March 2, 2014,
Exodus 24:12-18:
24:12 The LORD said to Moses, "Come up to me on the mountain, and wait there; and I will give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction."
24:13 So Moses set out with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up into the mountain of God.
24:14 To the elders he had said, "Wait here for us, until we come to you again; for Aaron and Hur are with you; whoever has a dispute may go to them."
24:15 Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain.
24:16 The glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days; on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the cloud.
24:17 Now the appearance of the glory of the LORD was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel.
24:18 Moses entered the cloud, and went up on the mountain. Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights.
CONNIE:
2 Kings 3: 15--Get me a musician! They fetched a musician, and while he was playing, the power of the Lord came upon Elisha.
Ezekiel 33: 32: And lo, you are to them like one who sings love songs with a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument for they hear what you say…When this comes, and come it will! then they will learn that a prophet has been among them.
In late 2007 Kent, Nathan Holst and I sounded the call for the New Creation Mission Group, after talking about how music is not just “singing love songs with a beautiful voice and playing well on an instrument” – it is a compelling movement of the spirit that encourages, and challenges people, as a prophet does. I envisioned our group as giving that encouragement to people on the “front lines,” those of us in 8th Day and elsewhere who are doing missions and obeying calls, who need support and bolstering along the way. As put in our written call, “We seek to be a prophetic voice to those in need of challenge, a soothing balm to the discouraged, and accompaniment on the path to meet Shekinah Glory, the Spirit of God.”
Since that first call, we have expanded our mission to include art, poetry and creating liturgies, all still with the same purpose.
The creative process was something we also paid attention to, and this process is not unlike the experience of Moses on the Mountain in Exodus, or Jesus on the Mountain with Peter, James and John. One goes to a high place, away from daily life. A cloud surrounds one. There is the not knowing – waiting, and the waiting for a voice, a message. Then there is the shining, the receiving of the voice. As Peter recorded it, “we saw him with our own eyes in majesty…”. And Moses’ face shone after he descended from the mountain.
One thing we having been doing, once per month, is exploring mandalas, in different forms, corresponding to each month of the year. We do a meditation, and then draw on our own, then come back to share what we’ve experienced and drawn. Drawing spontaneously allows us to let the unconscious come up instead of a more thought-out creation. This allows us to grasp that creating is in the moment, and it requires vulnerability to show oneself in a not-so-polished state.
So, each of us is going to share a little about how we are co-creating with God and engaging our “Living Song”. Some of these creations are in process, not finished, and our sharing them is a leap of faith, not having to have everything put together.
MEADE:
I joined New Creation Mission group first and foremost because it was a mission group that would provide me with the accountability around nurturing my inward journey that I was not getting at Potter’s House church and would not expect to get at any other church outside the Church of the Saviour.
The fact that the outward journey of NCMG from a nuts and bolts level, was about providing music for prayer, protest, or celebration made choosing it as my outward journey, a no brainer. Music has been an active call for me since elementary school. It is in my spiritual language. Singing in choir, listening to John Denver and singing camp songs all helped me to anchor to God in the midst of navigating my parents’ shuffling of their lives as they divorced, traveled, redefined themselves and remarried. (It was the 70’s after all)
In college I could not help but to give it back to God. I bought a beat up guitar from a Catholic girl for $50 in New Orleans, LA and was soon leading music with new hippi Christian friends, singing all night around the metaphorical campfire – (a huge collection of wine bottles covered in candles and melted wax on our coffee table) I led music for a small interracial Presbyterian-going-Black Baptist church in the inner city Irish channel neighborhood of NOLA. Back in Memphis, a couple of years later, I let music at church retreats, at the Peace and Justice center, with Vineyard open air charismatics on Memphis State’s campus. Here in DC, beyond worship, it has been music at interfaith worships, memorials of Gerardi and Romero, vigils for peace, protests against war, for fair housing, against torture, for abolition of armed drones.
