BALTO Resurrected?

(A Post Today January 25, 2016 | By Bethany Sollereder on Faith and Science Seeking Understanding – See more at: http://biologos.org/blogs/jim-stump-faith-and-science-seeking-understanding/do-dinosaurs-go-to-heaven#sthash.RHbUZWjI.dpuf raises the same question I did about four months ago I felt it was worth re-upping Balto. And Emily Hylden’s response: Hope of Things Not Seen ( 28 September 2015)

BALTO – An ICON of Canine Magnificence

A dear friend, and priest of the Church, recently posted a picture of herself with a statue of Balto in Central Park in the Borough of Manhattan. Using Balto as a backdrop she communicates to us all the uncanny ability to see an icon in the most ordinary of things. I suspect she knew when she posted the picture that Balto’s accomplishments were legendary and that his service brought about the inspiration for the annual sled race commonly called the “Iditarod”. I think Balto is a true Icon in that his statue represents more than a tribute to a husky sled dog. It shows something inspired by the divine. Balto did what many of us humans would shrink from doing and that is he was able to navigate near whiteout conditions (a snow storm) to deliver a serum desperately needed for a diphtheria epidemic in Nome, Alaska. With commitment and bravery Balto guided his team of sled dogs through the blinding snow to bring relief to human suffering from a dread disease. Such bravery and fortitude challenges our notions of what it means to have a “soul”. Is it possible that our theology has erred in determining that our “best friends” simply do not have a soul?

Taken from Wikipedia:

Balto (1919 – March 14, 1933) was a black and white Siberian husky sled dog who led his team on the final leg of the 1925 serum run to Nome, in which diphtheria antitoxin was transported from Anchorage, Alaska, to Nenana, Alaska, by train and then to Nome by dog sled to combat an outbreak of the disease. The run is commemorated by the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Balto was named after the Sami explorer Samuel Balto. Balto died of old age at 14.

Balto proved himself on the Iditarod trail, saving his team in the Topkok River. Balto was also able to stay on the trail in near whiteout conditions; Kaasen stated he could barely see his hand in front of his face. Balto’s team did their leg of the run almost entirely in the dark. The final team and its sledder were asleep when Balto and Kaasen made it to the final stop, so Kaasen decided to continue on. At Nome, everybody wanted to thank Kaasen at first, but he suggested giving fame to Balto as well.

May God look with favor on those animals in service to mankind especially our canines. Who among you could perform such a feat?

As for me, my, now deceased, springer spaniel was one of the most loyal and loving of creatures. May she rest in peace. An may God have mercy on our souls.

AARON COPLAND -Son of Lithuanian immigrants and the Dean of American Composers

This evening we honor Aaron Copland an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. Instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, in his later years he was often referred to as “the Dean of American Composers” and is best known to the public for the works he wrote in the 1930s and 1940s in a deliberately accessible style often referred to as “populist” and which the composer labeled his “vernacular” style. Works in this vein include the ballets Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid and Rodeo, his Fanfare for the Common Man and Third Symphony. The open, slowly changing harmonies of many of his works are archetypical of what many people consider to be the sound of American music, evoking the vast American landscape and pioneer spirit. In addition to his ballets and orchestral works, he produced music in many other genres including chamber music, vocal works, opera and film scores.

It should be noted that as part of the Appalachian Spring Suite Copland incorporated an Amish hymn titled The Lord of the Dance which conveys the unique perspective of Amish worship giving the piece an authenticity. This hymn forms the supporting pillar of the piece and is transposed by Copland into a variety of forms and tempos not the least of which is a dramatic rendering by a brass choir with counter punctual melodies.

Copland was born in Brooklyn into a Conservative Jewish family of Lithuanian origins, the last of five children, on November 14, 1900. While emigrating from Russia to the United States, Copland’s father, Harris Morris Copland, Anglicized his surname “Kaplan” to “Copland” while living and working in Scotland for two to three years to pay for the boat fare to the US. Copland was however unaware until late in his life that the family name had been Kaplan, and his parents never told him this.

As with George Gershwin this son of immigrants developed a form and style of music which came to be considered distinctly American. Please think about what we would have missed had Aaron Copland’s parents be denied admission to the United States?

