First steps…

This feels strange and exciting. I’ve thought about blogging for a bit but haven’t taken the plunge. Something felt right about it tonight…so here I am. I’m not sure exactly what sort of format I’m going to take with this blog but I do know that there are lots of thoughts that flit through my mind each day. Perhaps some of them are worth sharing in a wider forum.

The other day I went to Vintage Vinyl with a gift certificate from a church member. It’s a great store in The Loop with tons of new and used CDs and albums. I left with a great bunch of music. I didn’t think too much about what to buy but just intuitively let myself choose things that I was drawn toward. The shopping cart included:

• Gershwin’s World featuring Herbie Hancock and guest artists
• Steal Away – Jazz greats Charlie Haden and Hank Jones playing Hymns, Spirituals and Folks Songs
• La Pasion segun San Marcus by Osvaldo Golijov

I got them home, started listening and this quote by Duke Ellington jumped out at me (from one of the CD booklets): “It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line.”

As I think about it, his quote gets to the heart of the CDs that I bought. Each blurs the lines, lives in the space between the labels that we have created and safeguard so carefully. Herbie Hancock revisits some classic Gershwin songs but as he says, “Our intentions were to reach inside to the core of each piece in search of the composer’s original impulses, and to take those elements and recompose them in our own way.” Charlie Haden and Hank Jones do the very same with spirituals and hymns – honoring the essence of each song but bringing their own musicality and creativity to create a new type of devotional music. And Golijov’s piece is a new setting of the Passion story (Jesus’ betrayal, trial, crucifixion and death) that borrows from a wide range of musical styles (from Brazilian singer Luciana Souza to string orchestra and from Latin percussion grooves to contemporary classical music). It doesn’t fit neatly into categories; the composer uses the tools and sounds that he feels are appropriate to communicate the story truthfully.

Perhaps these musicians can lead the way as we seek to be a more faithful and creative Church. What might Church be like if we stop putting our energy into categorizing things/people? (And in doing so creating such a strong sense of “us” and them”.) What if we allow ourselves to inhabit that risky but liberating place between the labels, between composition and improvisation, order and chaos? What if we live as if there are no boundary lines? On one hand, we do need and want structure – a melody, a chord progression, a roadmap or narrative to return to if we get lost. And yet, I think we also need and want the freedom to embellish, to adapt things in a way that sounds honest to our ears, to travel down new and different roads, if only to return the the place we started.

With all respect to Herbie Hancock: What if we spent our time reaching inside to the core of our faith/denominational tradition/the Scriptures in search of the Creator’s original impulses, and took those elements and expressed them as truthfully as we could?