If everything is holy, nothing is holy

 

If everything is holy, nothing is holy

by Lydia McGrew

(Originally published at What's Wrong With the World. Link to original post at 'permalink' below.) 

One of my Facebook friends recently shared, with approval, Minnesota folk singer Peter Mayer's song "Holy Now." The lyrics are here.

When I was a boy, each week
On Sunday, we would go to church
And pay attention to the priest
He would read the holy word
And consecrate the holy bread
And everyone would kneel and bow
Today the only difference is
Everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now

When I was in Sunday school
We would learn about the time
Moses split the sea in two
Jesus made the water wine
And I remember feeling sad
That miracles don't happen still
But now I can't keep track
'Cause everything's a miracle
Everything, Everything
Everything's a miracle

Wine from water is not so small
But an even better magic trick
Is that anything is here at all
So the challenging thing becomes
Not to look for miracles
But finding where there isn't one

When holy water was rare at best
It barely wet my fingertips
But now I have to hold my breath
Like I'm swimming in a sea of it
It used to be a world half there
Heaven's second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
'Cause everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now

Read a questioning child's face
And say it's not a testament
That'd be very hard to say
See another new morning come
And say it's not a sacrament
I tell you that it can't be done

This morning, outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
Singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head
I remember when church let out
How things have changed since then
Everything is holy now
It used to be a world half-there
Heaven's second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
'Cause everything is holy now

Compare them with his even more pointedly titled "Church of the Earth" lyrics linked from here.

Here's a little info.:

PETER MAYER is a well-known American singer-songwriter. His song "Holy Now" has become a beloved standard in liberal church contexts and was the title entry of the 2006 Songbook of the Association of Unity Churches. Peter's "Blue Boat Home" gained a place in the supplementary hymnal of the Unitarian Universalist Association.

In 2006 Peter began collaborating with photographer/videographer Connie Barlow to render the particular songs that highlight evolutionary and ecological themes into captioned video formats ideal for contemplative viewing or sing-along in churches and spiritual centers.

I trust that is clear enough, if you didn't get it from the song lyrics themselves. (Interesting terminological note: Evidently some liberals use "liberal" as a term of approval among themselves.) If you are curious, earth worship features prominently in the above-mentioned universalist "hymn," "Blue Boat Home." Lyrics linked from here.

Why do otherwise sensible and orthodox Christian people occasionally fall for this kind of "everything is a miracle, everything is holy, nothing is any more special than anything else" universalist shtick? What is it about a kind of spiritual egalitarianism of things and events that is so attractive that blatant, in-your-face pantheism and anti-Christianity goes unnoticed in the same lyric? (Gotta love the reference to orthodox Christianity as "heaven's second-rate hand-me-down.")

It's only fair to admit that Mayer is a talented lyricist, so there's that. I think, too, that many Christians are looking for profundity and mysticism, and saying that "everything is holy" seems to answer that need. And saying that a little red-winged bird shines like a burning bush could be taken in isolation to mean that the creation manifests God's glory.

The problem is just that the sweeping, profound-sounding statement is false. Everything is not holy. A Black Mass is not holy. A demon is not holy. Methamphetamine is not holy. An instrument of torture is not holy. A murder is not holy. There is good and bad and right and wrong. Some acts are holy and some are evil. Some symbols stand for good and beautiful things while others stand for evil things. Some objects or substances have no function or point but the bad function for which they were deliberately made.

We can even take it up a notch by moving away from acts and symbols of evil to things that are neutral in themselves. If you insist on saying that every bit of dirt is holy, you should at least have the theological capacity to say that a bit of dirt is not holy in the same sense that the Blessed Sacrament is holy. The dirt is also not holy in the same sense that a saintly human being is holy. And the saintly ordinary human being, not being God Incarnate, is not holy in precisely the same sense, or at least not to the same degree, that Jesus Christ is holy. Even Christian mysticism must be held together and made coherent by hierarchical structure.

Furthermore, if there is not God, who is absolutely holy, and who is strongly Other than and separate from His Creation, then nothing can be holy at all. A radical anti-egalitarianism, a radical separation between Creator and creature, is a necessary condition for the possibility of meaningful holiness. The "holiness" of pantheism is merely everything-ness. It's a faux holiness that actually turns all theological categories into a giant egalitarian mush. Mayer, being an artist, can dress it up pretty nicely, but he can't make it other than what it is. God's presence can infuse glory into the smallest grain of sand only if God is God, if God is a real, personal Being (not "the All" or the Force), and only if the sand is part of God's creation. The omnipresence of the Judeo-Christian God is sharply different from the pantheist universalism of Peter Mayer's lyrics. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the two concepts are opposed to each other.

