Seamus Heaney

I credit poetry… both for being itself and for being a help.
Seamus Heaney, Nobel Lecture, “Crediting Poetry”

Seamus Heaney died yesterday. I think it was sometime in 1996 when I first “met” him. I was driving along Minnesota 169, either between meetings or perhaps going to the hospital to visit a parishioner. Minnesota Public Radio was broadcasting the Guthrie Global Voices lecture from that year (1996) – and it was then I heard that magnificent voice. Heaney, who had been awarded the Noble Prize for Literature the previous year, used the Guthrie Lecture to read some of his poems and offer a few comments in between. To my delight the program was also being broadcast later that evening, 9 p.m., and I recorded as much of it as I could get on one-side of a ninety-minute cassette tape. He has been a companion in the car through the years, and one regret I have about newer vehicles is that they no longer have tape players. I can no longer listen to Heaney’s rich Irish voice coming from the tape player in the car.
That reading led me to Heaney’s books. Many of the poems he read at the Guthrie were being published that same year in his book The Spirit Level, and it remains one of my favorites. There one finds the poem dedicated to his brother and in praise of the virtue of “keeping going.” It is an underappreciated virtue in the complexity of our modern world. The book also has Heaney resurrecting the myth of the Irish saint, Kevin, who, while praying with his arm extended out the window of his small monastic cell, has a blackbird come and make a nest and lay eggs. The image of nurturing life feeds my pastoral imagination.
The Spirit Level contains poems with memorable lines:

And catch the heart off guard and blow it open (“Postscript”)

So walk on air against your better judgement (“The Gravel Walks”)

For Heaney, poetry can make an order as true to the impact of external reality and as sensitive to the inner laws of the poet’s being as the ripples that rippled in and rippled out across the water in that scullery bucket fifty years ago. An order where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew. An order which satisfies all that is appetitive in the intelligence and prehensile in the affections. (Crediting Poetry, 10)

One poem that particularly grabbed hold of me in the Guthrie reading was a chorus that Heaney had added to a Sophocles’ play he had translated. I could not find it in print at the time, so I transcribed it from his reading. While I have since found it in print, his reading of it that day was slightly different, for in the reading he repeated the chorus’ most famous line twice:

That justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.

So Heaney’s voice has now gone silent, but not in my heart. In his poetry and voice, one believes that hope and history can rhyme (something I understand to be the work of God’s people in the world – working with the Spirit to help hope and history rhyme).
Thank you Mr. Heaney. Your poetry is a help, a help in keeping going, a help in moving me to walk on air against my better judgement. Perhaps if we all did that just a little more, hope and history could rhyme just a little more.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David

Christian Communities

On Sunday July 21 I experienced three gatherings of Christian community. I preached and led worship at the church where I am the appointed pastor – First United Methodist Church. The sermon for the morning was in response to a question about myth and truth in the Bible. The sermon was entitled “Mything the Point” (click here). I am now in my ninth year as pastor here and have found this a wonderful Christian community. I appreciate being a part of the adventure of the journey of faith with this group of people. My experiences the rest of the day helped me reflect on some of the journey that has brought me to this place and this place in my life.
In the early afternoon Julie and I attended the funeral for Steve O’Neil, a St. Louis County Commissioner, who was also a person of deep Christian faith. I ran into Steve quite a bit over the years, though we were not close personal friends. His work for the hungry, the poor, the downtrodden, the homeless in our community, often working with communities of faith, made him a very special person. His service was a wonderful celebration of his life, and you could not leave the service without knowing that Steve’s concern for those on the margins of society was rooted in his Christian faith. For Steve, following Jesus had everything to do with caring for the poor, with compassion, with kindness, with reconciliation. There was a sense in which his service was an expression of that ecumenical Christian community that connects following Jesus with working for justice and peace in the world.
Following that service, Julie and I went to a reunion of a group called the Christian Fellowship Workers – often just known as the CFWs. The Christian Fellowship Workers was a Christian community that emerged out of the Jesus People movement here in Duluth. When I was 14, I found Jesus or Jesus found me in a profound way. I was part of a United Methodist Church, but in trying to figure out what it might mean to be a passionate follower of Jesus, I found myself as part of the Christian Fellowship Workers. I was part of this group from age 14 to age 17. While at the reunion, I saw a picture I had not seen in years, a group picture at the farm owned by the CFWs. I am in the middle of the picture. This Christian community was passionate about Jesus and the focus of the passion was having people come into a person relationship with Jesus. It was about salvation understood primarily in terms of one’s existential condition and one’s status in the afterlife. I don’t remember a lot of connection between being a follower of Jesus and caring for the poor and hungry, though there were folks on the margins who were part of this community.