Text is a rewriting of the text of a Wikipedia Article about Aaron Copland. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Copland for more detail.

Art: The portrait of Aaron Copland is taken from the same Wikipedia article.

Post Script: It should be noted that Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein were fast friends and Mr. Copland trusted “Lenny” implicitly with the interpretation of his work. Many of Mr. Copland’s pieces were premiered by Mr. Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra while Mr. Bernstein was the conductor of that great orchestra. The premieres took place first at Carnegie Hall on 7^th Avenue in New York City and later at the Avery Fisher Hall of Lincoln Center located at 10 Lincoln Center Plaza,also in New York City. if you should find yourself in either of these places say a prayer of thanksgiving for all the blessings these great buildings have bestowed on American art.

GEORGE GERSHWIN – AMERICAN COMPOSER WITH IMMIGRANT PARENTS

Given the recent exhortation from the Holy Father concerning our dealings with immigration, I thought it would be fitting to publish a series honoring American composers whose families were but one or two generations from the status of “immigrant”. Recently an American diplomat made the statement in an interview on the PBS news hour that historically immigration has proved to be overall a great positive to our country and not the great negative is has been portrayed to be by recent politicians seeking votes. Those portraying it in that way have fallen into a form of hate mongering reminiscent of segregation times and they need to be asked the question an old mentor, J. William Fulbright, asked of Joseph P. McCarthy during his communist witch hunts, “Have you no decency, sir?”

Tonight my Pandora station surrounded me with the chords of a Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin. The piece opens with a daunting clarinet solo in the form of what musicians refer to as a glissando. It is hard to describe the sound of a glissando but as a former tympanist I can say it is similar to the sound made by the tympani when the tympanist engages the pedal to stretch the heads of the tympani to elevate the pitch from something in the range of a base cleft B flat to a D or F. The effect is rather dramatic and gains your immediate attention. Interestingly Gershwin did not originally intend to have the opening passage of Rhapsody in Blue played as a glissando but rather as a “clarinet trill followed by a legato 17-note rising diatonic scale.” But during a rehearsal Paul Whiteman’s virtuoso clarinetist, Ross Gorman, rendered the upper portion of the scale as a captivating (and fully trombone-like) glissando: Gershwin heard it and insisted that it be repeated in the performance. Paul Whiteman was a famous jazz band leader who had commissioned the work .

George Gershwin was born of Russian and Lithuanian Jewish descent. His grandfather, Jakov Gershowitz, had served for 25 years as a mechanic for the Imperial Russian Army to earn the right of free travel and residence as a Jew. He retired near Saint Petersburg. A detailed account of his background can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gershwin.

The music of George Gershwin , the descendant of immigrants, has come to exemplify American music through pieces like Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris , and the opera Porgy and Bess which was based on a story by South Carolina’s own DuBose Heyward.

At one point in his highly successful career Gershwin approached Maurice Ravel the famous French composer and asked Ravel to teach him the classical style of composition. Ravel rejected Gershwin’s request and in the rejection letter he stated “Why become a second-rate Ravel when you’re already a first-rate Gershwin?” Ravel and many of the prominent classical composers of the day truly appreciated Gershwin’s jazz-like style and wished they could themselves emulate it.

In a future post we will explore Maurice Ravel, the quintessential Frenchman, and in my opinion the French musical Picasso, in connection with his work titled “Bolero’.

Ponder what we would have missed had Gershwin’s family been barred from admission to the United States.

Saint Matthew the Outsider

As a tribute to Saint Matthew the Apostle, a tax collector of another era, I offer another of Pablo Picasso’s works during his blue period, the Two Sisters. I am not sure why but there is something about the paintings from this period of Picasso’s work that hold a fatal allure for me and stirs in me something that no other works of art have, so far, been able to match. I think it may have something to do with, as one website puts it, [1] the fact that his ever returning theme is the desolation of social outsiders, whether they were prisoners, beggars, circus people or poor or despairing people in general.” A good friend and clerical mentor is very fond of another work that exemplifies this thematic, that is “El Loco” also pictured above. Talk about the picture of an outsider, I have actually seen people on the streets of Columbia closely resembling this figure.