Now, about miracles: However sweet it may sound to say that everything that happens is a miracle, that is also false. And again, as with holiness, so here: If everything is a miracle, nothing is a miracle. The concept of a miracle is meaningful only if there is a contrast class of events that form the natural order, i.e., not miracles. (See also the discussion in this comment.) Every drop of rain that falls is not a miracle. Every flower that grows is not a miracle. Though it is true that we wouldn't have drops of rain if God had not made the heavens and the earth and all that is in the beginning by the Word of His power, and though we wouldn't have flowers if God hadn't made the first flowers, the growth of the flower now and the fall of the raindrop now are not miracles now. When Jesus rose from the dead, that was a miracle. When Peter was released by an angel from prison (today's Scripture reading for the Feast of St. Peter), that was a miracle. When Christians were martyred and their bodies decomposed and formed soil for the crops to grow, that was not a miracle.

Sometimes the only way to guard true mysticism and profundity is to seem to run in the opposite direction. I make no claim to be a mystic; far from it. But it seems to me evident that somewhere along the road to a true understanding of God, even by that way of darkness, lies clarity, not vagueness and muddle.

There are crossroads that come up in our thinking about God, and woe betide us if we take the wrong turn. If we are to honor God with our minds, we should see always at those crucial places where the ways part between truth and error an angel with a burning sword held aloft. And from his lips there comes a cry:

"Distinguo!"

Posted by Lydia McGrew on June 29, 2014 12:32 PM | Del.icio.us | Permalink

Tags: (miracles) (mysticism) (philosophy of religion)

Open Thou Mine Eyes

I think I like this recording even better, though obviously not professionally recorded.




Open thou mine eyes and I shall see;
Incline my heart and I shall desire;
Order my steps and I shall walk
In the ways of thy commandments.

O Lord God, be thou to me a God
And beside thee let there be none else,
No other, naught else with thee.

Vouchsafe to me to worship thee and serve thee
According to thy commandments
In truth of spirit,
in reverence of body,
In blessings of lips,
In private and in public.

The inestimable privilege of singing to Mrs. K.

Every year since 2001 my family has organized a Christmas caroling potluck at our house. Mostly attended by home schooling families (some quite large families), joined by Christian college students and various other friends, the caroling parties can get quite large. I believe our record is eighty, counting unborn children. I did not count this year so would only be guessing, but my guess would put the total this year somewhere around forty.

We eat first then go out into the neighborhood. This year we stopped at ten houses, most of whom were expecting us, but four of those families were not home, so we sang at only six. On a Saturday evening in December, many families are simply not at home. It's amazing how much energy it takes to sing at just six houses, but despite that, I would like to raise the number of houses we go to. I prefer to go where we have been previously announced and expected rather than knocking at random doors. Perhaps in future years I will put my caroling letter into the mailboxes of more neighbors. My voice was about shot by the end of this year's caroling, but then, my voice had been entirely gone just two days before the party, so I was grateful to be able to sing at all.

For all of those thirteen years and fourteen caroling parties we have sung to the elderly Mrs. K. She lives nearby in her own home, cared for by the frequent visits of her adult children, whose assiduous help has allowed her to continue to live on her own with her small dog. With each year she has grown more frail, and now she is, quite literally, bent double due to spinal problems. She is very much all there. She told me a story this last summer of going to the doctor and being asked what medications she was on. She said she listed all twenty-six from memory, with their doses.

This year she was careful to call me on the evening of the caroling party to remind me that we should come to the side door of the house to sing. Why this is easier for her is a mystery to me, since it requires her to come down a short flight of stairs to open the door, while the front door is level with the main floor. But I know there is a good logistical reason, whatever it may be, and I duly assured her that we would come to the side door, which is equipped with its own doorbell.

Having had several disappointments ringing bells where people were not home, our merry band was a little nervous when Mrs. K. took a while getting to the door. They wondered if this would be another house where no one answered. I wasn't worried; I knew she was home. When she appeared and slowly opened the door, looking down at the ground and unable to lift herself up, much like the woman in the Bible whom Jesus healed (Luke 13), everyone felt, I think, just as I did: Who are we that she should go to all this trouble to come to the door and listen to us sing?

We gave her our best. I can't remember which song we started out with. Perhaps it was "Hark the Herald." Then, as I always do with the people for whom we sing, I asked her if she had a favorite carol she would like us to sing. She said "O Holy Night."

It just so happens that I've never added "O Holy Night" to our repertoire. If I'd thought of it, I probably would have said it was too hard for us. But Eldest Daughter immediately struck up the tune (in an excellently accessible key, I might add), and off we went. Fortunately, we were all gathered rather close together by the side door. A first rule of caroling outside in front of houses is, "Thou shalt bunch close together so as to be able to hear one another." My beloved band tends to straggle, however often I ask them to come closer. I think they are afraid of making the goodman or good lady of the house feel crowded with a bunch of people around the front door. But this time, we could hear each other, and I was pleasantly surprised at how good we sounded.

