Rock of Ages, rediscovered

Normally in my church choir--Episcopal--we sing mass settings, psalm settings, chant, motets, and anthems of various genres.   Of course, we sing hymns as well.   Last night during the first half of rehearsal we had sung a recently composed mass, tonal (anchored in a structure of tones) but not without dissonance.  All the mass settings we rehearsed were of that flavor.

But during our break, our director
was messing around with the well-worn Protestant hymn, "Rock of Ages." Anyone who's been to a Baptist or Presbyterian or Methodist church, or listened to gospel or country music, knows it well:

Rock of ages, cleft for me
Let me hide myself in thee.


The melody even sounds rocking (that is, the rhythm of someone rocking back and forth in a rocking chair):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM7gt_cSxjw

In searching YouTube for clips of "Rock of Ages,"  I discovered that many famous contemporary singers, such as Amy Grant and Vince Gill, have "covered" it.   I was surprised at how widely it's been covered, in gospel, country, operatic, and choral a cappella (unaccompanied) style.  I was surprised at how much I liked some of those covers.

At my grandparents' Baptist church in Morganton, North Carolina in the 1970s, and at my own Presbyterian church, I remember it sung differently:  with lots of slides and plenty of diphthongs (slurry lazy vowels) here and there, with a strident male voice and a painfully vibratoed female voice sticking out like twigs from a bunch of kindling wood.  Kind of messy.  People were happy to sing the easy melody, and almost shouted it.

Rock of AAAEEEeeges, cleft for me

Let me huIIIIIeee-ed mahsef in thee.

Playing it during our break last night, Robert improvised a non-traditional accompaniment on the piano, sliding away from anchoring tonic-dominant chords toward sevenths and ninths, sort of jazzy, the chords making you laugh because they were unexpected.  (He's very good at that).  But Robert's tempo was reverent, not rushing, lingering to capture the hymn's words.  Hiding oneself in Jesus the Rock isn't something that needs rushing.  You could be in that crevice for a long, long time.

I love singing music I don't know, sight-reading every week.   I love singing lines that express the text.  I feel, in my marrow, the bloom and wane of a long note held out.  The dissonant grating of two notes against each other, stretched until they beg for resolution, thrills me when I get to sing that suspension.  Purcell or Monteverdi or Handel's possibilities for ornamentation--those improvised extra notes that you toss in once you get the hang of where they can go--make me jump and tingle to do them.   After twenty years of early-music and other classical singing, I've found the sounds that fulfill me.

But hearing Rock of Ages, out of context and as funny-incongruous as it was, filled me with something deeper: my childhood.  That Southernness that I tried to rid myself of is still there in hearing Rock of Ages, even more me than a long gorgeous high phrase from 16th-century John Taverner.  I laugh that hymns like Rock of Ages, and Just As I Am, are still me, but they are.  And damn it, singing them still comes out more easily than singing that swoon-worthy high solo from the Taverner mass.  Damn, I say.  Rock of Ages comes flooding back just as easily as those 1970s disco lyrics lying dormant in my brain, as easy as a knee reflex kick.   There's none of the striving and nervous excitement of wondering whether that high A in the Taverner will come out.

What is it about music when it's associated with an event, with a place, a dance, your grandparents, music firmly implanted even if you don't like it? ("Just As I Am" is another story).  Our childhoods are complex tangles of doing things because the people dear to you do them.   I sang those hymns because they were what we had.  They are what I was given, along with the Southern accent and the humidity and the inferiority complex.

I'm grateful to be reminded of what's buried, lying dormant, in me.  It often happens most clearly through music.

Eleanor Roosevelt the cleric? Who knew!

I am lucky to sing in a wonderful church choir at St. Paul's - K Street Episcopal Church in Washington, DC.   We sing enough music to fill a concert, every Sunday, all year.  Although I've been singing my whole life -- sacred music in particular -- I'm constantly amazed at how little of this music I've sung before.  There are new composers, new pieces, every week.

Last Sunday, we sang an anthem by Timothy Hagy (b. 1958) with a text by Eleanor Roosevelt.  It was called, simply enough, "A Prayer of Eleanor Roosevelt."  I don't know more than what's commonly known about Eleanor Roosevelt:  her strength, her resilience in the face of all her husband's weaknesses and challenges; her travels, her independence of mind.