This appeal to me may also have something to do with the fact that, for some reason, I have always felt like a “social outsider” though because of my background and socio-economic status I have absolutely no reason to feel that way. And another factor may be that, one cannot walk outside one’s door these days in Columbia, South Carolina without encountering social outsiders in droves. But then again, perhaps, my religious belief and veneration of Jesus the Christ has something to do with this also because Jesus was the quintessential outsider. He exemplified a selfless prophetic lifestyle that none of us will ever be able to totally understand much less attain. His rejection of the conventional is exemplified in the Gospel prescribed for our remembrance of Saint Matthew today. In Matthew 9:9-13 Jesus passes Matthew, a tax collector for the Roman government, and says to him “Follow me” and Matthew by some force, which I am sure he did not fully understand rationally, leaves his bench and follows him. Then the passage recounts that as he, Jesus, sat at table many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples. And then the Pharisees who were known to be very upright and pious asked a disciple “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? And Jesus hearing this question answered that “Those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick. … “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

So in his grief Picasso’s sight was opened and he, perhaps unknowingly, turned his art to exemplifying the “outsiders” of this world, those who are the sick, and those who are sinners in conventional eyes. These paintings came from a grief that touched his very soul as he raised up through his art the rejected of humanity. And, as he venerated the outsiders of humanity he venerated the Christ himself.

As for the Two Sisters I quote from the website:

A significant influence on Picasso’s blue period paintings was his visit to a woman’s prison called St. Lazare in Paris, where nuns served as guards. The Two Sisters is an example of how Picasso used to mix daily reality with Christian iconography. The posture and gestures of the women were derived from the way artists depict the visitation, the color blue symbolizing Mary, the Mother of God. The meeting, or visitation, refers to the meeting between Mary, Mother of God and the mother of John the Baptist.

So as we enjoy the works of this great artist let us call to mind the outsiders of this world he sought to venerate through his work and of whom not the least was our Lord himself. Let us open our eyes and our heart to those who are outsiders to ourselves as we can never be sure when or in whom we might encounter our Lord himself.

[1] Art and Qutations attributed to Pablo Picasso, Paintings Quotes and Birography http://www.pablopicasso.org/blue-period.jsp

THOSE WHOM YOU ARE CALLED TO LOVE – Revisited

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith as to remove mountains but have not love, I gain nothing. Saint Paul’s First Letter to the Church at Corinth Chapter 13 verses 1-3. (RSV N.O. Annotated)

Recently a good friend and highly admired priest pronounced his blessing at the end of a noonday Mass using the phrase and “to those whom you are called to love.” That phrase “those who you are called to love” caught my ear immediately and started rattling around in my head and has continued to do so for the past few days like a bomb exploding in my head. I believe my padre friend has made a very important distinction to which we should all pay close attention.

At first one might think that those “whom you are called to love” are simply those who are closest to you whether by family relation, friendship, or romantic affiliation. But no, I don’t think so. We love our family and the objects of our passions automatically and naturally. But for those “whom we are called to love” we are called to love because of another set of commands which are not “of our own making” and are somewhat counter-intuitive. As has been pointed out ad nauseam we live in an age of all-encompassing narcissism and incessant sexual obsessiveness. We worship physical attractiveness and material success. We seek to satisfy self to the exclusion of seeking to satisfy community. As Professor Mark Edmundson of the University of Virginia points out in his book: Self and Soul a Defense of Ideals:[1]

In a culture that has become progressively more skeptical and materialistic, the desires of the individual self stand supreme… We spare little thought for the great ideals that once gave life meaning and worth.

As one review of this book points out Edmundson guides readers back to the ancient sources of the three great ideals: courage, contemplation, and compassion. Translated into Christian idiom we could call these principles spirit (the spirit to do what is right), prayer, and love.

