Song of Miriam

The Lectionary psalm for last Sunday was a fantastic passage from Exodus 15 known as the Song of Miriam. We don’t know tons about her from the biblical narrative (not as much as Moses, for example) but I have always been fascinated by her song as well as the songs of other women in the Hebrew Bible like Hannah and Deborah.  Whenever I read the text, I am struck by her ability to draw others into singing and dancing.  I see Miriam as an enthusiastic, sensitive worship leader, who invites the exhausted but exultant Israelites to an encounter with God through their voices and bodies.

And if she was a prophetess, there was also something about her way of speaking that cut through familiar, well-worn expressions of praise and helped the Israelites to see their relationship with God and others in a fresh light.  The song is not simply a celebration of victory over the Egyptians but is somehow awakening God’s people to a new awareness of who God really is…how God acts and operates in the world and in human history.

I tried my hand at a setting of Miriam’s song this month.  I knew the text was coming up, so in mid-August I called a good friend, Sarah, who is a fine singer in town and she was game to have me write something for her.  I spent time with the text, sketched a little, and other instruments and ideas evolved.  As you will hear, the parts sung by Miriam are free and expressive, in a virtuosic style.  There is also a rhythmic refrain, with a Middle-Eastern or even Indian tinge to it, that returns throughout.  The congregation and choir participated in this section and we also had a young woman in the congregation who interpreted the piece through liturgical dance.

We had the pleasure of performing the piece again tonight at a fundraiser for Compagnia Colombari in a slightly edited format, but you should get a good sense of it.  I’m also including the text below as the sound is somewhat fuzzy.  Anyone want to commission the Song of Hannah or Deborah?

Then the prophetess Miriam took a tambourine in her hand; [and all the women went out with tambourines and with dancing.]

And Miriam sang to them:

Refrain: I will sing to our God!

I will sing to our God who has triumphed gloriously, horse and rider are thrown into the sea!  *Yah! My strength and my song has become my salvation.

Refrain: I will sing to our God!

Who is like you, O God! Who is like you among the mighty! Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendor, working wonders! In your love you lead the people you redeemed; In your strength you guide them to your holy habitation. And the Eternal shall reign for ever and ever!

Refrain: We will sing to our God!

- Exodus 15:1-2,11,13,18,20-21, translated by Judith Wray

*Yah is an earlier form of YHWH.

peace

It has been a busy few weeks so not much time to blog.  However, today I feel a need to post a short entry as there are a few things on my mind.

This is my first September 11 as a New Yorker and it is becoming clear that the wounds from that horrible attack are still tender.  There was a service of remembrance at the World Trade Center site this morning; around the city I have seen gatherings at fire departments and other civic buildings.  Of course the media are covering it extensively and newspaper headlines on the sidewalk are yet another reminder.

This Sunday, our congregation will offer a Litany of Peace and sing the hymn “This Is My Song”.  It has quickly become my favorite patriotic hymn, quite simply because it is does not have a flag-raising, us-over-all sentiment.  (In other words, it probably wouldn’t have been sung at the Republican convention a few weeks back.  Sorry for delving into politics (not the intention of this blog) but every time the crowd broke into that “USA” chant I wanted to cry.)  Instead this hymn helps us to remember that others love their country as much as we do ours, and we are called to pray for peace!  I’m including the words of the hymn below, which are so effective sung to the tune, Finlandia, drawn from Jean Sibelius’ gorgeous tone poem of the same name.

This is my song, O God of all the nations,
a song of peace for lands afar and mine;
this is my home, the country where my heart is;
here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine:
but other hearts in other lands are beating
with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;
but other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
and skies are everywhere as blue as mine:
O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,
a song of peace for their land and for mine.

May truth and freedom come to every nation;
may peace abound where strife has raged so long;
that each may seek to love and build together,
a world united, righting every wrong;
a world united in its love for freedom,
proclaiming peace together in one song.

This evening I also have the honor of being part of a Concert for Peace at Merkin Hall sponsored by Musicians for Harmony. On the first anniversary of September 11, this talented group of musicians offered a concert to promote peace, unity, and cross-cultural dialogue. It was such a successful and healing experience that they have continued annually. A small group of actors and instrumentalists from Compagnia Colombari are performing excerpts from Walt Whitman’s epic poem “Song of Myself”. It is a thrilling combination of spoken and sung text that lifts up Whitman’s expansive vision of a what it means to be an American. My friend and the director of the project, Karin Coonrod, calls his poem a declaration of interdependence.  In Whitman’s poetic imagination, all of humanity is connected and thrives on the unending diversity that is around us.

One particular excerpt from the piece touched me in rehearsal this afternoon so I’m posting it. The last line is especially poignant when connected to the image of the collapsing towers. I don’t mean to offer some sort of cheap reflection but I almost hear Whitman encouraging us to move beyond that day, as painful and staggering as it was, onward and outward into widening circles of connection, trust, and love for all of humanity.

A child said, What is the grass?
Fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child?….
I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition,
out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners,
that we may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child…..
the produced babe of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is the uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means,
Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff,
I give them the same,
I receive the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and from
offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps,
And here you are the mothers’ laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward…and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.