When we tried it again, just for fun, at the house across the street, it was definitely a thinner sound. We had already given our all to Mrs. K., in honor of her gallantry and in honor of Our Lord.

It was a very great privilege. I hope we will have the privilege for many more years.

Sunday guessing game

Taking a leaf from Bill Luse, who occasionally does guessing games of this sort:

Without looking it up via Google or any other method, can you name the following song and singer given this snippet?

Have you been half asleep
And have you heard voices?
I've heard them calling my name.
Is this the sweet sound
That calls the young sailor?
The voice might be one and the same.

Hint: These lyrics are surprisingly profound given their source. Also, if you can identify them without looking them up, you will probably enable other people to peg your approximate age.

I admit, I'd forgotten all about the song and its source until reminded by a Facebook friend yesterday.

"Most Gracious Lord"

This song used to be sung by the large college choir at my alma mater. I still think it incomparably beautiful today and have many fond memories of singing it, especially in a rotunda area that had lovely acoustics. The words are sobering--none shall falter, none shall shrink. I suspect that if it were translated into Latin those "none shall" phrases would end up in the murderously difficult subjunctive. We are asking God to grant us living faith so that as we walk His chosen path none shall falter, none shall shrink. But whether we falter or shrink remains up in the air, as it were. It's our prayer, our aspiration, our fervent hope, but by no means a sure thing.

May God indeed grant us that living faith.

If any readers happen to have access to the sheet music for this piece, I would love to have a copy. Google has not turned it up anywhere. I believe the composer is named Berntsen.

Count your Christmas music blessings

It's that time of year again. The time when the stores rev up the admittedly too-early and too-oft-repeated Christmas music. And the time of year when bloggers and Facebook status writers, eager to demonstrate their trad-ent or Catholic or Protestant-Scrooge creds, start complaining about Christmas music. This cartoon has been doing the rounds and allowing everyone to feel superior.

However, I was struck when going to the grocery store on the Friday after Thanksgiving by a strange feeling of relief as the strains of "White Christmas" wafted over the sound system. Why the relief? It took me a couple of moments to figure it out. Then I remembered the previous week when I stopped at the store of an evening and heard a song so graphic, so sexually explicit that I could not believe it, until one line had been repeated so many times that I couldn't deny what I was hearing. Admittedly, that was one of the worst to have been piped into my unwilling ears while I'm contemplating the cabbage, but for the most part, the music even on the "oldies" stations, even at our nice little local grocery store, is sufficiently junk-laden that I'm usually glad not to have children along on the trip and come home wishing there were such a thing as mouthwash for the brain. (The music makes a nice complement to the copies of Cosmo in the checkout lane.) Even when the lyrics aren't explicit, they include an almost never-ending stream of glorification of fornication, including such charming ditties as "Come On Over Tonight." (I can't help smiling wryly at the line in that one, "If it don't feel right, you can go." That's nice. "Look, Ma, no date rape!") In the evenings, whoever gets to choose the music often chooses hip-hop, so we get to listen to animalistic noises. During the day, a drawback of the so-called "oldies" station is that you can hear every word.

So, I have some questions for all the people who are posting or getting ready to post their yearly gripe about Christmas music in the stores: Why are you complaining about the one month out of the year when your local store plays "White Christmas" when you never uttered a peep about the eleven months out of the year when your local store was playing "Do That To Me One More Time" and "Undercover Angel"? Did all the real trash you've been hearing at other times go in one ear and out the other? Or do you actually prefer soft pornography to Christmas schmaltz?

Sure, there are suggestive Christmas songs as well, or so I'm told. (So far, I've been spared listening to them.) But let's face it: That isn't primarily what gets the complaints, and when it does, it's part of a larger diatribe about too much Christmas music, too contentless, too early, shouldn't be played during Advent, etc. For the most part, the "holiday season" is in musical terms quite an improvement both in the wholesomeness of the lyrics and, believe it or not, in the niceness of the music. I caught myself twice this morning thinking, as an intro. started up, "That's really pretty." The fact that it was an instrumental lead-in to a Christmas song that I'll have to hear five hundred times over the next month didn't change the fact that it was a big improvement over the second-rate rock I usually have to listen to. (No, I'm not an anti-rock hater. Remember me, the person who put up a positive post about "Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog"?)

Please take as read all the concessions about the fact that Christmas music is played for too long, that it is more repetitious than at other times of year, to the point that it must be something near torture for the employees before all is done, that some of the songs ("Here Comes Santa Claus," etc.) are utterly trivial and lacking in artistic merit. I acknowledge all of that freely. However: If the stores followed the same pattern in terms of genre and Wholesomeness Quotient for the rest of the year, we'd be listening to Cole Porter and the Andrews Sisters most of the time, with an occasional daring foray into the Temptations--perhaps "My Girl." And that would be, I submit, a change for the better.