So we are, according to the padre, called to love all men and women despite their likeableness, or lack thereof. To love is not the same as to like, he says, and loving the unlikeable is hard work. And we are called to especially love those in trouble, need, sorrow, sickness or any other adversity to use the Prayer Book language. The homeless, the sick, those in emotional distress are our care and delight however unlikeable we may find them to be. That is not to say we cannot love those we like. A result of this calling is that we actually begin liking those we once did not like because we now see them as people and not members of a classification. This call takes us out of our present culture and requires that we move beyond what is comfortable, what is socially acceptable, and what we might find self-fulfilling, at least at first.

This calling requires the application of another very familiar admonition from Saint Paul also found in his first letter to the Corinthian Church:

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant and rude. Love does not demand its own way; it is not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. I Corinthians verses 4 – 7 (RSV NO Annotated)

However, self-fulfillment has a way of changing as we grow in the spirit and upon reaching a certain level we find ourselves taking great delight in stepping back and seeing our sacrifices bear fruit in others. Some of my most rewarding experiences have been making a sacrifice which benefits another directly in a way that they never know that the sacrifice was even made. Parents experience this all the time as they give up time and treasure for their children so as to see them prosper and thrive.

Loving all men and women regardless of who or what they are sounds a bit “impossible” and I must admit I fall far short of this ideal. In another post, I once related a story about myself and a friend who were confronted with the request of a homeless man for money. My friend employed the same tactic I have always used and that is to tell the homeless person that I simply have no money. But this time I was moved by a sermon just preached by a gifted cleric whose words echoed in my brain like a voice over in a motion picture. I yielded to the voice out of respect for my priest and gave the man the money. His reaction gave me so much pleasure and peace of mind that I realized what I had been missing all these years. Such moments call to mind the writings and sayings of such saints as Dame Julian of Norwich and Saint Augustine which emphasize that out primary delight is in our return to the creator from which we have come. Love of self and material fulfillment pale to insignificance compared to the peace and joy we experience when we move closer to God. Some weeks later I saw that same man at the homeless breakfast and we have since become fast friends. He is a truly remarkable man who I have come to like, as well as love.

More than likely we Christians will not be able to change the vast emphasis our culture places on self-gratification. However, we can change ourselves and seek to restore to our lives the great principles of courage, contemplation, and compassion or rather spirit, prayer and love. It will not be easy and it will definitely be hard work.

This brings us to a graphic illustration of one who employed these principles and cwas able to bring about great things. Saint Hildegard whose feast was yesterday September 17^thwas a mystic, poet, composer, dramatist, doctor, and scientist. And it should be noted that she died in 1179. In those days women were to be “seen” and not “heard” or at least not heard very much. Hildegard knew that her work in all these areas would meet stiff implacable resistance and yet she put on the armor of God and sallied forth. In the end she became counsel and correspondent to kings, queens, abbots and abbesses, archbishops and popes.

From childhood she experienced dazzling spiritual visions. At 43 a voice commanded her to tell what she saw. She began an outpouring of extraordinarily original writings illustrated by unusual and wondrous illuminations. These works abound with feminine imagery of God and God’s creative activity.

In 1147 Bernard of Clairvaux recommended her first book of visions, Scivias, (which comes from the Latin phrase “Scito vias Domini which translates to English as know the ways of the lord) to Pope Eugenius III leading to papal authentication at the Synod of Trier.[2]

She carved out four preaching missions in northern Europe which at the time was unprecedented activity for a woman.

She practiced medicine, focusing on women’s needs, published treatises on natural science and philosophy, and wrote liturgical drama.

In her play titled The Play of the Virtues, virtues were personified and the actors playing each virtue sang their part. In contrast, the devil, who was condemned to live without music, could only speak his part. Hildegard believed that music was essential to worship.

Thus, despite the enormous challenge of living in a world accustomed to male governance Hildegard set about the hard work of converting that prejudice and converting her world through converting herself through the exercise of commanding spiritual authority based on her visions and her considerable political astuteness.

We should first open our hearts and minds to God. and his son Jesus letting him come in even if through a dream or vision. Then hold fast to that vision and begin the hard work of converting our lives to be governed by courage, contemplation, and compassion.

