V
Love Songs in the Marketplace
"Our hearts are restless, oh God, until they rest in Thee."
Augustine of Hippo was as a young man who easily could have sung many of country hit songs of today. He spent many years "Lookin' For Love," looking in the wrong places, searching for transient, questionable pleasures with questionable companions, attempting to find satisfaction for the longings of his heart in a lifestyle leaving more questions than answers regarding his spiritual, physical and moral values, one considered debauched even in his time. His life reflected a desire we find relevant even today, one each of us shares with him as we search to satisfy the unspoken, inarticulate yearnings we often do not realize are the impetus to our restlessness.
Love, the unending need for it in our lives, the words we write, the songs we sing about love, all permeate and focus a larger portion of our activities and thoughts than, perhaps, any of us realizes. It is my belief, because we are created from love, we find satisfaction and completion only when we live our lives in an atmosphere of loving acceptance. Love enhances and emboldens our beings in a manner no other stimulation achieves. Healthy, positive, loving relationship between parent and child, within community of shared commitment and belief, between the truest of friends, between two who are beloved of each other, evokes the best qualities, grants courage to face even severest of challenge, encourages growth and exploration of new possibility, brings otherwise dormant talent to life. When we feel a lack of love in our lives, when our perceptions of what love there may be available to us are distorted, when the relationships in which we are engaged are unhealthy, we continue to search. We follow any path appearing to beckon towards the fulfillment of longing which we share, yearning for love and acceptance.
Our music, almost without exception, reflects our focus towards the preeminence we give to love or its lack in our lives. Whether the military marches setting our feet tapping as the strains rouse our patriotism and love of homeland, whether the Broadway musicals rooted in our memories through their frequently unforgettable melodies, whether the pain-filled yearnings in Nashville, whether the gentle mother lullabies; most of our music is a song to love in some form. If we do not sing of love present in our lives, we sing of our longing for it, or we sing of the confusion and pain the distortions of love create.
While we may have no conscious memories of these, the first melodies many of us heard were those our parents sang as they rocked us in their arms. Somewhere in the dimness of our earliest memories, though, the love songs from the days our infancy remain, to be echoed in the songs we sing to our children. We begin to sing our songs in our childhood years. Many young girls today join the group of women long past their own girlhood days around the campfire of the heart, singing
Tell me why the stars do shine;
While I have no experience of the male version of campfire singing when fireflies light the long summer nights, I am certain our brothers sang, while less tenderly and certainly with less romance, their own versions articulating love of the outdoors, love of camaraderie of the "guys" and love songs avoiding such "nonsense" but were love, just the same.
Love Songs in Our Professional Lives
We learned the songs of love in school along with reading and mathematics, those we began to sing and those we heard throughout our classroom days in the persons of our teachers. Our teachers, those we recall with memories as varied as the often dedicated, always underpaid men and women who attempted to lead us into the world of knowledge, taught us love in their efforts to help us to appreciate our unique abilities. While, during childhood, all of us encountered adults who sang songs of distorted or confused love, many of our teachers sang silently, tirelessly with carefully prepared lesson plans, products often requiring long night hours for adequate completion. Their patience with recalcitrant children who had other interests on their minds seemed unending.
The creativity of a sorely tried teacher is often an unforgettable song of love, the music echoing through time long after the teacher no longer inhabits an active role in one's life. I recall a young first grade teacher who had the dubious delight of attempting to further the education of my headstrong second daughter who was our family's reply to the dramatic actresses of the ages. In a generous effort to ensure Catherine's participation in a class play, this sincere woman rewrote a portion of the play, including another "starring role." While I disagreed with her method to resolve the issue of Catherine's refusal to participate unless given a starring role in the performance, I saw the teacher's love song in action through her patience and flexibility. Catherine's love song in that instance was, most certainly, one of love of being the center of attention, one centered on her desires.
We sing love songs through our participation in business, through our professional lives of employment. This is a world in which love can become unfocused, confused and misdirected in innumerable unhealthy manners. In a world that demands proof of one's value through winning at any cost, one expecting often detrimental competition in an effort to achieve the profitable goals of business, we can hear only discordant, often grossly strident music screaming for power and control while undermining and frequently even destroying human dignity and development. Yet, even in this world where the danger of distorted love is prevalent, where the antithesis of love maintains rampant control all too often, there is harmony, many times a concerto of gentle generosity and thoughtfulness.