But this: she wrote prayers, too.  Hagy, the composer, set it beautifully and simply, without accompaniment, so that the words were made prominent.  In this season of Lent where (sometimes confounding) scripture abounds, Eleanor's words spoke to me with immediacy.  Here they are:

A Prayer of Eleanor Roosevelt

Our Father, who hast set a restlessness in our hearts and made us seekers after that which we can never fully find, forbid us to be satisfied with what we make of life.  Draw us from base content and set our eyes on far off goals.   Keep us at tasks too hard for us that we may be driven to thee for strength.

Deliver us from fretfulness and self-pitying; make us sure of the good we cannot see and of the hidden good in the world  Open our eyes to simple beauty all around us and our hearts to the loveliness men hide from us because we do not try to understand them.  Save us from ourselves and show us a vision of the world made new.

Just putting that out there . . .  it all speaks to me.

Mes anciens élèves sont généreux et généreuses . . . et vous?

http://fnd.us/c/3EzS3
Springs of Peace: Clean water

My former students--all of them, young men and young women--are generous and determined.

A group of young women who are now in grad school or are working have created a charity for their classmate and my former student at the school in India, Sylvia Gift Nabukeera, who was found dead in Nairobi in June 2011 as she was traveling back to her home in Uganda.

My former students have worked tirelessly through their grief to make something positive out of the death of a friend.   Sylvia was generous and determined and powerful, too.   She had started an initiative--Springs of Peace (click link above)-- to raise money to bring clean water to people in her home area.   This may sound like an easy thing to us in the West, who drink water from city-wide sanitation systems that we assume we can rely upon.   In rural areas in much of the world, women walk for miles every day, often accompanied by their young children or carrying a baby,  to bring back water for their families.  They carry it in a huge jug balanced on their head, a stunning and beautiful picture in itself.  But this keeps women in a place of almost Biblical servitude; of course, it also means that families rely on women and girls for water.   Finding, and competing for, clean water in an area with no distribution system is an all-consuming job which keeps women and girls from education or from tasks which might earn them a small living.

There are many effects of the lack of clean, readily available drinking water.  I am no expert.  My former students have educated themselves, though, and some are working in these areas.  They know.   You can trust them with your money!

There are two more days in this month of February to give to Springs of Peace.   We are over 90% there to raising $10,000.  If Springs of Peace can raise this amount by the end of February, a donor will match that amount.   This means work can get started on Sylvia's dream.

Sylvia was full of love:  for people who didn't have much, for her friends, for those around her, for every new day she was given.   Please consider a donation, large or tiny or in between, to help the people Sylvia knew receive the love she wanted to give them.

One of the saddest things I've ever seen

It's hard to know what to say, watching former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head at her own political rally two years ago, now pleading with her former colleagues for laws to promote responsible gun use and curb gun violence.   She is partially blind, needs help to walk, and is very slowly re-learning how to speak.   Today, her little girl's voice and child's hand-gestures implored members of Congress to Be bold and Act now.   I felt guilty thinking, as I watched her painful testimony, that her prepared speech and its delivery had the look of a Saturday Night Live sketch except it was much too real and sad.    Gabby Giffords will never be her former self.   She will probably always speak in a child's voice, with a child's hand gestures, to people who sympathise but have no empathy for her situation.

And this is because of a crazy twenty-something guy with a gun.   Yes, it's true that we need better mental health care in this country.   It's true that in some cases, it should be easier to commit someone showing dangerous, unhealthy behavior to a mental institution.

But Wayne La Pierre of the NRA (National Rifle Association)  would have us believe that knowing the  whereabouts of severely mentally ill people, keeping some of them in a national database, is fine while keeping a national database of gun owners is not.   It infringes on our right to privacy; to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

He asserts that keeping guns out of the hands of criminals is all we have to do, so we won't infringe on the rights of lawful gun owners just trying to protect their families.

To me, the first statement is hypocritical and the second is simplistic.   Because when does a criminal become a criminal?   Maybe he's already committed some criminal act before he buys a gun at a gun show.  OR, maybe she doesn't become a criminal until she takes the gun out of her purse one day and shoots someone in the grocery store parking lot.   Maybe he's always been a mild-mannered dentist until one day he gets depressed or angry, slides the gun out of the drawer, and shoots his wife and children.