Art: 1955 Sketch by Pablo Picasso titled Don Quixote. This work is offered here to illustrate the countercultural nature of our quest to use courage, contemplation, and compassion as the foundation for our lives. Don Quixote was a figure from a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes and it follows the adventures of a nameless hidalgo who reads so many chivalric romances that he loses his sanity and decides to set out to revive chivalry, undo wrongs, and bring justice to the world, under the name Don Quixote. (Text attributable to Wikipedia)

[1] Harvard University Press, Cambridge (2015).

[2] Scivias is an illustrated work by Hildegard von Bingen, completed in 1151 or 1152, describing 26 religious visions she experienced. It is the first of three works that she wrote describing her visions, the others being Liber vitae meritorum and De operatione Dei (also known as Liber divinorum operum). The title comes from the Latin phrase “Scito vias Domini” (“Know the Ways of the Lord”).The book is rather long – over 150,000 words, or what would be about 600 pages of printed text. The book is illustrated by 35 miniature illustrations, more than that are included in her two later books of visions. From Wikipedia .

THOSE WHOM YOU ARE CALLED TO LOVE

This calling requires the application of another very familiar admonition from Saint Paul also found in his first letter to the Corinthian Church:

She carved out four preaching missions in northern Europe which at the time was unprecedented activity for a woman.

She practiced medicine, focusing on women’s needs, published treatises on natural science and philosophy, and wrote liturgical drama.

[1] Harvard University Press, Cambridge (2015).

RENOVATION, RENEWAL AND REBIRTH

These past two days my wife and I have been privileged to be visitors on the Duke University Campus. As is our custom we spent times during breaks and at the conclusion of our business walking and exploring. One of our rituals has always been to visit Duke Chapel to marvel at its architecture and make our prayers. This time something was different. Duke Chapel was closed for renovation and repair. What struck me immediately was the scaffolding set up around the outside of the Chapel which made its appearance even more medieval than the last time I saw it. The picture above shows the view from the Bryan Center containing the University Bookstore. However disappointed we were at not being able to pilgrimage into the Chapel we were blessed by a visit to the Divinity School and its wonderful chapel (pictured above) and its bookstore.

Later, as I contemplated our visit it struck me that the life of a great building is much like our own life. From time to time we have to shut down, and renovate. Sometimes we have to renovate our bodies through healthier eating and exercise and sometimes we have to renovate our minds through contemplation and prayer to clear away things and regain a sense of connectiveness to friends, and family, but most importantly to God. We should never be afraid to face uncertainty and doubt which is cast upon us by the chances and changes of this life and to do so we must sometimes renovate. The great thing is after renovation comes rebirth and a relaunching of our selves back into the fray with renewed vigor and assurance that God is always with us even when we think he has abandoned us.

In the morning office for yesterday, the day we visited, the thirty day lectionary called for the reading of psalm 56. Verse 12 struck me as particularly applicable to the discussion of renewal and rebirth:

12 For you have rescued my soul from death and my feet

From stumbling,*

That I may walk before God in the light of the living.

And in the Old Testament lesson, from the First Book of the Kings (18:41-19:8) Elijah is thrown into a panic when Jezebel sends him a note threatening his life which brings him to proclaim “O Lord, take away my life; for I am no better than my fathers”. But, rather than take away his life God sends an angel not to chastise or punish but to encourage him to arise and eat to prepare for the renewal of his journey.

So when necessary renovate and prepare for rebirth. God has not abandoned you and he stands ready to accompany you as you continue on with your journey.

Note: If you click on the picture of the Chapel encased in the scaffolding you should notice the juxtaposition of a big black pickup truck against the medieval like Chapel. I find this rather apt for this day and age.

AGING AND THE SUFFERING OF HUMANITY- A Meditation

I offer up Picasso’s “Old Guitarist” tonight as tonight it speaks to me in a special way and begs to be heard. This piece is a good example of Picasso’s “Blue Period” (1901-1904). The term “Blue Period” actually caries a double meaning here as during this period Picasso tended to paint stark flat single images in blues and blue greens but also, during this period, he was grieving the loss of a young artist friend who had committed suicide and that grief is very evident in the work. Some art historians feel that his next period, his rose period, signaled the end of his depression and grief.