So we should count our blessings. We get to listen to Christmas music until December 25th.

To help you lighten up

Just in case you are a somewhat un-light person, this is supposed to help you lighten up in preparation for a fun Christmas. Signature Sound, "All I Want Is You." The studio version cannot be embedded, but you can listen to it here.

Here's a fan-made live version:

Worthy Is the Lamb--Hallelujah Chorus

Today in the church calendar used by my church is the Feast of Christ the King. In the spirit of bringing together old and new, liturgical year and Protestant music, I give you an unusual arrangement of Handel.

The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir:



Collect for Christ the King:

Almighty and everlasting God, who hast exalted thy beloved Son to be King over all worlds, and hast willed in him to make all things new, mercifully grant that th kindreds of the earth which are wounded and dispersed by sin may speedily be knit together under his gracious sovereignty, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, world without end, Amen.

"Musical child abuse" page

I've been researching penny whistles lately, and in the process I found this absolutely hilarious page about a penny whistle set sold at Christmas some years ago. Be sure that you are all set to laugh when you read this, though actually, I agree with the guy. Whoever did this should be shot, figuratively speaking.

"Shall We Gather At the River" with Irish whistle

Here's a really nice rendition of "Shall We Gather At the River" with accordion, penny whistle, and acoustic guitar. Has a folk sound. Buddy Greene singing, Jeff Taylor on accordion and penny whistle.




Buddy Greene is the harmonica player for many Gaither homecomings, and here he is bringing the house down at Carnegie Hall (!) with his harmonica:

Collingsworth Family

A week and a day ago we were privileged to go to Shipshewana, IN, to a concert by Ernie Haase/Signature Sound and the Collingsworth Family. (The Browns--children and mother--were the supporting artists. I'll say a bit more about them in a later post.)

In many ways I'm still processing the concert and deciding how much to blog about. I can't really do it justice and could say so many different things. The thing that will always stick with me the most is how very, very kind these Southern gospel performers are to their fans and especially to young people. My girls got to meet and have pictures taken with all of the performers, to get autographs, and there was no impatience at all, even though it was quite late by the time the concert was finished.

More in a later post about Ernie Haase/Signature Sound, a great bunch of guys with a great sound.

If you have any interest at all in Christian music, especially somewhat old-fashioned, God-honoring music, hymns, etc., I cannot recommend the Collingsworth family too highly. They are incredibly talented. What I didn't know before going to the concert is how hugely talented a pianist the mother is. Kim Collingsworth is simply amazing. Here is (part of) her rendition of "How Great Thou Art."



The entire arrangement is here. (Embedding disabled on this one.)

I was privileged to speak briefly with Kim Collingsworth during the intermission. She has a beautiful, soft Southern accent and is a true lady, sincere, kind, and gracious, which is so striking in a person of such high musical professionalism. She told me, "If you will do the best for God, God will do the best for you. And that's a good deal."

Here are the Collingsworth ladies (mother and two eldest daughters) singing "Fear Not Tomorrow," which I have not heard elsewhere.



Brooklyn, the eldest daughter, is getting married this winter.

"Little Jazz Bird" by Glad

And a big HT to reader Stuart for suggesting imeem as a source of Glad clips. I'd been looking all over Youtube for a good recording of "Little Jazz Bird," but with no luck. (I didn't like the ones that were there, and of course they didn't have Glad.) Here is Glad's. I hope Gershwin won't be turning in his grave if I say that this song is absolutely adorable. It would be a lot of fun if some professional child singer had recorded it long ago--like Shirley Temple or somebody. The imeem clip is only missing a little bit at the end.

Little Jazz Bird - GLAD

A Cappella Gershwin

My old college friend Rich recommended this album to me when I had an earlier post about Glad. I only wish I could find a link that had more samples. Amazon appears to have no audio clips at all.

I got it for Eldest Daughter for a Christmas present, and in her jargon, "it's the bomb." (For all you old fogies like me out there, that's a compliment. I understand that "you are a total beast" is also a compliment.)

Anyway, it's excellent. Glad's top-notch musicianship is on display, as is what I read someone somewhere describing as "Ed Nalle's uncanny high tenor." Some of the pieces have words, some don't. Their vocal renditions of "American in Paris" and "Summertime" in the Gershwin medley are fantastic.

But my favorite was "Little Jazz Bird." I'd never heard it before and can't find a good Youtube or other on-line recording of it. Frankly, I can't stand these female jazz singers I find sort of simpering it out. Ick. But Glad does it straight up. If you should get the CD and hear the song, you'll have it going through your head and cheering you up for weeks. I recommend it.