Just Breathing (the Cinematic Orchestra ft. Fontella Bass)

Oh that song is singin,' singin' into me.
Over everything I used to be.
Oh, that song is singin,' singin' into me.
Slow and sweet, it carries me...

...Breathe into me
Breathe out through me
Breathe into me. (Cinematic Orchestra)

The giggly excitement of the shepherds and kings quieted, as one little angel stood up to deliver her carefully memorized lines.  I noticed, as I watched her, that I was holding my breath; perhaps in anticipation of what would surely be the cutest thing I’d seen all year, or perhaps remembering the nerve-wrecking pageant performances of my own childhood.  

There are many moments, in this season, when we might hold our breath: walking into a room full of strangers at a Christmas party, Uncle Joe starting a political debate over turkey dinner, turning around at the Christmas eve service to see everyone’s faces lighted only by candles, hearing that strange song on the radio that grandma loved so much when she was alive…

Today’s song offers us an important reminder in these last days before Christmas: Breathe.  Just breathe, in and out. Whether in a state of anxiety, stress, fatigue, wonder, the reminder of this song is that in all of these moments there is space for us, grace for us, to just be, to dwell in each moment, to breathe. 

 

In the varied moments and emotions of these days, in the rushing and in the quiet, there is a steady grace singing over us, reminding us that Love has come for us, just as we are. Or as the angel sang “I bring good news of great joy for all the people,” not just for people who have it together, not only for those who are full of Christmas cheer, not only for those who identify as Christians, but good news for ALL people.  

At the root of this story (and of our faith) is this grace: Love came to be born among us, and seeks still to enter our lives, to be born in each of us, all of us, every day. When we are quieted from the rushing, the expectations, the judgments, when we take a moment to just dwell in this grace, what song will we hear singin’ over us?

May it be a song of love, a breath of grace, carrying us, breathing into us and out through us.

-Lindsey

As swimmers dare

to lie face to the sky

and water bears them

as hawks rest upon air

and air sustains them,

so would I learn to attain

freefall, and float

into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,

knowing no effort earns

that all-surrounding grace.

-Denise Levertov, The Avowal

Lost in Translation (Bruce Cockburn)

Dau yishyeh sta atyaun errdautau 'ndi Yisus

avwa tateh dn-deh Tishyaun stanshi teya wennyau
aha yaunna torrehntehn yataun katsyaun skehnn
Iesus Ahattonnia, Ahattonnia, Iesus Ahattonnia

As they entered and saw Jesus they praised his name,
They oiled his scalp many times, anointing his head
with the oil of the sunflower
                                                                                                              Jesus, he is born

There's a magic to each language, a special way of talking about and describing the world that can't quite translate into the framework of another tongue. We forget that this is true of the Bible as well, and so when we read the Bible in translation we miss some of the depth of meaning and texture of the original. 

The Huron Carol was originally written in Wyandot (also called Wendat) the language of the Wyandot/Huron people of the Ontario region of North America. The carol was a French missionary's way of communicating the message of Christ in terms more familiar to the context of the Wyandot people.

It speaks of Christ who has come to ransom humanity from bad spirits, and the "sky people," (whom we call angels and the Biblical Greek called "messengers") who are here to ask us to rejoice -- literally in Wyandot, to "be on top of life."

It's both sad and interesting, therefore, that this carol got turned into a sentimental hymn about imagining Christ if he were born as an Indigenous American. There's nothing wrong with imagining Christ as being born among other peoples, or honoring the specific ways in which each nation imagines Christ to be "one of us." What doesn't work is when we do this imagining on our terms, in our cultural language instead of trying to understand another's.

So sometimes it's better to dwell in the mystery of words that are foreign to our tongues, terms and ideas that don't quite make sense in translation, and recognize that it is precisely in these places of static and imperfect understanding where the true beauty and mystery of our experience of the incarnation lies.




Jesus Ahatonnia (The Huron Carol from Bruce Cockburn on Myspace.



The incarnation is, in the end, deeply cultural and deeply personal. If we truly believe Christ came for all of us, then there will be ways in which the mystery of the incarnation becomes embedded in another culture that don't make sense to us. ... or, that illuminate our own understanding of the incarnation in a way we'd never come to on our own.

In the common English translation of this carol, God is referred to as Gitchie Manitou, which is actually an Ojibway term meaning, roughly, Great Spirit. Yet the word 'manitou' isn't so easy to describe as simply, "spirit." The "character" of the word manitou is itself changeable meaning sometimes talent... attribute... spirit... potential... potency... substance... essence... mystery.

Even if in the wrong language, I like that embedded in the awkward English translation of this hymn is a word that calls us back to unknowing: the mystery of Christ, the potency he carried even into his birth, the spirit and attributes he embodied even as a young person and into adulthood.  These are the core mysteries of the incarnation, and whether they dwell with us through the medium of another tongue or our own, they offer themselves to our wonder, our reverence, and our great joy in a God who knows no boundaries of language or culture for the Incarnation speaks the native tongue of each and all in slightly different ways.

