My blog friends and emerging worship conversationalists, I’m just thrilled, over the moon, tickled deep red about this. So many of you have asked, now, we’ve done it.
Cheers to the formation of the worship and creative community for the now of our generation, and toward the centuries ahead. Hope you can make it.
PRESS RELEASE: THE INSTITUTE GOES ONLINE THIS SUMMER 2008!
Sign Up today for our inaugural Summer 2008 course in July! First 10 applicants receive a special launch gift - a copy of the new St. Stephen’s Book Prayer Book from our St. Stephen community.
Song As Sacred Action: Learning From Native Americans
Dan Wilt
In a small, Native American community center in eastern Maine, a group of friends gathered from towns on both sides of the Canadian/US border. A potluck and music-sharing evening had been arranged between the communities on the Pleasant Point reservation, and an air of joy and festivity filled the room. By the time I arrived with my children, the music had started and we were soon serenaded with a guitar and fiddle weaving together reels and jigs – engaging the whole, ethnically-mixed group in contagious humming and irrepressible foot-tapping.
Songs And Sacred Acts
Our hosts were from the Passamaquoddy tribe (part of the Wabanaki confederacy, meaning “people of the dawn”), and they warmly welcomed us to the gathering. After a few more songs, a group of young men began to gather in a sacred drum circle for the next expression of the night. They seemed to be both chatting and offering prayers as they prepared themselves to play, enrobing their hands and large drum in smoke from a smudge pot, while they breathed in the strong vapors.
Video cameras and audio recorders were poised, ready to capture the thundering beauty of the energetic native sounds we had come to know and appreciate. Then, a young man from the circle stood, and walked over to the microphone. His eyes and face revealed the striking characteristics of an ethnic heritage that is said to reach 600+ generations into the story of this area.
“The songs we will do are sacred songs of our people,” he proudly said. “For that reason, we ask that there be no video-taping or recording of what we are about to do.” My immediate response was to sigh with sadness. For anyone who has ever been stirred by the communal, impassioned performance of a native drum circle, capturing it in some form of media for others to behold is a rare opportunity.
I turned off my recorder, honored his request, and lingered in the raw celebration of tribal history and spirituality embodied in their intricate melodies and rhythms.
Music As A Shared Experience
The next day, I spoke with a good friend who had organized the non-native contingency of musicians. He had spoken to one of the drum circle leaders, and discovered a fascinating truth about their view of the sacred music they played, and why we were asked to turn off our recorders.
In the eyes of the tribe, it seems, their sacred music is not a commodity to be somehow captured and passed around for enjoyment or spectating after the performance. The very essence of the music arises from those participating in the live, sacred moment. The sacredness of the music is intimately tied to the shared, live experience of praying its themes together, and both the music and the focus of the music may be dishonored when we seek to document the event for a second-hand listener.
The tribal “pow-wow songs” (i.e. the ones we were allowed to record) were historically written to make money for the tribe – by playing them for the white man. Pow-wow songs were created, in effect, to be a loophole in the native vision of music. They are a necessary accommodation, enabling the tribe to survive in a system ordered against them.
In ceremonial music, the music is sacred because of its focus, and our shared experience. In fact, the music is the shared experience for the players and those gathered – our fellowship is an essential instrument in the offering.
For the Passamaquoddy, the playing of the music, and the community praying with it, creates a sacred space not meant for mass consumption. In ceremony, the beating of prayers to the sky becomes more important than the actual musicality of the playing. In summary, the music is not the center point in the experience, but rather the playing of that music. In many ways, Passamaquoddy sacred music is all about the moment of encounter, and the community’s participation in that moment, together.
The High Goal Of Communal Worship
While we may not fully embrace this view of intentionally sacred voicings of music, there is an insight here to be gleaned from our native brothers and sisters. In today’s contemporary Christian music experience, the gift of documenting music in media is that it multiplies a powerful message, and to some degree extends to us the experience embodied by the recording. However, our view of worship, employing music that is explicitly directed toward interacting with God should possibly undergo some reflective scrutiny.
According to this native view of sacred music, the fact that this past Sunday our church connected with God, through shared songs, may have been the highest goal to which our gathering could attain. As the worship leader, I am deeply aware that our band sounded great in some moments, and similar to a train wreck in others. And yet, without veiled spiritualized attempts to justify a flawed performance, the fact that we shared a common voice through those songs may be a higher goal to be celebrated than the pristine execution of the music (have you ever been to a music execution before? I sure have; I’ve even led the proceedings!)
Connected In The Music Of Worship
The next time you gather with a body of believers to sing the songs of faith, consider this view of sacred music brought to us by our native brothers and sisters. The music that you jointly make with the group gathered is the gift itself, offered exuberantly to God, in that moment. See yourself as an integral part of this sacred experience, whether you sing on the stage or from your seat, and share the vitality of the music with those playing and singing near you.
We may not want to skip recordings all together, but if we are attentive to the living moments of worship we share with others in our churches, we may find ourselves more present to our community’s shared moment of worship ¬– and more fully engaged with the One we adore.
I’m now going unconscious. Will update in a few days. In the meantime. listen to the mp3 at the post below, again, 1/2 way through the poem, with the dulcimer in the background, it begins.
Gifted writer, artist and communicator Joel Mason (SSU) offers his poem on the voyage of St. Brendan, and Garrett Viggers backs him up on hammered dulcimer.