Today's corporations leave a trail of displaced, unemployed people in the almost endless down-sizing and reorganization. While the fear, anxiety and maneuvering for favorable positions does little to enhance dignity and cooperation among business associates in such a climate or to encourage mutual assistance through severely challenging times, there are occasions when one person's love song floats above the harsh noise of instruments become out of tune in the corporate orchestra.
A few years ago I worked in contract administration for a pharmaceutical company, a subsidiary of a giant corporation in the health care industry. During the period of
more than two years, the management committee instituted functional alterations reducing the staff significantly, attempting to increase profitability by cost-cutting wherever they considered feasible. In the end, the company was separated into the original two entities from which it had been formed and sold to two competitors.During the process of catastrophic change for some associates, new challenge and opportunity for others, fear was prevalent and the music of care and consideration almost impossible to hear. During the process of reorganization my position was transferred into a different administrative area under the direction of a woman for whom I developed respect and liking, although not without some disagreement and reservations. She stood out as a symphony of love, a gifted professional as exemplified by her thoughtful, caring management of her sales administration team through those stressful, demanding years. Her music remains in my memories as gentle as a spring breeze through the earthquakes and storms of what was occasionally a dark time.
It often is difficult to live out our business commitments to work with dignity, professionalism and positive attitude in today's commercial environment, even when there is no apparent pressure of possible staff reductions. The constraint to produce more, to keep in touch with rapidly changing technology, to progress on a constant upwardly focused career track places inordinate pressure on so many of us. We often neglect to allow the extra moments in our days in which to do the small kindnesses, the thoughtful acts reminding us of our shared humanity. We contend daily in our offices or in the retail establishments with the expectations we will accomplish more with less, and courtesy easily can be overlooked. The dissonance of demand replaces the harmony of consideration for each other.
Yet, this is not universally true. Love songs still echo in unexpected corridors. One day several years ago I stopped in a store while visiting in Baton Rouge. Although I had never before walked into the business establishment and had never seen the lady who assisted me, her gentle, warm courtesy as remained as lovely memory as I recall her, "Have a good day, cher." After living several years in the suburban sprawl of metropolitan Los Angeles, I moved north to a community of about one percent of the size of that neighbor almost six hundred miles south. Without exception, in every retail business where I have shopped since coming to Redding, the employees have greeted me with sincere, caring interest in my well-being, welcomed frequently as a new resident and, as a result, have come to feel I am a desired and appreciated member of the community. I have not had contact with any of the store clerks or restaurant servers outside their work places; but each of them demonstrates a love song of thoughtful, honest acceptance in their conduct towards those they serve
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Love Songs in Relationship
We sing our love songs as we move through the frequently altered relationships in our lives. I think of a song, "Cherish," one significantly more meaningful to me in the last few years, although I have enjoyed and appreciated it for much longer. Cherish the moments, cherish those we love and who love us, treasure what we have and be thankful. Change in relationships, circumstances and people is an absolute. Too often we neglect to sing our songs to one another; we forget once the fragrance of the newly opened bud of beginning has become the full bloom, complete with thorns and discolored petals.
We hear the melody, one occasionally losing its pristine clarity when the instrument playing it loses a little of its resonance or its pitch; then, too often, we hear the lack of perfection more than we understand and address the cause of the difficulty. We forget some of the words to the song and often decide we would rather not sing, rather than returning to the score and refreshing our memories. We allow the song to be stilled as we allow relationships, friendships and mutually committed communities to falter and fragment through inattentiveness, fear of confronting serious issues and failure to work towards positive resolution, growth and renewal.
