theological "barbed wire".

We will always need great art that is inspired and comes from right brain individuals who are the "liberals" of our time. We also need art that is created by people who live on the opposite spectrum of human thinking. Conservative practice never produced great art, medical, scientific or educational achievement. You have to be willing to think and analyze and ponder and question and seek and confront and create and adjust and re-establish and reform and critically throw out everything that becomes irrelevant and useless, but to recognize uselessness one must be able to KNOW WHAT HAS BECOME USELESS.

So to conclude this LOOONG treatise... I cannot tell you how I have anticipated playing the inspired music and setting of Ubi Caritas this week as our opening voluntary by Dom Paul Benoit . I have spoken earlier of his music. It is entrancing and sheer elegance. The offertory anthem will be the lovely Ave Verum Corpus by Edward Elgar. I cannot possibly illustrate my points better than to perform such elegant and inspired music and art as this within the unique and holy atmosphere of our worship. selah rdl