Sunday morning in Wilshire’s Epiphany class, pastoral resident Maggie Morey led us in a discussion of how music contributes so richly to our lives in so many ways. There were lots of good thoughts shared about how music triggers memories and feelings and can feed our spirit in ways that words and other forms of communication can’t. I’m totally on board with all that and could have contributed plenty but I was silent. I was still tumbling down a musical rabbit hole I fell into an hour earlier and I’ve been in all week.
Driving to Wilshire that morning, we turned on the radio. It was already tuned to WRR, which at that hour was broadcasting NPR’s weekly “Pipedreams” show featuring organ music from around the world. We caught it in mid-program and the host, Michael Barone, in mid-sentence as he said, “As you listen, you can hear the busyness and maybe even the consternation of the world awaiting the savior.”
For the next couple of minutes, to our ears at least, it was an unholy mess of organ sounds that perhaps only another organist might appreciate for the difficulty and technique behind all the noise. I commented that it sounded like the organist was leaning on the keyboards with his forearms, and LeAnn said it sounded like his feet were stomping all over the pedals. We’d heard enough and turned it off.
Still, I was intrigued by the host’s description: “busyness and consternation of the world awaiting the savior.” That struck a chord with me because I think it describes our world today. We are busy and bewildered about almost everything, and there are deep divides about what will save us and where it will come from: God or government; God’s will or our stubborn self-determination; prayerful discernment or bombastic force; militant activism or quiet dissent.
Politically speaking, I’m praying for some sort of seismic shift in the next few years with both parties offering a new generation of leaders committed to a new era of cooperation and harmony. Sadly, however, most of the disharmony we hear is multigenerational, and it’s also global. Other nations seem to have been caught up in our mess or are dealing with the same issues inside their own borders with or without our over-sized influence.
Thinking more about the “busyness and consternation” all around us, I found the “Pipedreams” program online and listened to the entire piece that annoyed us Sunday morning. I discovered the host’s comment incorporated the actual title of the piece, “The World Awaiting the Savior,” composed by Marcel Dupre in 1924. What’s more, if we had listened longer, we would have found the cacophony at the beginning is followed by a softer, quieter, more melodic section that feels like a prayer of hope and peace. Another source I read said Dupre composed the piece from an improvisation on two Christmas melodies: “Jesu, Redemptor Omnium” (“Jesus, Redeemer of All”) and “Adeste Fideles” (“O Come All Ye Faithful”). I listened to those and Dupre’s piece and couldn’t hear the connection at all. Regardless, the piece ended with the unholy noise we’d heard at the beginning.
What I got from my full listening to “The World Awaiting the Savior” is a sense that we can’t get ourselves right in the courthouse and marketplace until we get ourselves right in the sanctuary and temple – and not just our place of worship, wherever that may be, but in the temple of the Holy Spirit that is our own being. We can’t make peace with each other on the outside until we make peace with God on the inside. And that is only going to come with a spiritual disposition that is honest, prayerful, confessional, sacrificial, loving, fair and just.
It sounds like a pipedream to me. I’m certain it can’t happen with just a few people working at it; it would take millions if not billions of us. We’d have to quit listening to the false prophets on whatever side we’re on and start listening to the true God inside all of us. Until then, we’ll keep returning to the busyness and consternation of our fruitless efforts to save ourselves.
I wrote that down and thought I had climbed out of the rabbit hole, but then I fell into a new one this morning. Driving home from an early breakfast, I was listening to an oldies station and they played a song I hadn’t heard in years: “Everything is Beautiful” by Ray Stevens. Released in 1970 during another time of unrest and turmoil, the song begins with a children’s choir singing the familiar “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” and then Stevens sings about a world where everything and everybody is beautiful if we’ll just open our eyes and our minds. He ends each verse with these words of hope: “Under God’s heaven, the world’s gonna find the way.”
That was 56 years ago and we’re still trying to find the way. I do believe we’ll get there someday, but not just yet.