May you experience the awe of the God Who Comes in a language and culture you know as the same God Who Comes to others in ways that sometimes remain unintelligible... and yet offer the blessing of unknowing, of an experience of God outside language where the heart must guide us Home.

                                                                                              - Anna

An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.  

- Luke 2: 9-12

Tues Dec. 27 - Time Is on Our Side (Free Energy)

We'll never get any other life...

So together we make this whole.
                      - Free Energy

It may seem strange to put a pop dance song in a Christmas lineup.  There are no 'silver bells' here, but there is plenty of cowbell.  This song is basically about liberation through a great beat, singable lyrics and a will to survive - and if this theme seems a little thin to you, just hold on for a minute.

One of the reasons the A.M. Project came into existence is because I know in my own journey how many times a good song has "saved" my life.  Sometimes prayer or meditation works, sometimes worship works, sometimes a talk with a friend does the trick, but sometimes when we're lost in the circles of our own thoughts, a good song on the radio can resuscitate us back to reality.  This is no insult to more "certified holy" forms of rejuvenation; it merely acknowledges what many of us already know: music moves us.

A danceable song, lyrics that seem to speak right to us, hum-able tunes... whether we more often listen to R&B, bluegrass and soul, hip hop, dance pop, classical or jazz, those of us who love music love it because of its power to stay with us, to change us - to help us.

This is all we got tonight

This is all we got tonight

We are young and still alive

And now the time is on our side

The Advent Music Project could very easily have been a collection of Christmas classics and new Christian rock favorites and indie Christian gems where the lyrics were always clearly about Jesus and God and the Christmas miracle.  Honestly, this would have made our reflection-writing task much easier!  But we didn't take on this project to find God only where God was already obvious; we wanted to find God, Jesus, Advent and Christmas in a few places no one had thought to look yet.

As with many good pop songs, the lyrics to Free Energy are both extremely literal and also open to the listener's personal experience. 'We are young and still alive' can be a rally cry for anyone from 9 to 90, and 'now the time is on our side' can speak to each of our hopes and longings.  So if we let go of our prejudgments about what "makes" Christmas music, isn't this the kind of song we could imagine the shepherds singing on the way back to their fields - the world and its possibilities suddenly opened up before them by a baby and his family camping in a manger?

What if 'this is all we got tonight' isn't a minimalist statement, but a free-wheeling confession that all we need is what we have because we've been freed from all our fears?  What if it was better-known that the angels loved a good cowbell-enhanced rock song just as well as harps and flutes?  What if we could acknowledge that at Christmas we are free to rock, free to dance, free to dare new things, because once and for all we have been shown that time is on our side, that God is bringing about astounding acts of mercy and grace, hope and love, freedom and wisdom all around us, and is urging us to just join the chorus and sing along:

The Lord is my light and my salvation -

so why should I be afraid?

The Lord is my fortress protecting me from danger -

so why should I tremble?

                                - Psalm 27:1 (NLT)

This Christmas-tide, let us not be afraid to rock, to dance, to shout with the knowledge that, despite all brokenness and waiting, in the end we have been shown in Christ's birth that time is definitely on our side.

Thurs Dec. 15 - Carrying our Songs (Lauryn Hill and Ziggy Marley)

Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;
   incline your ears to the words of my mouth. 
I will open my mouth in a parable;
   I will utter dark sayings from of old, 
things that we have heard and known,
   that our ancestors have told us. 
We will not hide them from their children;
   we will tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the Lord, and the LORD's might,
   and the wonders that God has done. 
                          - Psalm 78:1-4

Anna: I love Bob Marley's Redemption Song, but what makes it an Advent song for me is the idea of carrying our histories that I hear in the line 'they're all I ever had...redemption songs.'  It reminds me of the preciousness of redemptive stories, especially for displaced or struggling peoples.  Bob Marley speaks from the experience of the African diaspora, and the prophets (and likely the psalmist of psalm 78) spoke for a scattered Jewish population.  It is amazing to recognize that the promises of God have represented 'all some people have ever felt they had' to carry with them through their difficult journeys.  As people who can frequently fool ourselves into forgetting our need and hunger for stories, how can we name the value of stories that name and claim us, that wrestle with us and change us, that bless us and set us free?
 

Lindsey: For me, there is something striking about the part of that same verse that says ‘Won't you help me sing / these songs of freedom?’   This request for joining voices in freedom songs speaks to me of a need for the community  to sing the song together, to tell the story together. It reminds me that we are all keepers of those communal stories.  We have a responsibility to remember the story of our community and to let it live through our voice as we pass it on. There is a collective ownership as we help each other to remember the  songs and as each singer’s place in the song adds a new dimension to it.  It's my experience, that when it comes to the stories of our communities, there's a way in which we hold the story and the story holds us…

Redemption Song (Bob Marley) sung by Lauryn Hill and Ziggy Marley

Anna: As you talk about everyone's contribution to the song, it sort of reminds me of a quilt, or the act of quilting.  I actually don't have any idea how to quilt, but from what I understand, people often used pieces of their own lives - old discarded clothes worm for a special event, etc. - so the quilt became a pieced-together history of where they'd been.  At times, the quilts would be worked on in groups, or would be heirlooms handed down to the next generation, so they were also communal.  These gathered scraps of quilting cloth often became story-telling vehicles for a family, a community… How is this also true for our Bible, which is actually a beautiful patchwork of stories, histories, poems, prophecies and letters compiled over at least a thousand years of history and movement and change?