Criminals may be able to get guns, and that's "criminal,"   but using a one's own legally bought gun when you've never used one before can make you a criminal.  It usually does make you a criminal, immediately.   Charged with murder, attempted murder, or something else.

So I hope we can get beyond the simplistic, the hypocritical in this issue and pass legislation that's practical, based in public health and common sense.  Guns are too easy a tool for killing and injuring people.

Foreign fallacy

I watched the Obama - Romney debate last night on foreign policy.   I didn't catch onto Romney's strategy until I listened to the PBS commentators afterwards:  Romney was trying to be calm, agreeable,  less aggressive, even the hurt puppy, to appeal to women.  He wanted to come across as someone who isn't scary, isn't ready to go to war at the drop of a hat, in order to appeal to women who evidently worry more about that than men.  (And perhaps that's true).

I'm voting for Obama anyway, but I have to say I thought he came across as more personally connected to foreign policy than to some of the other issues they've discussed.  (Except health care).  I was thinking about why it appeared this way to me, and I've concluded this:  So much of the news in the last four years has been economic:  to tax or not, to bail out or not, to spend or not, the price of houses, how many people are out of work, the percentage of increase or decrease in unemployment and home sales . . . numbers, numbers, numbers.    This isn't completely the case, of course:  some news stories focus on human examples of these economic realities.  But more than ever in the last four years, I find I can't listen to the news on the radio for more than 5 or 10 minutes, because it's so much about numbers and financial institutions and strategy.

Obama seemed very personally connected to foreign policy last night, because he's been living it the last four years.  He's been living all the issues--economic, environmental, health care--but health care is (at least in the news, often when it's discussed) completely intertwined with money, too.

But, as I was pondering why the president seemed to take all the issues so personally last night, why he glowered at Romney as he realized that Romney was just going to repeat everything he said about foreign policy because he didn't want to appear scary--as I was thinking about this, I realized that foreign policy, more directly than any other issue a president tackles, involves people dying.  President Obama--anyone who's been in that office after four years--has seen people die on his watch, die as a direct result of him sending them to war, or of the results of what other countries do because of our relationships with them.  People dying is not necessarily the US's fault, and there's not necessarily anything the president can do to prevent our citizens, our soldiers, or other countries' citizens from dying, but that's very often what the stakes are in foreign policy.

I thought of all the students and faculty I've worked with, from the Middle East and all over the world, and how they would react to the unmistakable assumed superiority of the US that both candidates projected.   How we arbitrarily say that Iran must never have nuclear weapons and Pakistan, who already has 100, can't have any more.  Nobody mentioned India, an enormous presence (and nuclear-armed too, right?)  I understand that these issues aren't so simple; that the nuclear arms race was called a race for a reason, and I can accept arbitrariness in who's nuclear-armed and who isn't.  

But do WE always get to decide?  Really, the US gets to be the decider of these things?  I guess a candidate for the US presidency can't say otherwise.   And if I'm honest, having grown up in this country it's hard for me to imagine the US as not having some kind of major influence in the world.  I just wish it didn't have to be voiced in such starkly simple and arbitrary terms; that Obama didn't have to say, "If I am president, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon."  And Romney to say "Me too, and I'll even cripple them some more."

At least, to me, the debate brought out Obama's decisiveness in an area of experience that Romney just doesn't have.   In that way, it seems a bit unfair even to debate foreign policy, when one of the debaters has been in charge of it for the last four years.   It made me think of the sobering influence a US president has over the lives of people.  That foreign policy means life or death at times, and it's complex and messy and important.

Teenage passions

I'm a college counselor at an international school.   My students apply to colleges/universities in the US, Canada, and UK.   If you've attended any admissions information sessions or applied to college in the US in the last 10 - 15 years, you've probably been urged to tell colleges about your "passions."   For colleges with a selective admission process--that is, who require more than rigorous classes/high grades/strong test scores--they distinguish between students based on what makes them interesting.   Interesting in the context of their particular campus, to be sure--but increasingly, it's the student with a "passion" for an instrument or a cause or a subject (multiply that times 10 for a sport) who is "interesting," rather than the classic "well-rounded" applicant.