Being at Steve O’Neil’s funeral and experiencing that Christian community, and then being at the CFW reunion and remembering that Christian community I thought about the variety of Christian community that has been a part of my journey of faith and that has helped make me the disciple of Jesus I am. I still believe in the importance of a relationship with Jesus, or with God through Jesus, that decisively shapes one’s existential self-understanding in such a way that one is “saved.” I also believe that this Jesus in whom we are saved moves us to care for the world, to work for justice and peace. This more comprehensive understanding of salvation is well-articulated by one of my theological teachers and mentors, Schubert Ogden: By “salvation” is properly meant, first of all and fundamentally, the redemptive activity of God whereby the whole of humankind, and thus each and every human being, notwithstanding the universal fact of sin, is accepted into God’s own everlasting life – the theological term for this divine activity being “grace.” And then, secondly, and in absolute dependence on God’s grace, salvation is the activity of a woman or man through which she or he accepts God’s acceptance – the theological term for this human activity being “faith” and, more exactly, “faith working through love,” a love that, as I like to say, incarnates itself as justice. (The Understanding of Christian Faith, 123).
And that makes me think about yet another Christian community that has had an impact on my journey of faith, the Christian community I experienced in seminary. There I discovered that a passionate Christian faith could also be a thoughtful Christian faith, one that deeply engaged the intellect. My first year in seminary, I tried growing a beard. I hope my intellectual development outpaced the growth of my facial hair.

A passionate, compassionate and thoughtful Christian faith – that is what I seek to grow and nurture in my life. That’s what I hope to help others develop and nurture as a pastor. I am grateful for the Christian communities that have been and continue to be part of this adventure.


With Faith and With Feathers,

David

Maybe I'm Amazed

Paul McCartney is touring this summer. Unfortunately, I will not be attending any of his concerts. Right now my concert commitments consist of the Americanarama Tour coming to Duluth next Tuesday: Bob Dylan, Wilco, My Morning Jacket, Richard Thompson. It is a great line-up and I am looking forward to attending with my son. The only negative is that it is an outdoor concert and there is rain in the forecast.
Back to Paul McCartney. On Tuesday, May 28, McCartney re-released his first post-Beatles live album, Wings Over America. First released in December 1976, Wings Over America was then a three-record vinyl album – a rarity. McCartney and Wings were doing quite well at the time, with a number of their songs having been hit records in the early to mid-1970s. You could not listen to the radio for very long without encountering a McCartney/Wings song. I remember a joke that went around at the time, intended to test one’s musical cool quotient – “Did you know Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings?”
It wasn’t an infrequent occurrence to hear McCartney unfavorably compared to his former Beatle’s writing partner, John Lennon. Lennon was seen as the more intellectual, the one more engaged in the issues of the day, the more serious. McCartney had a knack for silly love songs. In the end, what’s wrong with that?
In my circle of friends, it was o.k. to like Paul McCartney and Wings, but not be too enamored with them. Nevertheless, Wings Over America found its way into my record collection, along with Wings Greatest. In 1977, the year I graduated from high school, a song from Wings Over America was a hit single, a live version of “Maybe I’m Amazed.” It is a wonderful love song, and the tempo of the live version gives it a certain leg up on the earlier studio version.
When Wings Over America came out again in May, I bought a copy. It was fun to hear again that version of “Maybe I’m Amazed.” Listening to it, I found that it also spoke to how I understand my faith.

Baby, I’m a man, maybe I’m a lonely man
whose in the middle of something
That he doesn’t really understand
Baby, I’m a man maybe you’re the only woman
who could ever help me,
Baby, won’t you help me to understand

maybe I’m amazed at the way you help me
sing my song,
right me when I’m wrong

For me, my Christian faith, my relationship to God in Jesus addresses me a person in the midst of life, in the middle of something that I don’t really understand. My faith helps me understand myself and the world. It helps me sing my song. It rights me when I’m wrong. I’m amazed.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David

