A Joyful Noise

A Musical Interlude for Pentecost

Dear Friends,

As someone currently living in Boston, it feels like everyone is talking about music non-stop these days.

Okay, not just music. Everyone is talking about Taylor Swift, as her three-night engagement here winds up. Personally, I find the whole thing to be a little stressful, but ultimately there’s a lot of joy interwoven into it all. And, whether Taylor Swift is your cup of tea or not, I think we all have music that turns up the endorphins in our brains. For me, at least this week, that music is Motion City Soundtrack – but it changes all the time. The reality is that as someone who was growing up and forming my music taste as an indie kid at the peak of things like Limewire and Bitorrent, my music library is heavy on “you’ve never heard of them” bands, but also several generation of contemporary Christian artists, One Direction, and - of course - Taylor Swift.

One of the challenging things about adulthood is that it can make discovery harder. We’re les likely to try new things, we settle into routines, but music is an area that I think remains ripe for the experience of discovery because it doesn’t feel too risky. We can’t “fail” when we listen to a new album the way we can at a new hobby. Worst case scenario, you hit skip.

In honor of the hubbub and ruckus of Pentecost this coming Sunday, this week I offer you a bit of a wide-ranging musical interlude. May these songs help you hear and connect in a new way, opening you up in much the same way the coming of the Holy Spirit revealed new understandings to those gathered on that first Pentecost.

Not Just ‘Fireflies’

Okay, I know Owl City’s '“Fireflies” was popular way too many years ago at this point – one of my college’s a cappella groups had an arrangement of it – but Owl City is not only still making new music, but if you haven’t been following closely, you may also be surprised to learn that a lot of that music is explicitly Christian. I’ve really been enjoying “Field Notes,” which is off of their latest album, Coco Moon, and is totally about storing up your treasures in heaven -

Sing Out In Protest

I’ve been writing about protest music here for about as long as I’ve been writing this newsletter, but it seems particularly fitting that the most recent show I went to was a Mother’s Day protest music show at a Unitarian church. And among the many fabulous pieces we heard that night, two were about the work of John Lewis. My immediate response: I wish there was an easy way to put these songs on the shelf with John Lewis’s story in Godly Play rooms. (Hey parent-readers, do any of you know how programming a Toniebox works, because that actually seems like it may be a tenable solution…) I may not have worked out how to do that right yet, but I can share Claudia Schmidt and Sally Rogers’s song “Still On The Bridge” with you here -

Protest music is a rich tradition and one with strong roots in various faith practices. The Spirit surely moves through it.

Beyond Obscurity

Do you know about Judee Sill? If you’re like a lot of people, the answer is no, despite a career that initially seemed very promising, including two professionally produced albums, the second of which was critically acclaimed. Unfortunately, this didn’t translate to commercial success and Sill, a peculiar figure, moved on from music, pursuing an interest in theosophy, working as a cartoonist, and otherwise falling into deeper obscurity before dying of an overdose in her mid-30s after suffering from chronic back pain related to a series of car accidents. All of this is to say, Sill is deeply under-recognized and even in this day and age, Spotify shows her as having fewer than 100,000 monthly listeners.

Sill’s music is lyrically fascinating and draws heavily on Christian themes, while holding a poetic, dreamlike quality. On the cusp of Pentecost, the words to “When the Bridegroom Comes” seem particularly fitting -

See the bride and the spirit are one,
Then won't you who are thirsty invite him to come?
With your door opened wide,
Won't you listen in the dark for the midnight cry?
And see when your light is on when the bridegroom comes.

In All We Do

This past Sunday, I had the privilege of telling the Godly Play Baptism story for my church school class, and as we break down the Trinity in that story we speak of how the Holy Spirit moves on invisible wings. It is like a dove, flying where it wishes, but it can be hard for us to detect. And that description stands out to me in a particular way, pointing to a presence that is so often beyond our recognition mostly because we aren’t opening our senses to it. But what if we attuned ourselves more carefully to the sacred? What if we found the holy in the simplest things?

Carrie Newcomer’s “Holy As the Day is Spent” is such a gentle reminder of this shifting awareness for me, one that resonates with the phrase “Ora et Labora” - Pray and Work, a monastic practice that can help all of us live more deeply into faith and prayer.

I sing a lot while I work, or listen to hymns (yes, I have a playlist called Ora et Labora), and it is one of the ways I find I can live into the idea that we might “pray without ceasing.” But even without such words, without a song on our lips, we can find our way to the holy in so many simple acts, as we tend to our lives, to each other’s needs

And so, as we move through this day, this week, this month, may the familiar be more than just routine.

Holy is the familiar room
And quiet moments in the afternoon
And folding sheets like folding hands
To pray as only laundry can

There is so much there, if only we open ourselves to it. If only we prepare our hearts for the work of the spirit.

Peace & Pentecost Joy,
Bird