In addition to this familiar call, the mission group calls us to the growing edge of creating NEW music, a mountain I have been intimidated to climb all my life. I am a technician, not a creator. Part of the hardest part for me has been to immerse myself in the cloud of NOT knowing that Connie talked about. Being a mom of 3 and managing PH, I have had many encounters with God in the middle of ordinary days but have been too busy to capture them in any way but a prayer of thanks. The more I, as an extrovert, resurrect an inward life, my prayers become songs, stories, and visual expressions that fuel the transformation of our souls and change our world. Time becomes abundant - a friend not a foe and anything is possible.
Here is a quote from Gordon Cosby (who was ALWAYS about throwing out old structures for the NEW CREATION ) that reminds me of this dynamic - "Don't you know there is a limitless flow of life - a superabundance of love and caring? You simply cannot exhaust it. It may be tough learning how to touch that current, how to get into that stream, to feel the flow and power of it, to be carried by it, but one thing is certain: the stream is there. And it is limitless."
In the middle of this timelessness, we are taken to what John O Donohue, the late Irish Catholic priest, calls the threshold, the doorway between the world as it is and our dreams of what the world could be. While we are not a mission group to end homelessness or feed the hungry, I often call see ourselves as a threshold mission group - a mission group that brings you to that place between was is and what could be. John O Donohue wrote a poem about beauty that I modified and put to music and would like to sing for you today as my living song….
WILD BEAUTY…..
Do you listen to your longing to be free?
Are the frames of your belonging, large enough for your dreams?
Do you arise each day with a voice of blessing
whispering in your heart, something good will happen to you?
Now let the wild beauty of the invisible world,
gather you, and mind you embrace you into being. (repeat)
Do you find harmony between your soul & life.
Can we know eternal longing that lies in the heart of time?
Is there kindness in your gaze when you look within?
How can we break free from our prison of despair?
Now let the wild beauty of the invisible world,
gather you, and mind you embrace you into being. (repeat)
SUSIE:
The living song I'm committed to singing is of the steadfast extraordinary goodness of God which has unfolded like a rose and simultaneously served as a theme running throughout my life. I'd like to share a few vignettes to illustrate this theme.
1. Poverty turned to Joy- I was born into poverty in Raleigh, NC, my father having disappeared before I was born, never to be part of my life. At age 6 I was placed in the Baptist Orphanage of NC, named Mills Home, in Thomasville, NC, where I lived until I graduated from high school. In the ordinary course of things I should have gone to Kennedy Home, the branch in Kinston, which was closer to where my mother lived but there was no room there at the time of my placement. As a result of being placed in Thomasville in Davidson County I became eligible for what was essentially a full scholarship to Wake Forest University which was open only to low income students from Davidson County. Starting about the 6th grade, it was my deep dream to go to Wake Forest.
2. Debate to Call- Thanks to my high school civics teacher who was always seeking to spot talent for the debate team I wound up debating all 4 years of high school, including attending the annual Wake Forest debate tournaments for high schools and winning the aforementioned scholarship to Wake Forest to debate another 4 years there. My long held dream came true. It was while debating the topic whether US foreign assistance to poor countries should be increased that I began to experience the call to work for economic justice for and with the poor in developing countries.
3. Job Search to Practical Economics- After getting a Master's in Foreign Affairs I looked for a job here in Washington. Through Peace Corps I was steered to the National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA)where I worked for 41 years, living out the economic justice call. When I went for the initial interview I had never heard of cooperatives, group-based, not for profit businesses, governed democratically by their members. Once I learned about them I knew I had found an economic philosophy and practice I could embrace wholeheartedly. NCBA applied and still applies the principles and practices of cooperatives, not just in its work with farmers in production and marketing of their crops but also with communities in health care management, forest management,and several other fields. Its field work is highly creative, innovative and is genuine bottom-up development. And so my second great dream came true at NCBA.