Without doubt, relationship requires committed effort, respect for the freedom of those with whom we are in contact, acceptance and celebration of differences, continued honest communication, desire to maintain and even to increase the levels to which each will open themselves in trust. We choose to sing our love songs, how to sing them, when to sing as much as we choose the nature of those songs through our efforts to live in harmony in our communities of relationship throughout our lives. We often do not understand and, perhaps, may not have learned our participation in the lives of others is meant to be gift of ourselves, sacrament of loving presence, an often silent symphony of the intertwining themes of love from each of us as we touch each other in the moments. We strive with such single-minded focus to maintain individuality and personal freedom, and we too often forget our freedom is most perfectly expressed through our understanding of the interdependence of all persons on each other. Our freedom to sing our love songs is only as free as our realization and acceptance of those to whom we would sing, who are as free as we not to listen or to respond.
Over the recent past I have participated in several conversations regarding the sense of isolation many of us see evidenced in the lives of those we love and even struggle to resolve ourselves, the emotional illnesses of far too many people in our society. Those of us who lived through at least the last forty years have seen a soul-destroying shift from a culture celebrating community life to one in which the interests of the individual assumed preeminence. Although this focus has begun to modulate, the damage is readily apparent. Even the designs of our homes reflects isolation and the closing of one's self from the rest of the world with blank front walls, high solid fences and no architectural invitation to visitors such as the deep, shaded porches on which many of us sat and shared summer twilight hours with our neighbors. We have allowed insidious selfishness to replace our care for one another and have denied our very human nature as community beings. The sad result of this societal isolation is our loss of the touch with the very characteristics of human living with the power to bring us into touch the Sacred in our lives.
Presence as Prayer
Our presence within God's love as we are present to those with whom we connect in the daily context of living is sacrament, prayer that is its own love song. During a meditation I came across a thought from an obscure writer and, although I have had no success in relocating the source, the idea remains, weaving its melody in harmony with my own. When we love, we touch the face of God. While I would have a few caveats to expand the sentiment with focus towards the nature of that love, there is a profound truth in the words. When we sing songs of love to those who inhabit and participate in our lives, we sing, also, to the Love who has blessed us with presence through the caring and commitments others share with us. While listening with attention attuned to the messages in many of the popular love songs in both the country/western and rock venues, I frequently have been moved by the simplicity and theological depth in the lyrics. Few of the songs may be directed as prayers, but the effect is definitely prayerful in the truth of love expressed throughout the words.
Where we place prayer in our lives, through the daily demands of professions, families, school or play, demonstrates our understanding of how God loves us and wishes to participate actively in our lives. Some of us, particularly the younger of us, spend many hours listening to popular music, some to performing those love songs. We have no difficulty in innately understanding the importance of love in our lives; however, many of us do not equate the value of prayer as an expression of love between each of us and the Sacred in our lives. There is no obstacle in our ability to find some desirable, comfortable method of music to sing love for others whom we wish to know of our care for them; yet, we often cannot or will not open our hearts and minds to listening to God's love for us or to allowing that love to permeate our lives. We often do not understand we are created from love and we are most fully alive when we are united to that Love.
We do not know how dear, how beloved we are; and we do not allow ourselves to taste even the first course of the banquet or even to sit down to the table, to hear even the overture to the grandest opera of all eternity. We go to rock concerts, symphonies, operas, the ballet, movies and hear or see the endless variety of the expressions of human love. Yet we do not stand still on a mountain ridge, beside the crashing surf, next to a quiet lake or walking down a country road and see the beauty demonstrating God's love in the generosity of creation in existence for our enjoyment and wise use. We do not hear the love songs of the God who put them in the throats of the skylark and the Anna's hummingbird, who whispers them on the wind that cools our heated bodies as we pursue fitness regimes without seeing the beauty beside the paths we run, whose love even the mountains and hills express in their rugged magnificence. We do not stop in our headlong pursuit of love to fulfill our lives long enough to allow Shekinah to reach out and touch us with a song of forgiving, accepting love.
Prayer Opens the Soul
Abraham, nomadic leader and founder of a nation, and his wife Sarah honored the desert traditions by welcoming three strangers into their tents, giving hospitality and sustenance. Isaac was born to a couple long past childbearing years because his parents opened their hands and hearts to three angels, messengers of Jehovah who heard the prayers of a childless woman. When Sarah knew she was pregnant. her reaction was one of disbelief and, I am certain, the most incredulous delight. God laughed at the very laws of nature Shekinah had put into effect that one time, thus Isaac, whose name translated is "God laughed." Are we so immured by our fear of opening ourselves to the results of prayer and, thus, do not look into the eyes of strangers? Do we not realize by doing so, we offer a song of love to angels who come bearing unexpected gifts we crave; indeed we often even shrink from making the request for those freely offered gifts?