The Art Institute of Chicago website contains an excerpt from The Essential Guide which states that Picasso presented this painting as a “timeless expression of human suffering”. As I contemplate it tonight it begs me to relate the concept of human suffering with the inescapable hold upon which aging and old age has or will have on us all. It calls to mind the motion picture I recently watched about an old and blind priest who agrees to take in a woman who had been convicted of murder so that she might serve as his assistant in answering letters from parishioners. The woman is clearly very resentful at first and refuses to perform the work for which she has been paroled. In her resentment she decides to leave her new home taking with her money stolen from the old priest. But in the process of preparing to leave she discovers a large pile of old letters stacked under the priest’s bed and she realizes that the letters received each day from the country postman are not “new” letters, but letters which have been “recycled” by the postman so that the priest might continue to think he is still continuing to receive letters from his now non-existent flock. This triggers deep within her a rebirth of her sense of compassion and she decides not to leave but rather to join in “playing the game” to keep the old man happy. Then, the director of the film presents to us a scene which each and every one of us will face at some point in our life. Laboring under the misapprehension that he has a wedding to perform the old priest walks to his now abandoned church and tries mightily to carry out his usual duties in the absence of a congregation only to find he is simply too frail and too blind to do so. He is so broken by the experience he ends up writhing on the floor of the church in agony. His agony and absolute devastation is so heart rending it is reminiscent of the Crucifixion itself. Then comes the Resurrection, albeit still in this lifetime, as in a later scene, the parolee opens up one of the old letters only to discover that it is a letter from her own sister whose husband she had killed. In the letter the sister describes to the priest the circumstances of the murder which occurred in an effort to protect the sister from a surely fatal beating at the hands of her husband . The sister begs the priest to intervene and to save the parolee from a life in prison pleading the truly good nature of the parolee. The parolee is now brought to tears, breaks down and expresses her gratitude to the old man. And, it is at that moment that the Father passes into eternity having received, for one last time, the gratification of having redeemed a fellow human being.

So as we age and become old guitarists we share in the common suffering of all mankind. We find to our dismay that we can no longer perform the duties we have been trained to perform, or called to perform, and it is a real shock. So like the old priest it is then incumbent upon us to keep the faith in the knowledge that time has a way of bending and that which was can and will become that which is and even that will be transformed by God in the end. We, therefore, must always remember what we have done for others and never forget our true worth in the sight of God.

For additional reading click the link below:

The Old Guitarist – Chicago Institute of Art

Comments on the Psalter and the Saint – 10 September – Feast of Alexander Crummell

In the thirty day lectionary of the Book of Common Prayer psalms 50, 51 and 52 are appointed to be read at Morning Prayer on the tenth day. In preparation for the office today I have reviewed the origins and purposes of each of these psalms as stated in the footnotes of the New Oxford Annotated Bible, Revised Standard Version, Oxford University Press, 1977 along with a biography of Alexander Crummell whose life and ministry is venerated today.

Psalm 50 is called a “liturgy of divine judgement”. In v 1–6 God is coming to judge his people and in 7-23 to arraign the nation. In 8-13 the people have brought sacrifices in abundance but this is not what God wants. In 14-15 His demand rather is for thanksgiving and prayer. In 16 -21 the people have violated God’s law by tolerating evil and indulging in slander.

This psalm contains a number of examples of parallelism, or thought rhyme, which is characteristic of Hebrew poetry particularly in the psalms. Verse 1 exhibits the synonymous form of parallelism which involves the use of two lines or stichs in a kind of reflection one of another. It is a way of expressing the same thought in a different way:

The Lord, the God of God’s has spoken,

he has called the earth from the rising of the sun to

its setting

The synonymous form is also demonstrated in several of the verses from 8 through 21.