Gordon used to say that there is no such thing as coincidence. I believe that is true and I believe it was God who worked through people and circumstances to open doors for me. Sure there have been times of pain, disappointment and struggle but they have been far surpassed by the extraordinary grace that has been poured into my life. One of the ways I try to sing the song of this amazing goodness is through art. I have brought a collage mandala called "Everlasting Goodness" to share today. My future hope is to share art and the love of it in ways that help people heal physically and emotionally.
CONNIE:
[Connie first sang her song, Tuned to the Source, Aligned with the One. To hear it, scroll down to bottom of page. Here are the lyrics.]
Healed are those who devote themselves to the spirit;
the design of the universe is shown in their form.
Tuned to the source are those feeling deeply confused by life;
they shall be returned from their wandering.
Healthy are those who have softened what is rigid within, they
shall get strength from the universe.
Aligned with the One are those who wait up at night, weakened and
dried out inside by the unnatural state of the world; they shall receive satisfaction.
Blessed are those who shine from the deepest place in their bodies.
Upon them shall be the rays of universal love.
Aligned with the One are those whose lives radiate and shine from a core of Love;
they shall see God everywhere.
Blessed are those who bear the fruit of safety for all;
they shall hasten [the coming of] God's new creation.
Healing to those persecuted for trying to right society's balance;
to them belongs the [coming] King- and Queendom.
When you feel contaminated, dislocated and feel an inner shame for no good reason--
it is the sign of the prophets to feel the disunity around them intensely.
Do everything extreme, [including letting your ego disappear,] like a white bird in the snow,
for this is the secret of claiming your expanded home in the Universe!
FLORENCE: Poem: Music Plasma
It flows through my veins, a life force that knows few bounds and with it some of the happiest most joyful moments of my life - a source of joy, yes, but also the needed comfort when I have been in pain from sickness, loneliness, anger, frustration, or depression.
Music to see me through the darkest nights of the soul:
Illness beyond repair, death and the fear of numbness, grief that such bring;
Music to hide behind and music to hurl me into action.
It was first a family affair. Indeed it was part of me from conception, the months of gestation, the earliest stir of a separate life flowing into my brain and then birth.
From childhood to my teen years it was a passage to growing up
First a teenager then a young woman And now an elder of the clan
And oh the wonderful variety!
At first only the classics: symphonies, piano and violin concertos, medieval chants and songs. I teethed on the great soloists fo the first recorded era – Renata Tebaldi, Galli-Curci, Henrico Caruso and more and then there was opera – that great synthesis of music and storytelling allowing the whole family to have fun mimicking what we heard
- Singing with the greats –
- Daddy, the baritone bass, Mama, the dramatic mezzo, Connie, the coloratura soprano and me, the mezzo alto
- Musical careers for Mama and Connie if only they had dared to go beyond choirs, choruses, and lead singers in those groups
- But nevermind, we were a home grown choir that played to family, friends, and sundry visitors.
- My teen years saw a shift to popular music: Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn and even Doris Day but no and never Bing Crosby.
- And there was also music to dance to – waltz, foxtrot, rumba, mambo, cha-cha, and my favorites: meringue and calypso. Oh, how the floors would rock!
- We danced at home, in the park and at the Palladium and Roselands – dance halls of the 50’s and 60’s where a group of girls could go and come without escorts and still an array of guys we met! Many left behind at the “stage door” but some few becoming dates, friends, and guests at our home, dances and parties. One was Benny who would have been a brother-in-law save the death of my sister, Connie.
Music – Song – Dance
Formative pillars of my life. I used to say if I am dying – play music, bring singers and dancers and I will either resist and return to life or go off happily and with a bang to that other world where if the psalms are true, singing, dancing, harp and lyre are integral parts of the “new life”
More to say, more to remember but for now, suffice it to say, the music of the Gods is my living song.
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Connie's song: Tuned to the Source, Aligned with the One Words:
Matthew 5:1-12,
Aramaic Translation by Neil Douglas-Klotz
Music and Editing of Lyrics: Connie Ridgway © 2014