As Isaac certainly changed the lives of his parents, just as all infants do as they join in relationship with their families throughout the ages, the effects of prayer as the expression of relationship with God are those of change, challenge, need to grow. I believe each of us knows, albeit not always consciously, to place any priority on prayer is to accept we shall be called to change. By allowing love into our lives in any form, we know our living will experience transformation. There is fundamental, metaphysical change in any of us who allows another to love us, in us who will take the risk to become vulnerable. Prayer, disciplined, committed, deliberate, active meeting with the Sacred is unlocking the soul and inviting in Love, although far too many of us believe this is a stranger and do not recognize the God who comes.
Choosing to love another is committing to involvement, altered manner of living, new ideas, occasional need to compromise. Choosing to live a life in which prayer becomes an integral facet is a choice to invite radically altered perceptions about ourselves and others, new awareness of the requirement to respond in new ways to others in our lives and to those whom we might never meet but can touch in new ways. Placing a priority on prayer alters our perspective regarding the significance of many other priorities, even to the point of eradicating some of them. Giving even a few moments each day to prayer in some form opens doors in our soul we may not have realized were there and behind which are all manner of surprises. Singing a love song to a beloved is gift of self in vulnerability; singing the love song of prayer is knowing we are vulnerable, trusting that frailty to Creator Spirit's love and discovering there was no risk involving destruction in the loving.
Prioritizing prayer unquestionably does invite risk-taking. Communicating with the Spirit of restlessness and change who is Creator is an open invitation, whatever the word we use to describe that interaction uniting us to Great Spirit, one leading to more change, rather than less. We cannot help except to become increasingly sensitized by the effect of allowing love into our lives; thus we become more involved with living and with those places where we see love and the goodness it evokes is missing. Participation in the redemptive, forgiving love of God through prayer demands corresponding participation in bringing the reality of that love into a world broken and in pain. By its very nature, love is healing and life-giving; love is creative power, unequaled by any other force. Prayer, the openness to Love who is Great Spirit, invites relationship and possibility; that openness removes blinders from our eyes and plugs from our ears.
Throughout the scriptures we read the invitation to "taste and see," to come nearer the tabernacle, to draw apart from life as we presently know it, to meet this Yahweh in the wilderness, before the burning bushes of our world. Is it the wilderness, that unknown and unmapped adventure of meeting the Sacred, frightening us? Do we hear a gentle, always insistent melody of pure love far within the depths of our souls and know that power such as pure love will forever change our lives? There may be many who would take issue with my belief it is truly fear propelling us into flight from the Love for whom we yearn throughout our lives.
I am convinced most of us learned more fear than loving acceptance through our institutionalized religious organizations. We received a list of "shalt not's" and the voice of criticism with possibility of punishment with untold horrors for the slightest infraction. We saw a picture of a vengeful god who caused death and destruction. We heard we were born sinful and eternally damned, even our bodies needed purifying, let alone the cataclysmic actions our souls required if we were to have any hope of redemption. As children we were positive there was a god who kept a long list of all the "bad" things we did, one we could never hope to please. We were sure this was a deity who sat on some huge chair above us all and watched everything with a critical, assessing eye.
To Whom Do We Sing Love Songs of Prayer?
Where were the unheard songs of Shekinah, loving mother God? "Fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have summoned you by name...you are precious and honored in my sight...because I love you" from Isaiah. From Jeremiah we hear, "I have loved you with an everlasting love." From the psalmist, "I would gather you as a hen gathers its young under her wings..." Is this a vengeful, punishing god? This is Great Love who is involved in every moment of our days, the Father God who runs down the road while his prodigal child is still far off, welcoming the recalcitrant beggar home with all the best he can give, the accepting forgiving parent who never stops believing in his child even when the child no longer believes in himself. This is the "Hound of Heaven" who follows down all our dark paths, into our dim caves, through the crashing, thunderous storms we create in our lives, who runs after us with open arms. This is the Christ who wept for us and died because he respected and honored our dignity and was determined to unite us in wholeness and grace with God. This is the God who sings the majestic song of love celebrating the freedom endowed upon each one of us, never to be revoked or usurped, freedom even to refuse love and forgiveness, freedom to remain in our darkness and in need of healing.