It starts about halfway through the mp3. It’s breathtaking - a beautiful spontaneous work of art between the two of them. The poem and the journey it represents is a reflection of our postmodern wandering. St. Brendan’s Voyage by Joel Mason, Music by Garrett Viggers
Our concert and FaceToFace event went off without a hitch, and was a great success.
Here’s a link to a Facebook video Holli’s sister shot at the concert (we were opening for a few minutes at the start): Video
Many musicians and worship leaders were served during the day, and the concert in the Gothic Arches was just a blast. More later, as the Intensive is still on through this week.
I’ll get some of our current participants commenting on the experience in a post. Then, yesterday, hammered dulcimer artist and Intensive participant Garrett Viggers led worship - a rich a beautiful time surrounding ideas from St. Brendan’s journey by Joel Mason.
We’d still appreciate your prayers - more earth-shattering discussions, worship and creativity going on this week.
Our first week in the Intensive is going incredibly well. The grounds here are beautiful, and our learning community is going deep into so many aspects of creational theology, spiritual formation, worldview and worship. Fully alive, boy, fully alive.
David Ruis brings so much to the table as we explore the bigger story of creativity, justice, and a story that’s big enough for all human beings to live in, including Christians. There are moments I think that we all just want to stop, be silent for a time in the presence of God and the richness of ideas, and let it soak in. Today, our sessions are on Ignatian prayer, Celtic Spirituality, Creativity and Cultural Interface (Ruis) and tonight we party around the Planet Earth DVDs (creational theology).
I’ll try to keep you posted, but it’s a time thick with glory, authenticity and activity. The most amazing sounds arise from our group worshipping in songs together - the harmonies are so rich, so cool and the textures of hammered dulcimers, guitars and percussion fill the room.
What a privilege to do this. Thanks for praying for us as we go. Past, present and future - so much in so little time.
Well, we’re full swing into our Two Week Intensive Certificate course at the Institute, and the group is an amazing collection of worship and creative leaders hailing from all over North America. Creative streams are already beginning to flow, and music fills the air in the liminal space of the Dominion Hill Centre.
After sharing our stories yesterday and continuing to recoup from jetlags, we enter into the festivities. Spiritual Director Lorna Jones, Historian Gregg Finley, David Ruis and myself will lead through the day.
The worlds of Ignatius, the Celts and essential worship theology (Wright and others) begin to open up to us, and we’ll begin the day with an ancient form of worship, Lectio Divina, and some contemporary worship.
If you would take the time to pray for us, just for a minute as you read this post, we’d be so grateful. Pray that a vanguard of worship artisans would rise in a living way in our midst, reaching into the past, engaging the present, and breathing in and on the future.
I seem to be in a bit of an “artist” series right now, so I’ll go with the flow.
I was introduced to this artist, Blair Anderson, by good friend and sacred networker Heidi Turner. What I may appreciate about Blair the most is her personal story, part of which unveils her struggle to call herself an artist even after 40 years.
Given the recovery in which the Church finds herself, I’m not surprised. The next 50 years of the Church, in my view, will be an exciting season of watching artists who follow Jesus find their honed, singular and highly skilled voice.
Let Blair’s story be a declaration to you if needed - that the artist must continually come forward, no matter the voices within that seek to quench the call.
Again, in the midst a world that bases human value on so many insubstantial measurements, Derek Paravicini gives voice to the glory of God in the human image.
Especially watch the 1 in a Million clip - a gift. When I think of how many today diminish the spiritual and transcendent in such anomalies of hard-wiring, I’m amazed at the amount of faith they must exercise.
By the way, this man is blind, and by tests thinks in the manner of a three-year old.
Thank you God for for Derek as a living ensign to things beyond - thank you Derek’s parents for giving him the chance to live.
I was speaking in the Canada West School Of Worship (what a great group this year), which Norm leads, and spending some time with the worship community. It’s been a rich time, and we fly back tonight.
Norm and the artists here spend much of their time playing gigs in the city and investing themselves deeply into the artistic community of Kelowna. They embody many of the central ideas and reformations I talk about in The Worship Artisan piece. The language of cultural interface and creational theology marked much of our time.
Pray for them and their work, and our growing friendship. There is a wonderful synergy in what we do at the Institute, and what they do here.
I’ve just launched the beginnings of a full product gallery for Wild Pear Creative. The goal is simple - to create products that celebrate themes of hope, love and beauty among human beings.
Three Words To Live By. Simple, 3 word, text-based clean design that grabs the eye and awakens the heart. T-shirts and mugs. Ex. “See Beauty Everywhere.”
The Color Of Eden. Original poetry to stir the soul, emblazoned on t-shirts made by edun LIVE, an ethical t-shirt company launched in 2005 by Ali Hewson and Bono with a mission to drive sustainable employment in sub-Saharan Africa.
Brainwaves. Silly storms going on in the noggin, justa weepin’ for some air time.
One of the central values in the world of emerging churches is that of creativity, and especially that of “user creativity” - i.e. taking the creativity out of the hands of a few and putting it into the hands of the many (we, of course, see the gift of both).
So, welcome to the hip, hot, rich new world of user creativity on the web.
According to Wired magazine, this instapreneurs are guiding us into the next phase of the internet.
I’m always amazed at how intriguing these things are to me personally, though one shouldn’t be amazed. We are children of our age, engaging its joys and seeking to challenge its idolatries.