Psalm 51 is a Prayer for healing and moral renewal. 1-2 is a prayer for deliverance. While v.8 sets out that the psalmist’s problem is illness the thrust is aimed at restoration of moral, rather than merely physical health. 3-5 contains a confession of the psalmist that his nature has been sinful even from the moment of conception. 6-12 contains a renewed prayer for deliverance. V.7 contains a reference to a ceremony involving sprinkling but as the note points out only in the metaphorical sense. In 13-17 the vow is to instruct others and to praise and serve God rather than to offer sacrifice. V. 14 contains a prayer for the delivery from bloodguiltiness, or rather, death. 18-19 is a later addition designed to modify the anti-sacrificial spirit of the pre-ceding verses and to adapt the psalm to liturgical use

Again if you look at v. 18 there is a perfect example of synonymous parallelism:

The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit;

a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Psalm 52 shows God’s imminent judgement against a tyrant (a lament)which is a prayer for deliverance in the form of a denunciation of the psalmist’s enemy. 1-4: sets out the character of the psalmist’s enemy. 5-7: Retribution is about to befall the psalmist’s enemy. 8: The psalmist is confident of his own deliverance. 9: sets out the vow.

Alexander Crummell

Priest, 1898

Alexander Crummell was born in New York City on March 3, 1819. He was a man who struggled against racism all of his life. According to Holy Women, Holy Men as a young man he was driven out of an academy in New Hampshire, dismissed as a candidate for Holy Orders in New York and rejected for admittance to general Seminary. Ordained in 1844 as a priest in the Diocese of Massachusetts, he left for England after being excluded from participating in diocesan convention.

After receiving a degree from Cambridge he went to Liberia as a missionary. The African race, Crummell believed possessed a “warm, emotional and impulsive energy” which had been corrupted by oppression. He felt that the Episcopal Church was an especially fitting place for the spiritual regeneration of African Americans due its emphasis on rational and moral discipline.

His ministry consisted of his mission to and about Liberia. He felt that I Liberia a model Christian Republic was possible. He envisioned a combination of European education and technology with traditional African communal culture under-girded by a national Episcopal Church led by a black bishop.

Despite his efforts to establish a national Episcopal Church in Liberia political opposition and loss of funding forced him to return to the United States. He then concentrated his efforts on establishing a strong urban presence of independent black congregations that would be centers of worship, education and social service. When Southern Bishops proposed that a separate missionary district for black congregations be created Crummell created a national convocation to fight the proposal from which sprang the Union of Black Episcopalians.

With his ministry spanning more than half a century Crummell and ranging over three continents Crummell labored to prepare his people and to build institutions that would serve them and provide scope for the exercises of their gifts in leadership and creativity. Crummell’s perception was that the Church transcended racism and the limited vision of its leaders. He had an unfailing belief in the goodness and greatness of black people which is the legacy of this African-American pioneer.

Love – The Power to Create, and the Power to Destroy – A Meditation

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence. Martin Luther King Jr.

On this Labor Day I offer a meditation on a piece of art created by Pablo Picasso. I wanted to offer something different from the usual depictions of laborers in the fields, or factories and in researching my art files I came across an article in the Wall Street Journal, of all places, titled “Picasso’s Labor of Love”. The article is a review of an exhibit of Picasso’s work at the Gagosian Gallery on West 21st Street in New York in April of 2011 which was called “Picasso and Marie-Therese: L’Amour Fou”. I The exhibit includes the sketch shown above which is a depiction by the artist of Marie-Thérèse Walter a beautiful young woman who became his mistress and served as an inspiration to him. It is interesting to note that Picasso was forty five at the time and Marie seventeen. The article goes on to discuss the various women in Picasso’s life who had inspired him in his various periods of prodigious creativity. In reading this article it occurred to me that the power to create is a direct result of the power of love. Unfortunately, the reciprocal of this power is the power to destroy. Perhaps that is what is so attractive about love, and being in love, as there always a terrible risk at the beginning, middle, and end of loving someone that destruction will occur. And, as human beings we are fatally attracted to risk as if to an irresistible potion. But, there is a place where love is always creative, always inspiring, and never destructive. That place is beyond our reach in this world, but despite that, we struggle to bring it here and to remake our world in its image. I offer this to honor, praise, and to dignify all artists, past, present, and future whose work uplifts humanity. I also offer it to all who have loved their fellowman in such a way as to uplift those whom they love and who, by doing so, brings our world closer to that heavenly shore toward which we all travel.

To see the entire article: WSJ: Picasso’s Labor of Love