It is little wonder so few of us have placed a high priority on the adventure of a prayer-focused life when we do not know we will hear a love song rather than a critical analysis of our performance to date? All too often, even those who apparently love us the most, or who we believe ought to love us, are often guilty to a crucial degree of undermining and even destroying our sense of self-worth. If we learn those who say they love us will usually disappoint or hurt us, why would we want to talk to them or spend time with them? It follows quite logically, if we believe in a critical, punishing god, we would not wish to speak to that god or spend any time getting to know such a deity. The day is long past due for all our religious organizations to revisit the focus they place on such powerfully negative attitudes, to meet the One who loves passionately and longs for us to unite ourselves to the God of joy and wholeness. Those of us who love in a whole, healthy manner know the enervating joyfulness that such involvement blesses upon us. We know the fullness of living and the occasionally almost endless energy we experience as we live in the assurance of knowing we are beloved and celebrated. It is incumbent, actually it is imperative for our churches to meet this God and share the life that is possible united in the reality of a loving Creator. Only then will prayer seem a natural way of life on a consistent basis.
With the understanding of prayer as the loving, open conversation between the God who accepts and forgives without question, where the communication of prayer is prioritized in our lives is no longer in doubt. As an infant reaches in complete trust to the waiting parent, knowing mother or father will support and protect, we can reach out to Shekinah in the same childlike faith. We may stand naked in our brokenness before a tender, compassionate Creator and accept the healing touch through the love of one for another in our world.
We can sing a love song, assured, when we lie down at night, we sleep protected by a powerful love; when we rise to greet the morning, we arise to new opportunity to touch God's heart through the opening of our lives and vulnerabilities to each other. We know we may meet with the One who loves us as though each of us were the only one to love where we are in the present moment of our lives; there is no fear in perfect love. Our openness to this God reveals the unity we share with all of creation and allows us to see how God touches us through the loving hands of those with whom we share our world, how we are present here to share in the life of possibility as creation of joy.
Human Hands
God touches us with human hands
God loves us dearly with the love
God grants us sunshine in the smiles
"Work Is Prayer, Prayer Is Work"
Awareness of another attitude towards prayer and work, how we may sing our love songs through the work of our hands, through the gifts we give to each other, through the care with which we manage the resources of our world, through our active commitment to human dignity and wholeness, places another dimension around the framework of prayer. Paul's exhortation to pray without ceasing, taken in the context of the Benedictine style of prayer inclusive of all our activities when done in the spirit of prayer, begins to assume the aura of possibility. When we come, at last, to the realization of creative and sustaining love uniting us to Creator Spirit, we know we take not one unnoticed breath. Awareness of the presence of God in each moment leads to awareness of opportunity: every bush is burning. We walk on holy ground with each step; to share the Presence within each of us in community is to share the life of God. This is sacrament.
Many of us find ourselves, at some point in our lives, employed in positions or participating in other activities appearing to be pointless, nonproductive. We question why we are involved, should we stay or go, whether we can accomplish anything worthwhile. If prayer has any place in our lives at these times, we often find ourselves using it as an opportunity to vent our frustrations and requests for reprieve. We question how such apparently useless activity can have any value as work, let alone as prayer. Those of us who have, at times in our lives, spent years caring for families, scrubbing floors and bathroom fixtures, wading through piles of laundry, washing dishes seeming to multiply more prolifically than the loaves and fishes, feel frequent frustration with repetitive tasks stretching into a cluttered eternity of chores.
These, the frequently routine jobs and the daily business of living, are the essence of our places in time. Few of us hear a call or find ourselves in places where we make nation-affecting decisions. Relatively few of us achieve widespread fame or speak before our country's decision makers. Only some of us realize even the small chores and the routine professional responsibilities do have affect far beyond our perceptions. Only after years of consistent effort have I begun to learn the attitude in which we approach even the most mundane of activities can have long-lasting, far-reaching effect.