Lindsey: I think there is a way in which each of our stories inform and reform each other; shaped, combined, set apart, by the stories to which they are 'quilted.' This is true for the interplay of our own life stories and the stories of our ancestors - those handed down orally and those given in the Bible. The story gets handed down and then retold in different and creative ways.  Connecting us to the stories, a place of identity and communal belonging, and connecting the story to us, singing wisdom or comfort or challenge into our lives: these redemption songs.

May we carry with us our redemption songs into these late Advent days; our hopes stitched, sung and scribed across cultures and times, trusting that they are answered by God's promises in Christ.

                                 - Lindsey and Anna

Wed Nov. 30 - What's Gonna' Sing Now? (Delta Spirit)

'The years are not coming the way I thought they would

I'm hoping and waiting for something to sing

Like the angels in heaven, the bones on the street,

Hoping for love to find a new voice,

The song that needs singing has already been sung before

                 - Delta Spirit, "People Turn Around"

I love it when the lyrics of a song surprise me.  Sometimes I listen just enough to think I know what a song is about, but just like realizing as a teenager that Salt n' Pepa's "shoop" was not a dance move, there are songs that aren't as obvious as they seem.

People Turn Around by Delta Spirit

I have been sure for years that this Delta Spirit song was a call to repentance.  'People turn around' sure sounds like Biblical-style repentance to me, but that's only part of the story.  Certainly there's brokenness, desperation, drug-use and violence in this song, but there's also suffering and loss, terrible surprise and loneliness.

'The bones on the street' is the line that catches me off-guard.  The speaker is 'hoping and waiting for something to sing' and looks to angels and bones for the cue. It makes me wonder: There is terrible violence that occurs in our streets every day; if the bones of the victims were left in their place, would they begin to "speak?"  To sing?  What if hymns of truth-telling or praise began to pour from the bones in mass graves now hidden beneath layers of time and our determination to forget?  

The call to "turn around" in this song isn't just a call to repentance, it's also a call to listen.

It makes me think, too, of our own bones, their aches and longings: we are all 'hoping for love to find a new voice.'  In this time of Advent, we remember and await the Love that definitively came in Jesus, but it can be hard to hear that love in our daily lives.

"Then [God] said to me: "Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel.  They say, 'Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.' ... This is what the Sovereign LORD says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel... I will put my Spirit in you and you will live..."              - Ezekiel 37:11-13

We rightly search for ways in which Love continues to find a new voice among us.  Maybe it will be the bones of the dead, the silenced and the forgotten, who first teach the words.  Maybe it will be the broken stones in the street, the moss in the shadows and the abused, abandoned lands that carry the harmony.  And maybe we will be surprised by the humming of our own bones in response.

Hey, People, turn around: did you hear that?  What's gonna' sing now?

May our ears be sharp and our feet be drawn toward the voices that are singing us back from the precipice of loss and violence -- the voices that are singing us home.

                                     - Anna

Tues Nov 29 - New Redemption Song (Over the Rhine)

   
My ancestors knew how to sing songs that would heal people. The people, I am told, would call on the gods who would teach them the song that was needed to heal an ailment, the land, the community. I frequently mourn this missing piece of my heritage, lost to generations of slavery and forced relocation.  I long for it most when I encounter brokenness for which I have no words - let alone songs - to mend.

   When I hear today’s song selection, I think of my ancestors and am captured by the idea that God could teach us a song for redemption. And on days when I am waiting, when I am telling the truth about this world, my heart longs for such a song, to sing into the disappointed silence and the broken dissonance around us.

My mouth hungers for new words, my soul sighs for the release of a melody,

Lord, give me a song!

A song to tap the toes of the old, to sway the hips of the young.

A song for the darkness and one for the cold.

A song to hold the deep sorrows.

One to sing to the mama whose son never came home

and one to wrap round the teenager who sleeps at the train station.

Teach me the lyrics to ward off evil and those that soften the hardest of hearts. Sing me the harmony that obliterates the disease of greed and the one that roots out those internalized tentacles of inferiority.

Give me a rhythm that keeps the collective memory of the peoples’ strength and an accompaniment to nourish the tender sprouts of our dreams. It is too long since we have sung together, too long since we have sung for healing, too long since we have sung redemption.

"New Redemption Song" by Over the Rhine.  
Forgive the overshare at the beginning of the video, but I love her comment about this being a blessing song.

We long to sing Lord, give us the song.



The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; The Lord will rejoice over you with gladness, will renew you in love; God will exult over you with loud singing.    -Zephaniah 3:17

                                                    -Lindsey