The Wild Ride to Revelstoke

After a quick trip to Lake Louise, we drove over the Continental Divide into British Columbia. It was a beautiful, dazzling ride to the town of Golden, with a ten-mile hill at the end.

And then the real fun started, as we climbed again on the way to Revelstoke, the town that gets the most snow in British Columbia (between 470 and 700 inches per year). The road was spellbinding. I was particularly glad that Jamie drove, so I could keep snapping photos through the windshield as we went around every bend. Glaciers, avalanches, high mountains with steep walls: it was exciting and we felt completely alive.

Take a look at the slideshow below . . . just click the button and watch the fun!

(Oh, and you will need Adobe Flash to see the pictures. Sorry if you don't!)

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The Necessary Picture from the Canadian Rockies

The View from Lake Louise

For the Beauty of the Earth . . .

Beauty touches beauty at Moraine Lake

Jamie and I are residing in beauty, totally surrounded by enormous mountains, stunning lakes, and the straightest pines we have ever seen. The Canadian Rockies are one of God's most extravagant designs.

As we toodle around Banff National Park, it is easy to pause, take in the view, and snap a few pictures which will never capture the grandeur and scope of the landscape. But we do this to touch the scenery and to later remember where we were.

On Sunday afternoon, we walk past the Roman Catholic church in Canmore. The priest has chained the parking lot to keep out the tourists. "Mass has concluded, stay out of here" is the unfortunate message. Apart from the obvious breach of hospitality, this belies the unfortunate split between the God who is revealed in scripture and the same God who leaves fingerprints all over the beautiful world.

My favorite "unreal" body of water: Peyto Lake

In territory that looks like this, I can understand why people are outside, enjoying nature. The splendor is compelling. I lament how some of my fellow clergy lack the imagination to find and describe the intersection between heaven and earth. Like a lot of others, they tend to choose one over the other, forgetting that Christ is the One who holds all things together.

Is this Bow Lake - or merely a copy?

Christian people need to be around beauty, especially like this. It lifts them out of temporal distress. It corrects their arrogance by reminding them of how small and limited we are. It prompts them to envision a great God whose power and abundance surpasses everything we see and know. This is grace in granite.

Along the Icefields Parkway

For the life of me, I cannot imagine anyone looking at these mountains and claiming they were an accident. God has been here. The Spirit blows in the bracing wind.

I guess that is why I am here. Not as a tourist but as a pilgrim. As we travel up the Icefields Parkway, surrounded by 10,000 foot-high blocks of granite, I imagine the Creator's good pleasure in conjuring all of this out of the soil.

Rundle Mountain, overlooking Banff Township

I also imagine God's delight when the children made in the divine image see the holy handiwork and exclaim, "Wow! Thanks for giving us a world that looks like this."

Takakkaw Falls, at full power

A Tzimtzum Moment

According to Jewish mystical tradition, when God stepped back after making the world. The Holy One, blessed be He, clapped his hands in laughter and said, "Tov! It is good. Very good!" Then God stepped back.

This blessed withdrawal is called tzimtzum. It is just the thing we should expect of a Sabbath-keeping God.

This stepping-back is the mark of good parenting, divine and human. God does not hover nor manipulate, choosing instead to make room for children to do their own work. The Spirit can come and help. But for a creation to flourish, the Maker must give it some room.

The elegant Mr. Hamme

Today I understand this, in a much smaller way. This is the date of the 22nd annual Jazz Communion at First Presbyterian Church of Clarks Summit. I am not there. The jazz service was my baby, my creation, but I have stepped back in sabbatical. The original plan was to return today, but family plans pushed everything back by two weeks. So we asked Al Hamme to step in as the musical director, with my old pal Tim Schumacher as the guest guitarist.

A quick afternoon Skype call to Al confirms what I already know: all went well. Tony Marino dug into the deep notes, Tom Whaley got up in time to get the rhythm dancing, Al swung his tail off, and Tim did just fine. Al reminded me that everybody is replaceable. True enough.

It is freeing to back away from something you started. Let it rise and fall on its own merits. If it is to live and flourish, let is do so in freedom. Truth be told, I was sleeping in on Sunday, just about the time the jazz service started two time zones away. And everything went just fine. Heaven's providence is greater than human control.

Tov! It is good. Very good.

Update

The panorama picture on my camera, just outside of Canmore, Alberta

Gone to the mountains for a while with my honey. I will check in when I can. This is the last big piece of the sabbatical, so we are going to make the most of it.

Talk to you later.

P.S. - Click on the picture, and you get a sense of the SIZE!

Sing a New Song (Part Two)

BC and Bobby McFerrin

So what is Bobby McFerrin like? I have fielded the question a few times since the weekend.

Here is one story from Tony Levin, famous bassist and rock star, who attended the weekend seminar as a fellow participant:

I was playing a gig with Peter Gabriel somewhere in Europe, and Bobby showed up. Somebody wanted him to sit in - and Bobby was game - but Peter wasn't very excited about it. So I pulled him aside and said, "Peter, I think you ought to do it." He gave in and Bobby jumped up on stage. He sang harmony along Peter, matching him phrase for phrase, note for note, making a great song sound better. The crowd went nuts. Then he jumped off stage and disappeared. Peter couldn't stop talking about it.