The perspective towards our lives and work we articulate, sometimes without deliberate consciousness of the effect, will touch others in manners we may not consider, but will reveal the nature of our souls clearly. Thus, an attitude towards the less dramatic issues of our daily activities demonstrating we are aware of and meet the Sacred in our lives through a life focused towards using even the mundane as an opportunity for prayer will radiate far past the effect such discipline has on our souls. The love song of such a prayer may be a simple melody sung in an almost inaudible hum, but its positive beauty will add to the harmony and grace of our world.
As a very young teacher in a private school in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I faced daily a class of nearly forty second grade children. The range of ability of the class each year ran the gamut of barely ready for kindergarten to extremely bright, mature children. Many children from those few years populate my memories, some bringing pleasure and recollections of both major and minor accomplishments, others reminding me of frequent educational failures when attempting to meet the "average" requirements of the majority of children.
The preponderance of each class was children whose parents were middle class, educated professional fathers and a significant number of mothers who were able to remain at home with their children. Academically, most children were at least average to somewhat above in ability and performance. Some were not and I recall them vividly still. A few were exceptionally gifted. These are statistics most teachers can enumerate in most schools, the ordinary life of education. However, I was granted the knowledge many years later of how I had positively affected the life of one boy because I cared enough to remain consistent in my expectations, because I continued to work with him at the same skills and basic academic expectations while I respected his individuality and human dignity.
Jeff was a slight blonde boy with blue eyes and, like many other seven and eight year old boys, he placed little value on attending school every day and becoming anything remotely similar to a scholar. I realized very quickly, although Jeff was not learning disabled in any way, he had no interest in performing beyond what was the absolute minimum requirement. If I could capture his attention effectively enough at the beginning of a task and assure he would begin the work satisfactorily, he usually completed it accurately. If I was unable to ensure the beginning, everything, particularly in mathematics, would be wrong in the same manner. I worked with him throughout the school year and tutored him the following summer, reinforcing routine information, attempting to keep his frequently distracted little boy mind focused towards the ongoing learning expected of him. I learned to love Jeff for the sweet child he was; and he sincerely tried to accomplish what I expected of him. I remember praying often for and about that child, seeking to reach him any way I could. I also remember occasional frustration with his need to revisit the most fundamental concepts on a consistent basis.
Perhaps fifteen years later I stopped to visit Jeff's parents in their jewelry store not far from my sister's home in Tulsa. His mother's words have remained with me since, reminder how our attitudes towards the challenges of our lives and our undeviating respect and concern for each other will have lifelong effect at times. There were other students in that class with Jeff who were far more studious, more accomplished, easier to teach, more rewarding. Yet, he is the only student from those years who came back to remind me, through his mother, while he never learned to appreciate education beyond the basics, he remembered with gratitude one young teacher who cared enough to love him for himself regardless of his lack of achievement.
I taught Jeff he mattered far more than his performance in school; he was a worthwhile person for himself; and he never forgot that lesson. Jeff taught me the value of our recognition of human dignity in the form of a small boy, the elderly neighbor watching us pass each day, the demanding boss at work, or the stranger in the grocery store. The love song Jeff and I sang was a simple melody of profound value and ageless beauty.
While expressing my views on the value of extraordinary ordinariness comes easily, living them has always been a source of challenge. Occasionally the challenge reflects itself into monumental struggle against boredom with routine tasks, one I have faced often enough in my life, both in the offices where I have worked and during the years when I cared for a family. My nature is one of restlessness when faced with predictable duties, a fact I am sure many who know me recognize clearly. The single most influential attitude enabling me to focus on predictable responsibilities and complete them with positive grace has been my belief my work, done well and in an attitude of active prayer for some purpose, has value beyond what might be readily apparent. I have finally begun to learn what matters is the process, not the result; it is the journey, not the destination. In the glorious orchestra of the cosmos in which each living being contributes to the master symphony, it matters not who of us plays first violin while another plays second trumpet, another bassoon; the significance is how each of us contributes to the music, to the prayers of all created life in praise of Creator.
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