Oddwalk Ministries

Category: Joy

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Christian Silliness and Joy

Anyone who has heard me (Shannon) talk about my Boy Scout days for any length of time might have noticed a glaring absence from that account: the complete lack of references to any actual scouting topics. There’s typically no talk of merit badges, rank advancement, and leadership roles. It’s not that those things weren’t a part of my experience. They certainly were. I earned many merit badges, advanced to the Life rank, and held several leadership positions in the troop. The reason those things are typically left out is because, in the end, they just don’t matter to me all that much. When I think about my time as a Scout, it’s the time spent with the other boys that matters the most to me. The boys in my troop were my first true friends. Those were the guys who, outside of my family, allowed me to be the bumbling, awkward person I was, without too much pressure to change.

One of the things I discovered through my time in scouting was my love of music performance. I wouldn’t have called it “music performance” back in the day, of course. Had I been forced to come up with a name, I might have called it: “having a blast with my friends, singing and making up songs and drumming on a tortilla chip box in the back of the van, while Mr. Bruss drove us to the campout”. Whether we were on our way to an outing, sitting around the campfire, or just hanging out at a troop meeting, these kinds of experiences helped me discover how much I loved entertaining and engaging audiences and, later, leading congregations in music and prayer. As I grew into adulthood, and my skills developed, I ended up with hundreds of opportunities to share my musical gifts.

Even now, some of the most fun I have planning music are times when it’s just me, a guitar, and a group which is ready to get silly. Sometimes that’s a churchy group, but most times, it isn’t. This is when I can just be dumb, make people laugh, and sing really loudly. Opportunities like these have given me songs like The Dooley Boy Rock, At The Grotto, Mexican Café, Shay Shay Cool Yay, Mr. Crocodile, When The Spirit Says, Dum Dum Deedle, I’m a Little Teapot/We Will Rock You, and many others. These songs are so goofy, but are so fun to do.

Today, along with my friends Chris and Isaiah Korte, I am performing two Week of the Young Child concerts in Kirksville, MO. For the thirteenth consecutive year, preschoolers, daycare kids, and kindergartners from around Kirksville will gather at Rotary Park to spend about forty-five minutes singing a lot of the dumb songs I’ve collected over the years. We’ll scream and encourage the kids to scream as well. We’ll do ridiculous hand motions and laugh a lot. And, while these aren’t Christian events, per se, the expression of joy will leave little doubt that God is in it somehow.

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Answer Me

Each year, at the parish where I (Orin) direct music, the school children attend Mass on what is nicknamed “Spy Wednesday,” Wednesday of Holy Week, because of how Judas and his role in the passion is featured in the Gospel passage of the day. It is in fact the last Mass before the Thursday liturgies of Triduum: Chrism Mass and/or the Mass of the Lord’s Supper.

I think, though, that more than the other readings of the day, and more than other psalms, the psalm of the day, part of Psalm 69, is one of my favorites. Here it is, in it’s entirety, as the responsorial psalm from Wednesday’s mass:

R. (14c) Lord, in your great love, answer me.

For your sake I bear insult,
and shame covers my face.
I have become an outcast to my brothers,
a stranger to my mother’s sons,
because zeal for your house consumes me,
and the insults of those who blaspheme you fall upon me.

R. Lord, in your great love, answer me.

Insult has broken my heart, and I am weak,
I looked for sympathy, but there was none;
for consolers, not one could I find.
Rather they put gall in my food,
and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

R. Lord, in your great love, answer me.

I will praise the name of God in song,
and I will glorify him with thanksgiving:
“See, you lowly ones, and be glad;
you who seek God, may your hearts revive!
For the LORD hears the poor,
and his own who are in bonds he spurns not.”

R. Lord, in your great love, answer me.

I think what appeals to me about this psalm are two separate yet connected ideas: Our faith as a journey, and prayers of lament.

I think, sometimes, our faith experience as we live it today has lost a sense of lament: a profound expression of sadness and grief. Surely there is some of that sometimes, particularly when dealing with a death of a friend or relative. But, anecdotally, in other instances when one might turn to lament, what I see instead are things like anger, revenge, or simply “fixing” the cause of the lament in convenient but perhaps not the most meaningful of ways. What does that mean? It means instead of turning our sorrow to God, we attempt to alleviate it on our own: by expressing other emotions, by taking actions that are typically sinful and hurtful to others and ourselves, or by engaging in more of a culture which oftentimes seeks instant gratification. (In some ways, we’ve lost definitions and distinctions in and around words and feelings like “love,” “need,” “want,” “desire,” and so on, but that’s probably material for another post someday.)

Lament, even anger at God, is an okay place to be and an okay way to pray. God expects nothing less from our human experiences. God lived those emotions as Jesus Christ, fully God and fully human. Go to God with sorrow, lament, and even anger. Let God speak to you about those things. Let God soothe and console, and even fill the empty places in your heart.

The Psalms of lament, which include Psalm 69 above, always have a moment where the voice of the psalm turns the corner. Note the last verse, which has jumped ahead in the psalm a fair amount: I will praise the name of God… the Lord hears the poor…” God hears us, and our lament, through God, can become joy. God is in the lament, knows the lament, and always wants for us, ultimately, joy. It is up to us, though, in those times, to remember God is with us, and turn to God with our needs.

May Holy Week blessings be with one and all. Orin

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Moust-Ash Wednesday

A number of our Jesus-Justice-Joy weekly reflections lately have focused on Joy, and this one will too.

“But,” you say, “Orin! How can that be? Lent begins this week.  Don’t you know that Lent is all sad and repentant and morose and sackcloth and ashes and other depressing things?”

Well, I know it’s Lent, yes, but Lent need not be those things, at least not overly so.  Indeed we ought to be repentant, and sad for our sinfulness.  And, further, knowing our sinfulness led Jesus to his suffering and death on the cross, well, sure, we can be sad and even grieve these things.

But to do so without also knowing there’s more to the story is to, in a sense, make an idol out of only one tiny facet of our faith.  We must always take our faith as a whole – it’s not like during Advent we forget for four weeks that Jesus did actually come to ransom captive Israel.  It’s not like during Lent we should remember only the repentance, the suffering, the death.  We should also, while celebrating these things, remember that there is new life that arises from these very same things – there is joy and even more celebrating to come.

Did you catch, there, that we “celebrate,” even in Lent?  It’s true.  There’s an expression, in Latin, that goes:

Lex orandi, lex credendi

Which is to say, in English: “The law of prayer is the law of belief.”  Even more simply, we pray what we believe, and we believe what we pray.  With that in mind, let’s turn to a prayer that we will hear and pray together very soon:

Each year you give us this joyful season when we prepare to celebrate the paschal mystery with mind and heart renewed. You give us a spirit of loving reverence for you, our Father, and of willing service to our neighbor. As we recall the great events that gave us new life in Christ, you bring the image of your Son to perfection within us.  (Preface for the 1st Sunday of Lent)

We pray that lent is a “joyful season” in which we prepare to “celebrate” the paschal mystery – Christ’s redemptive suffering, death, and resurrection.  And, as we ponder these things, we become more Christ-like through the power of God perfecting that image within us.

Wow.

So, I (Orin) have attached to this post an image.  This Wednesday, after our parish school’s 8th graders lead music ministry at one of our morning masses, I’ll be giving them each one of these – hopefully to remind them that Lent, which we should dive into whole-heartedly and intensely, is only one part of a broader story, a broader mystery, which as a whole tells us where we’ve come from, who we are now and who we should strive to be, and the future that awaits us all if we help each other grow in faith and holiness.

Blessings on our Lenten journeys this year, one and all.   Orin