Part II: Where there is joy

I'm sorry for technically not making this post 'tomorrow'.  It's been a tough bit of reflection on how to finish the story.  I'm not writing this to publicly blame or shame anyone, or air dirty laundry.  Like I said in the intro post, it's the joy of a few people, that they shared through World Youth Day, that inspired this, so I'm struggling to return this to that purpose.  I think I'll start by sharing a little about an inspiration of mine.  The guy is Steve Angrisano.  He's a composer, musican, and speaker with Oregon Catholic Press.  I'm not going to debate the merits or OCP and it's artists right now.  I'm just going to share that on Facebook the other day, Steve shared a video of a psalm setting he composed being sung at a Liturgy recently.  He was giddy like a little kid.  He was full of joy about it.  Look him up and check out his Facebook page if you want to see the post.  His joy is contagious.  That joy is one of the reasons I'm a musician, it's the reason I became a youth minister, it's likely why I'm even Catholic.  It's full of the Holy Spirit, and totally transparent.  There's no performance in it, there's no pride in it.  It's just joy because he loves God and is sincerely excited to get to share that.  I've been privileged enough that he has shared it one on one with me through different conversations, trips to the airport when we've hired him to speak in Calgary and Okotoks, playing music with him at Mass a couple of times, and getting to witness him inspire and share his contagious joy.

I'm sharing this (I know, it sounds like a starstruck fan now), because that's where my voice came from.  Joy is what I experienced ministering through music for so many years, and being blessed enough to both lead, and work under incredible leaders in music.  Every Sunday I would fight my way to Church.  If that meant pushing my body hard to finish a big ski  3 hours from Calgary in time to haul back to Calgary for practice before Mass, or doing homework on a Saturday so I had Sunday evening free, or eating and running from a Sunday family dinner and jogging down the road with my guitar in hand, I made sure I was there.  I did it because of the joy I experienced.  On a Sunday when I didn't really love the music selection, or wasn't feeling awesome with my playing, I still felt such an incredible connection to the Mass through the joy I felt getting to serve.  When someone didn't like the music I understood, because like I said yesterday, it's not as universal as we want it to be.  The congregation still participated so fully in the song and prayer, that it was impossible not to see the love of God there and feel that joy.  I don't mean the rush of performing, or the fun of playing enjoyable music, I mean the deep joy of God's presence.  I had someone come up to me once and tell me that I reminded him of a hippy because I played the guitar, and that he didn't like hippies.  That didn't bother me because no one ever said he had to like guitar music, and for every experience like that, I had 10 where people thanked me for helping them connect to God in the Mass on a deeper level, and I thanked God for those.

The change came when some people I love and trusted started changing the tune.  It wasn't about not liking certain kinds of music any more.  The conversation started shifting to why it's never appropriate to play a percussive instrument in Church because it can't be done in a way that's solemn enough, how chords on a guitar simply aren't high enough quality for the Mass, how piano is too idiosyncratic to inspire faith, how contemporary music is theologically too thin, how a song where we sing about God's relationship with us, or where we acknowledge the challenge to go forth and serve is worshipping the congregation instead of god, how anything with a blues, jazz, folk, or any other contemporary inspiration isn't okay because those sounds weren't invented for the Mass like a Gregorian chants were.  Maybe it was always there and I just didn't get exposed to it, maybe it was a shift in culture where I live, maybe it was a backlash to the too many musicians who were willing to throw all liturgical tradition out the window to have some cool music... I don't know.  What I know is that more and more people started finding theological sounding reasons why what I had been doing for the last 15 years of my life in service to the Church wasn't actually a service.  It was vile (not my words, someone else's).  It was low quality.  It was pandering.  No one ever said it, but the message was that God didn't want it in Church.  It upsets me because it's theologizing an opinion.  It isn't some direct application of Church law, it's finding a way to crush the thought of someone who disagrees, and push it out unchallenged.  If someone had been up front, and said 'this isn't the music we prefer, please go in this direction instead', I could have at least either said sure and challenged myself, or walked away feeling okay about it, because music opinion is what it is.  It wasn't that though, it was people needing to bolster their opinion at the expense of the gifts and service of someone else, and I just couldn't deal with that.

Every week I'd go to play, or go to Church in fear of what would be said, or what would be taken away.  First the drums went (I was the only one who played them, and in a prideful moment I would boast I am tremendously good at using them well, and solemnly, and appropriately to support and uplift prayer), then it was the song books, then it was the Mass parts.  I didn't feel welcome.  I felt like the contribution I worked so hard over the years, and had witnessed such incredible fruits from, was being cut out at the roots.  Every week, when something disappeared, so did a little of my joy, and with it went my voice, until I felt like I was standing on the outside of the Church looking in, not understanding what had happened.

I'm not going to stand here pointing fingers though.  No one can take away a person's faith and joy.  No one.  You can only give it away.  But the fight can get tiring.  Between that and the pride/ownership I took in what I had done over the years, I let mine slip away.  I'm still struggling to let it go and take a hold of that joy.  Make no mistake, nothing was taken from me, I let it go.  Some of it was because I was hurt by the words of people I love and trust, a good chunk was because of pride and stubborness, and some of it was because for many years I let one kind of service define my faith, and when that service was gone I was lost.

But this brings me back around to the quote from yesterday's post...  "May we be untiring in love, so that we serve all with a generous and creative heart."  It's the serve all, and the creative parts of the quote that really jumped out at me.  All.  That's hard.  When I was working in Ireland, much of the ministry was outreach to people who had left or were marginalized by the Church because they felt hurt by it.  It's hard ministry.  It means hearing people who's experience and the reality they constructed out of it, was one where the rules were more important than their pain, fear, or worry.  Many of the people we reached out to had been coming to Mass for years, even decades, faithfully, because they knew God was there.  At the same time they were in pain every time they came.  Lost in the shadows and corners of the faith because someone, somewhere along the way, or more likely many 'someones' had treated them unjustly.  I'd be willing to be that most of the injustices were unintentional, and unrecognized, as I'm sure much of the difficulty I faced was.  This is why St. Alphonsus' words are so important.  Our love for each other, for everyone who comes to the door seeking God and community, knows it.  Our creativity needs to be so profound that we find ways to make someone welcome, no matter what they bring to the door with them.  I understood it then, and I know it now because of my own experience.  Not everyone in the Church has to be looking for the ones at Mass who are lost, lonely, hurting, or feeling voiceless, but some need to take St. Alphonsus' words to heart and be those ones, watching the outskirts, the fringes, and the shadows of our faith, welcoming the ones on the outside looking in longingly.    Someone needs to be there to say to them:
'You are more important to me than a rule, let me share my joy with you, no strings attached.  When there is a relationship, and an emotion, and an experience of God's love, we can worry about the more challenging and technical stuff then, for now let's be joyful together.  God loves us.'

May God bless everyone in the Church who has the gift of finding the lost in the shadows, seeing the unknown hurt our words and actions can cause, and giving a voice to the voiceless through joy, so the voiceless can share their story and heal from whatever is keeping them away from the light.  Let's be so joyful its contagious.  I'm going to try to do that, and find my own voice again, in part through this blog.  I hope I can write well enough to keep you reading, share my joy, and shine some light in the corners.

Here's Steve singing the psalm I mentioned at the beginning.  If it's not your cup of tea, share what is so we can share in your joy too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7jpnYSTnv8