The man has that kind of talent. First time I heard him, he sang creatively with Wynton Marsalis and Herbie Hancock at a huge jazz festival. A few years later, I watched him bring down the house down with "Itsy Bitsy Spider" at a middle school in Bethlehem, PA. Just last year, I took daughter Meg to hear him in concert and her jaw fell open by the third or fourth note.

So on last Saturday morning, we found ourselves walking together on a garden path. He asked my name, and what I did. When he heard I was a minister, he stopped cold, looked me in the eye, and said, "What is your favorite book of the Bible? I mean, other than the Psalms." He was serious and said he was working through the Gospel of Matthew slowly, memorizing the verses that resonated with his soul.

He is a quiet man, confessing that he thought about the monastic life as a kid. "Wanted nothing more than to pray, be quiet, and reflect on Scripture." When he is not on the road, he attends an Episcopalian church near his farmhouse.

But put him in front of a crowd, give him a microphone, and the eyes twinkle. It is like a light switch clicks on.



When "Don't Worry" hit number one, the phone rang one day. It was Warren Beatty, pushing him to join the cast of his Dick Tracy film, joining Paul Sorvino, Al Pacino, and Dustin Hoffman - and to sing a song on camera to Madonna. Bobby looked at a Polaroid picture of him returning from a recent tour, worn out and homesick for his family, and said, "No way. I gotta stay home with the people I love." He took a sabbatical after his tune hit the top of the charts because he just wasn't interested in the Star Machine.

In a group conversation, he spoke to us of the healing power of music. After a ninety-minute solo concert, his favorite compliment comes from the person who says, "I feel so good, so much better than when I came tonight." In fact, he says his prayer before every concert is, "Lord, let the music help somebody who came with a burden, let the music heal and lift them"

I will savor the joy from the weekend that he evoked in me and so many others. Maybe I will be granted the opportunity to share it with others.

And I am convinced that if the Christian church in North America could sing like this - joyfully, honestly, inclusively, healthily - it could flourish again.

Sing a New Song (Part One)

Well, this is something that I did not expect for the sabbatical: to be brought to the place of inarticulate joy, and for that joy to linger for about five days.

Bobby McFerrin

The setting was a three-day seminar with Bobby McFerrin, the imaginative vocalist and musical mystic. Many will dismiss him as the guy who sang, "Don't Worry, Be Happy." What they don't know is that he invented that song in the studio after serious reflection on Scripture, singing all the parts, and scoring a number one hit in the process. And when he hit it big, he turned his back on the "star machine" of American Idolatry, singing only where and when he sensed it could make a positive difference.

Bobby reports a moment about thirty-five years ago when he heard a Voice that declared, "You are a singer!" When he pursued the Voice, his own voice grew stronger, his imagination found an outlet, and many, many people were positively affected. When he sang, they did, indeed, become happy.

As he developed solo concerts (literally, him with a microphone and nothing else!), he had this notion of pulling people out of the concert seats and bringing them onstage. Spontaneously he would sing a short musical phrase, repeat it, and motion for them to sing it too. When they did, he sang something over top -- and then motioned to another group to sing that -- while he improvised yet a third melodic chunk over it all.

So imagine this: 150 people in a circle three or four deep, arranged by vocal parts, all singing spontaneous songs like this. That was the essence of my weekend at a conference center on the Hudson. Wordless vocals, mostly, lingering for eight or ten minutes. I have rarely been part of such experiences of sheer euphoria. By the end of the first evening's three-hour singing session, my cup was full. Really full. It was a deeply spiritual experience of the power of music.

Here's a clip of how it looks:


Here is another clip:

 

Bobby brought an all-star faculty of four other vocalists with him. We spent time together, we split into smaller groups. It was all good. There were all kinds of people there - music teachers, vocalists, conventional  religious people like me, and a significant number of folks who were harmed or victimized by some form of religion. That in itself was fascinating.

When we sang together, differences did not matter. All of us reached above them. The songs consisted of of sounds and syllables, sung with deep passion, filled with intoxicating rhythm. I reflected in my journal:

     This is a non-sectarian bunch,
     but they know the power unleashed in music-making
     The songs swell and rise;
     a hundred-fifty tongues are loosed,
     three hundred feet are moving.
     Every heart strangely moved, a few budged.
     Smiles radiate the room,
     while the Spirit inhabits the tones and rhythms.
     Even if She is unnamed by many, Spirit is here
     with Bright Wings fluttering.

Most of the crowd was there for a full week, but that was too pricey for me and I have other things to do. The forty or so of us who departed on the third day were circled and blessed by the rest.

At the very conclusion, a group member approached me with a hug. She said, "I know you're a minister and I'm an atheist. I have to say this is the most spiritual event I have ever known. When we sing, it's all about love - a love greater and more inviting than anything I have ever known. It fills us and we reach beyond everything else to take and share it."

No insult intended, but I don't think she is an atheist at all.