Lotus and Lily Field Notes

It’s getting clearer and clearer to me that in terms of worldview and philosophy Buddhism really can’t be beat.  But I was born and will remain a “cultural Christian,” from my evangelical roots (not as intense as Jesus Camp, but not completely unrecognizable either) to  my current immersion in the contemplative liturgical scripture-infused world of chant.”Cultural Christian” is a riff on the “cultural Judaism” I learned about from hanging out with Hebrew students at UC Berkeley as an undergrad.  (See some manifestations here and here.)  I know that Christian identity is different from Jewish identity, but I feel some kinship with these good souls who recognize the incredible richness of their tradition, don’t want to abandon it entirely, but don’t subscribe to its philosophical or religious tenets.

There is one lone Wikipedia entry, a brief stub, on Cultural Christianity, which succinctly states, “The term usually is used pejoratively by other Christians to describe these individuals, whose spiritual understanding or practice they see as underdeveloped or superficial.”  Pooh.  Just when I thought I had a good thing going .  Yet another reputation to salvage?  (Peter Brown’s The Rise of Western Christendom makes clear that name-calling has been an excellent Christian strategy for millenia: from “pagan” (the equivalent of “hick” or “rube”) to “Arian” to “Nestorian”, it’s a classic technique.  OK, not just Christians enage in this, but we’ve been pretty good at it.
Still, the concept fits me pretty well: it describes my reliable passion for certain “classical Christian “artefacts and my very tenuous and unstable relationship its core concepts (Buddhism just says it better for me, almost all the time).  Something to keep playing with in the endless identity game.
As always when we have a really good Peregrine rehearsal: I’m in love with Gregorian chant all over again.  This evening it came at a particularly rich time, after several nights hearing the Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche expound on Buddhist wisdom (and somehow I snuck in there a viewing of Jesus Camp, which stirs up a whole host of its own personal issues about which more later, if all the conceptual planes circling my airport ever manage to land).

But into this maelstrom comes that inimitable, unforgettable, aesthetic spiritual transformative musical experience of singing chant really well with people I’ve been singing with for years.  It just all opened up and was sublimely perfect.  At moments like this, I really don’t care what identity I have.  It just feels great to be alive.

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I’m feeling especially proud of having tracked down, through interlibrary loan at Seattle Public Library, a copy of the Antiphonale Romano-Seraphicum, a 1928 edition of Gregorian chant, Franciscan style.  We decided a couple of months ago to focus our chant retreat this summer (July 20-22) on St. Francis and St. Clare.  I had been planning to use some generic chants for “confessors” (saints who aren’t martyrs)–that’s what was used for St. Francis in many of the chant books I have.  But this lovely volume has many wonderful chants specifically about both Francis and Clare, including texts that speak of his preaching to the birds–really quite delightful!

As always, I feel very happy when I am able to connect with a little bit of medieval history in this way: Francis the person, and the Franciscans as an order, have always felt special to me somehow, so to be able read and sing these beautiful chants (and, this summer, to share them with others) is a rare treat!  The breadth and scale of medieval music is always breathtaking to me, and here is yet another treasure trove to explore.  Wowie!

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I’ve been chanting Psalms, and teaching about chanting Psalms, for years now.  But ever since connecting up a few weeks ago with Cynthia Bourgeault’s Chanting the Psalms, and its vivid and compelling case for the contemplative depths of this ancient practice, I have renewed my own personal engagement in this practice.  What Cynthia has helped me see is that there is a non-verbal , non-conceptual profundity to the Psalm texts.  This has nothing to do with theology or even semantics.  It has to do with engaging the words, chewing on them, letting them speak in deep ways beyond reason or linguistic meaning.

I am so grateful for this new persective, since on any given encounter with the Psalms I am more likely than not to get very ticked off by the surface layers of meaning: the dualism, the baby-smashing, enemy-cursing, self-indulgent whining that are so often present there.  But no: there’s a way to see these texts as bearing a meaning beyond the meaning, not entirely independent of it, to be sure–but purified, perfected, wise in ways I can’t quite grasp.

It’s as though there is a sweet wisdom contained somewhere in there, that may require a great deal of maturity to grasp but *certainly* requires an open-hearted willingness to embrace what’s there without any conditions at all.  That takes trust, it takes patience, it takes a willingness to suspend judgment.  All by themselves, those are good qualities to cultivate.  But as my recent experiments seem to suggest, taking the Psalms as they are might just open up something deeper as well.  I’m curious to see what that might be.

This reminds, too, of the Buddhist teaching about how to relate to one’s thoughts in meditation, which is not a rejection, not an attachment, but a willingness to just *be fully present* with one’s thoughts as they are happening and let them emerge in simplicity and clarity–almost an attitude of welcoming.

So maybe the Psalms are just a particular form of thought, a playground within which the qualities above can be cultivated in a focused way.  Shamata (calm abiding) meditation is taught with focus on a seashell, a leaf or image of the Buddha.  So maybe the Psalms can function as exactly that same sort of support: not as an end in themselves but as a framework within which consciousness can be explored.

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Here is a more pleasing representation of the new Peregrine CD. Right now it’s available from the Center for Sacred Art; tomorrow it will be at the St. Mark’s Cathedral bookshop in Seattle, soon thereafter at St. James Cathedral and eventually on Amazon. Who knows where else? Making a CD is a lot of work, and just when you get it done there’s all this distribution stuff. Well, we will do what we can.

I’m really very pleased by all the good chant work going on these days, with more good stuff coming up. We just scheduled today another beginning workshop on September 8, and much more good stuff between now and then. The CSA website has just been updated with the details.

