If you're not outraged...

Once upon a time, like a lot of idealistic young people, I lived and died by the bumper-sticker creed “If you’re not outraged you’re not paying attention”. After a little time and a lot of experience, my bumper sticker is more likely to read “if you’re not outraged, you’ve probably developed a good self-preservation mechanism”. It’s not to say that there isn’t still plenty in this world worthy of lament, but that most of it is not the result of nefarious individuals but of huge systems impervious to our outrage. As I discovered the first time I was crossed by Bank of America, sometimes there is no one responsible, and no one to be mad at, and the anger only hurts ourselves.

Even with individuals I find it hard to maintain anger. Like a goldfish fooled each time by the tapping on the glass, I can easily be won over by a pleasant exchange with someone, even if previous exchanges have been less than pleasant, and even if I am convinced that they are one of those rare nefarious individuals mentioned above. Perhaps it’s because I am so frequently in need of mercy and forgiveness myself, but I am usually pretty willing to start over again with someone even if they’ve irked me in the past.

A lot of people mention Jesus’ anger when they are trying to justify their own. That’s a nice idea, but come on, this is Jesus we’re talking about. Yes, he went recognizably bonkers over the money changers in the temple, but he was also the Son of God. I better be sure my motivations are as pure and my anger as righteous when I start flipping tables.

Is it called growing up? Is it called settling? Is it called getting over it, whatever it may be? I’m not sure. But because I am more willing to let things go now, I give even more attention to the handful of things I am not willing to let go. There are a few incidents in my history that I refuse to forgive or forget, the claws and barbs of which I refuse to release from my gut and my psyche. I have made a conscious decision to keep being angry about these, so they must matter.

One was being told in elementary school that I couldn’t be an altar server because I was a girl, and the other was being told in high school that I should quit singing because my voice wasn’t worth listening to. They involve such wildly different things, but to me they are so similar that I have almost conflated the two incidents into some epic thwarting, an unidentifiable outside voice telling me something about me that I knew was false.

The comment in high school was really crushing. Not only had I shaped a fair amount of my identity around my vocal talent, I also had the intuition to know that this was what I should be doing. Singing was who I was, and had been since long before I had any outside feedback that my voice was “good” or “pretty” or “sweet” or any of the other adjectives that get thrown around. Singing was something I had always done, and part of how I expressed myself. Whether my voice was pretty or sweet had nothing to do with the most important fact which was that my voice was mine.

The issue with altar serving raises whole issues of gender that I’m not sure I am ready to get into here. What I am willing to get into, and what should embarrass me more than it does, is that even as a child I had a strong and bizarre devotion to the liturgy and I knew I wanted to be a part of it. The same way that I will now read any book, attend any lecture, or take any class that has to do with liturgy, when I was a child I would take any opportunity to be involved. It was bad luck that I was in a parish (and perhaps a diocese? I’m not sure) that still prohibited “altar girls”, and I remember being so astounded that I couldn’t even be angry or upset.

One of my earliest memories is of someone at day care telling me that blue was “a boys’ color” and having my now-typical reaction of “that’s the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard”. I never believed there was anything ontologically different about me because of my gender. There was nothing I deserved or didn’t deserve, nothing I was capable or incapable of, simply because I was a girl. So to be told that this element of my identity that I truly believed to be inconsequential was going to affect another person’s decision about what I could do was an absurdity that passeth all understanding.

In retrospect, neither of these things was truly enraging, more dumbfounding: somebody thought they knew better than me about me, and that somebody was wrong. Everyone has things that they are wired for, and to have those natural inclinations denied or disparaged truly violates the natural order of things. I suppose I hang on to these insults and slights because I don’t want to forget what it is that makes me who I am. I don’t want to forget that no one can tell me what I am capable of or what my aspirations should be. It’s good to let things go, but equally good to know what we should hold onto, what's worth being mad about.



I have avoided putting a “gender” tag up on the blog for a while, because I don’t want to get into something so controversial. But maybe it’s time.

I will hold Your people in my heart

Earlier today I clicked on a link to a post titled “Ten worst hymns of all time”. Despite the flippant title I expected to read something examining texts, vocalism, needs of communities, and musicality. Unfortunately I found the same list of popular tunes that I’ve read 100 times before, followed by reader comments lamenting the good ol’ days when we sand Gregorian chant and Holy God, We Praise Thy Name (which happens to be one of my favorite hymns, although people taking issue with awkward lyrics in modern songs shouldn't then turn around and raise up a tune with the line 'Lo! the apostolic train angel choirs above are raising'). I should be clear my beef here is more with the comments and the idea of picking out the “worst hymns” than it is with the actual list (although the inclusion of Pescador de Hombres offends me).

Judging by their comments most of the readers could be called “traditional” or “conservative” (yes, labels are odious, but sometimes they are necessary) , and it is no surprise that they don’t like the St Louis Jesuits, and they don’t have much use for Marty Haugen and David Haas, either. I have always argued that post-conciliar American liturgical music is a mixed bag, and that it is going to take sometime to separate the wheat from the chaff. But despite picking out a handful of bad couplets as evidence that these pieces are on shaky theological ground, it’s obvious that most of these people just don’t like that particular genre of eighth-notey, hyper-melodic, G or D major, Haugen/Haas style jams.

There are plenty of pieces in that genre for which I don’t care either. My issues with these lists (and I have read plenty, and they are almost always similar) is that rather than addressing particular shortcomings in a way that could be constructive, they self-righteously vent about how much they hate a song or how tired they are of it. It’s worth noting that One Bread, One Body has too many held notes and not enough internal rhythm, that I Am the Bread of Life has as wide a range as the National Anthem, and that We Are Called would be much better in G. Pinpointing challenges in popular hymns helps us to be more prudent about their use (We Are Called only as a closing hymn rather than opening, One Bread One Body with an organist and singers capable of subdivision, I Am the Bread of Life in thick enough orchestration that people can switch octaves and not feel like they’re sticking out). But that’s not as much fun as being snarky.

The elephant in the room when we get kvetching about Here I Am, Lord, is that people really like that song. I know, some people really like smoking, too, even though it’s bad for them. But if something is a legitimate conduit of grace, we need to give some value to that. If we don’t, it means we don’t trust our fellow worshippers’ taste or spirituality. Almost every song on this list is deeply meaningful to many people, and none are so theologically or musically revolting that they are truly unacceptable for worship. Yet there are still scads of liturgists (and armchair liturgists) who see their role as protecting the people from themselves. I literally cannot find words to express how frustrated this makes me. If you do not value or trust your community you have no place leading it.

I often joke to my choirs that they make me like songs I don’t like, and they do this by filling them with life and art and prayer. There are a very few songs that are on my “absolutely not” list, and I’ll admit that it’s often more fun to criticize a piece I don’t like than to open myself to learning why it is meaningful to other people. Just because this is what I do for a living doesn’t mean I get to decide for everyone what their values should be. I can try to influence their taste and offer new examples of meaningful music, and I can make the best of the meaningful music that is not ideal. The people who worship beside me in any setting are my family in Christ, fellow heirs of the Reign of God. To love and listen to a community can be exhausting and aggravating, but I don’t do my job as a minister or a baptized person if I smugly blow off their consensus, experience, and wisdom.