New/Old Music

Tuesday, May 28, three interesting cds were released – interesting to me, anyway. Paul McCartney re-released his early solo live album “Wings Over America,” about which I intend to write more soon. John Fogerty, who some may know as the lead singer for Creedence Clearwater Revival, released “Wrote a Song for Everyone.” Finally, Columbia released a cd “Bennett/Brubeck: The White House Sessions, Live 1962.”
Fogerty’s cd is fascinating. It primarily recycles older material, but with guest artists helping out on the songs. Bob Seger joins on “Who’ll Stop the Rain.” “Fortunate Son,” a strong rock song in the original is made even more blistering backed by the Foo Fighters. Country singer Alan Jackson sings with Fogerty on “Have You Ever Seen Rain.” The list goes on. The recording received rave reviews from Rolling Stone – “a testament to the continuing truth and power in Fogerty’s greatest hits.” Others did not think so highly of it. Some consider the cd a “dumbing down” of the songs.
The Bennett and Brubeck cd was discovered in a vault at Columbia records. The 1962 concert was held at the base of the Washington Monument, and it honored college students who had come to Washington, D. C. to work for the summer. President John Kennedy had met earlier in the day with the students. It was the only time Tony Bennett and Dave Brubeck made music together until the Newport Jazz Festival in 2009. Dave Brubeck died earlier this year.
I love that these two cds came out on the same day – old music made new, voices and instruments from the past reconnecting with heart and soul. Bennett and Brubeck swing their music in a way that typically brings a smile to my face. Their optimistic beat seemed perfect for a more optimistic time. Yet even now we need a little lift, a little hope, and this music brings that to me.
For a long time, I have appreciated John Fogerty’s songs and his singing. His voice seems to come out of the night, a sometimes dark night where our dreams and fears collide. His songs ponder pertinent questions. “Who’ll stop the rain?” “Have you ever seen the rain?” They identify unfairness – the favor given fortunate sons. They present more personal issues. One song on this new cd that I had not given much attention before provides the title for the cd. “I wrote a song for everyone, wrote a song for truth. Wrote a song for everyone, but I couldn’t even talk to you.”
In my life I need the joyous, buoyant hope I hear in Bennett and Brubeck. I need to be reminded of the complexities of life. I need to ask tough questions and confront the tensions in living. I need to be able to reach into the resources of the past – words written, songs sung, feelings felt, ideas thought – to make my way into the future.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David

Gregory Wolfe’s Editorial Statement in the latest issue of Image led me to this quote that I thought worth sharing:

The reason to read Blake and Dickinson and Freud and Dickens is not to become more cultivated or articulate…. The best reason to read them is to see if they may know you better than you know yourself. You may find your own suppressed and rejected thoughts flowing back to you with an “alienated majesty.”
Mark Edumundson

With Faith and With Feathers,

David

Roots and Wings

There is a saying that the best gift we can give our children is roots to grow on and wings to fly. I don’t know who said it, but it makes a lot of sense to me.
On Friday, May 3, Julie and I sat with two of our children, David and Sarah in the beautiful State Theater in downtown Minneapolis. My mother and her husband were there as were Julie’s cousin, David and his wife Sharon. We were in this wonderful place because it was where the University of Minnesota Medical School was holding its graduation, and our daughter Beth was graduating.
Finishing medical school has been the culmination of ten years of post-high school education. Beth was in college for five years because she was a college swimmer. She took five years for her medical education because she wanted to spend a year abroad. She spent her time in Sweden, India and Uganda. It was in Uganda that she finally decided to specialize in ob/gyn medicine. She wants to help women take care of their health as a way to make the world a better place.
I was a deeply proud parent that day, as were all the parents there, I am sure. It was a particularly special day because our family was together. Through the day, I could not help but reflect on where life has taken each of our children, think about what each has chosen or is choosing to do.
David is working in juvenile corrections, working with kids who have messed up to see if they can get their lives on a better track. He retains a deep passion for politics because he wants the political processes in this country to work to make the world more just. Sarah was admitted into the physical therapy program at St. Catherine University this winter. She chose to be a physical therapist, in part, because she saw her older sister work through a broken hip. She wants to bring a little healing to the world.
Our children are their own people. They have made these decisions for their lives. I am proud of what they are doing. I admire who they are and who they are becoming. They are not perfect. They have made mistakes along the way, but I am proud to be their father.
I hope in some way, Julie and I have given them some strong roots for making good decisions about who they will be. I hope we have given them some wings for flying. As I grow older and consider what my life has been, I hope that I can say that David, Beth and Sarah had some solid roots, some strong wings, and rejoice that they are doing some wonderful things with them.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David

A Prayer

Yesterday, I participated in a worship service marking the passage of a state law here in Minnesota which will allow same-sex couples to get married.
Here is the prayer I prayed:

God, Creative and Creating Spirit, whose nature and name is love, we have gathered together tonight with joyful and humble hearts. There is joy in that we believe justice has been done, that compassion has been embodied, that love has become law, that the beloved community is a little more real today. There is humility, for we know how long the road has been, and we know there are significant tasks ahead. Laws are important, but laws by themselves don’t change hearts. There is heart work to be done as we move toward the beloved community. There are those who have been wounded along the way, and those whose disagreement with this new law is like an irritating pebble in the soul. There is soul work to be done as we move toward the beloved community. The same scriptures which enjoin us to do justice, encourage us to love our enemies. Love’s work toward the beloved community is not yet done. With humble hearts we ask for tender strength and gentle courage to continue the journey toward the beloved community - where compassion reigns, where justice is done, where in love we recognize the common humanity of all, and where we acknowledge our shared dependence upon the earth itself. Amen.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David