When I first started working as a college counselor almost 10 years ago, I may have used those words:  "Tell them about your passion."  Eventually I stopped doing that because it began to sound trite, to ring hollow.  To me, it assumes that everyone who's seventeen or eighteen is passionate about something, and that if you're not, then you're not okay.  It even sounds like that to me, 30 years older than my students.   I did have a passion when I was a senior in high school--music, specifically playing violin and flute--but  even though I applied to a couple of music schools, I don't think I ever said "I'm passionate about playing violin"  to anyone.   I said I wanted to be concertmaster in a major orchestra someday, which was much more recklessly ambitious, but I don't think I would have ever called playing violin or flute or singing in ensembles a passion.

I suppose that concept, as a catchphrase for college-admission cachet, is relatively new, developing as more students apply to college and more students apply to more of the same selective colleges.

In the last four years--since I've worked at a school that teaches the French national education system--I've noticed more keenly a blank stare or a whisper of fright across a student's face when an application, or a university rep, has asked a student to describe a passion.  I'm not sure it's a concept that is contemplated as much in other cultures as it is in US culture.   We toss around the word "passion"  freely here in the US, without embarrassment (not a love-of-another person passion, but a consuming drive for an activity or subject), as if we should feel free to go around telling people we have a passion for reading Faulkner or rowing or blogging about sports.   If it's truly a passion, shouldn't it be obvious to others?  Do we have to name it?

Well, of course we have to name it when its importance is implied, or directly asked about, on a college application.   I find that many of my students have a difficult time naming a passion, and I'm on their side where that's concerned.  Their school day is consumed with classes from 8:30 - 5:30 on many days, working toward huge end-of-2-year exams whose results can determine a lot of your life.   This is the case in many, if not most, other countries.  

I put this out there to wonder if I'm right, whether the concept of having a "passion"  for something is a particularly American one . . . or if even naming something as a passion is a very American thing to do.  I don't know.

What if I just want to be President of the United States?

We hear every day, and we have heard for the last two years, about Mitt Romney's changing positions. He wants to protect a woman's right to control her body; the same day, he says he is firmly pro-life.  President Obama modeled his health-care bill after the Massachusetts plan that Romney implemented when he was governor, yet Romney would repeal "Obamacare"  on Day One of his presidency (except for the parts that everybody likes, such as denying coverage for pre-existing conditions).

I'm sure it's no secret that I'm an Obama supporter and generally vote blue.  I am not posting this to try to slam Romney, believe it or not.

While I will add that his aggressive behavior to Jim Lehrer during the first debate, and his "47 percent" comments, have not endeared him to me, my overriding impression of Romney is that he just wants to be president.  Period.  He wants to be president of the United States, and that desire seems to be his substance.  I respect his devotion to his church and family, and I can respect his ambition.  But after two years--even four years, remembering him from the 2008 Republican primaries-- all I can say I really know about a Romney presidency is that he wants to be president.

Now, normally showing that you're "hungry" for a job is a good thing.  In fact, the first time I ever realized the similarity of running for president to a 2-year job interview was in 2000, the first time George W. Bush ran.   I got the distinct impression that he didn't want the job he was interviewing for.  To me, he didn't have that fire in his belly, that sense of urgency that usually comes through in a candidate's interviews and speeches.   I had never noticed that before in any presidential candidate.

So, I keep saying to myself, it should be a good thing that Governor Romney wants so badly to be president of the United States.  Usually wanting a job means you'll take it seriously and you know why you want it, what the job will satisfy in you and what you want to accomplish in the job.

But there's something missing.  I still have no idea why he wants to be president, why it matters to him.      Yes, on many--perhaps most-- days during the campaign he has expressed differing philosophical views about the role of government than Obama.  (In the debate last week, they suddenly sounded more alike).    Maybe he does believe in less government, and maybe a hell of a lot less federal government in people's lives, than Obama does.

I realize that, as I started this post, I said I wasn't going to harp on Romney's changing positions.   But I think that's why my impression of him is what it is.   I don't know what's at his core.  If he is elected, I have no idea what would or would not change in the first month, three months, six months, one year, of a Romney presidency.  I can't recall ever feeling this way about a candidate.


Mitt Romney, more than anything, puzzles me.  And he points out a conundrum that is larger than himself.   What does it mean that a candidate just wants to be president?  If that's the case for Romney, is that enough to make him an effective president and a serious, circumspect leader?  Is it enough just to really, really, really want the job?