There is absolutely ex-PLODE-ing energy coming from my workplace, rich with opportunity and plenty of chance also to look for spaces to take deep breaths! That’s a good thing! Among the many consequences of this is a trip to Ohio for me all next week, with likely little blogging going on.

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Over the past four years or so I have periodically investigated the relationship between Gregorian chant and a variety of “sound healing” activities, including these:

• Music for Healing and Transition (I attended a conference in 2002 at Seattle University)
• Chalice of Repose (several of my students are graduates; I led a workshop for alumni a year or so ago)
• International Sound Healing Conference (haven’t attended–does it count that I have been very tempted?)
• Sound Healers of Washington (there continue to be various personal and conceptual connections between what I do and this very active local Northwest group)

My efforts with chant in recent years have been focused on singing and teaching and exploring connections with religious tradition, spiritual practice in general and meditation in particular.  When I was invited to give a workshop at Bastyr University several months ago, in the back of my mind was the notion that doing a session at such a top-rank natural medicine facility would reconnect me with this thread.

It seems intuitively obvious that there is some sort of healing properties to Gregorian chant; however, with the very significant exception of the Chalice of Repose, which makes explicit use of chant in its training for harpists providing vigils for the dying, the evidence is very scanty and out-of-focus.  I don’t know how many times I’ve heard the story about Alfred Tomatis and the monks who fell ill when they stopped singing chant after Vatican II–then recovered when they began singing again.  It really is a great story–but why is it the *only* story?  And then there are statements like this one:

The Gregorian chant is not a measured music and does not have a regular pulsation but comes close to the rate of respiration. It contains the frequencies of the human voice, allows a quiet and pleasing breathing and is appeasing, with a state of serene vigilance.

That seems right to me, but as one who is intimately familiar with the diverse moods and forms and possibilities of chant–I know there is a deeper, more complete and more precise story than this.

My workshop at Bastyr was yesterday, and I was delighted to encounter a number of students who are indeed involved in healing work.  In conversation with one particularly articulate and passionate student, a nurse with deep ER experience, a little light bulb went on for me.  Until now I have felt that *I* was somehow responsible for connecting the dots between Gregorian chant and healing–and I have felt overwhelmed both by a lack of expertise and a lack of time to take on such a monumental task.  What clicked in for me, most obvious now but not before (though “aha” experiences are like that), was that I can keep right on with my work of being an advocate and resource regarding GC as a thing, and connect with others who understand the healing process, and work together with them (or, maybe more accurately, be available to them) to develop a deeper understanding of just how, and why, and *when* chant heals.
Sometimes letting go of ego fixations is a huge relief.  Consider me relieved.  And newly open to possibilities.
Singing together all day with this wonderful group of dedicated and focused students in the sublimely beautiful chapel at Bastyr, was a profound blessing.  All the more so as one more piece–the healing aspect–of my journey with chant received a bit more illumination.

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Another ferocious, exhilarating, consuming week of work, followed this evening by an extremely satisfying concert of chant by Peregrine at Bastyr University–over 200 people in attendance, which in my performance world is just *huge*.  We had a little reception afterwards, which had its own satisfying component of buzz and conviviality  Very pleasing all the way around.

I have had little opportunity to stretch the Buddhist side of my soul lately, apart from (mostly) daily meditation, but there is nevertheless a sense of wellness through this whole recent series of rather intense events.  I credit the dharma for much of this newfound and somewhat surprising sense of happiness-within-stress.  An unfamiliar combination, for which I am most grateful.

And deeply grateful for the profound beauty and mystery of Christian chant, which despite piles and piles of philosophical quibbles just beguiles the hell out of me, every time.

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The Peregrine arrived via UPS this afternoon! And it is *beautiful*–the cover certainly is anyway, for which we have Victoria to thank.   As for the insides: I think it’s pretty great, but I’ve listened to it way to many times by now–we will see what The World thinks.

All I have right now is this pretty crappy digital version of the cover art (I won’t go into all the minutiae of the printing process and all that), but it gives you an idea.  We’ll scan the cover soon for Amazon purposes and then I’ll have something nicer to show.

Available for sale at our concert at Bastyr University in Kenmore this Friday night, and then we’ll be put it out in the usual places: the bookstores at Seattle’s St. James and St. Mark’s Cathedrals, Amazon.com, and at Center for Sacred Art events.  If anyone can get us a great distribution deal, let us know!

Also, at some point I will put up a couple of mp3 samples up on the CSA web site.

Pouf!  What an extraordinary month it has been!  Who knows what’s next?

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I was on Derek Blackwell’s KBCS show this evening and quoted Cynthia Bourgeault about professional groups singing chant that sounds like new wine, sharp and hurried, compared to the monastic recordings’ deep interpretations mellowed by years of contemplation.  And I get that, I’ve heard it myself, and felt it myself (in my barely semi-professional way).  And I don’t think Cynthia is trying to put down singing chant in contexts other than monastic (it was just a footnote of her book, for God’s sake).  But it’s something I think about quite a bit, especially now with the new Peregrine CD on the way here via UPS (supposed to arrive in a couple of days) and a pretty big concert on Friday night at Bastyr University.  Are we shills?  Phoneys?  I don’t really think so; but I have to acknowledge that when, a few weeks ago, I had occasion to listen carefully to some Solesmes brothers chanting through headphones, there was something different there–something Peregrine doesn’t do.  Yeah, it’s probably the contemplative life.

Still mulling that over.  My relationship with chant has gone on a long, long time and I don’t think that will change.  But there is a hint of something that is still looking to settle into place.  It’s a good thing, that somewhat unsettled feeling.  The seed out of which some new creative possibility might emerge?

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What else is a blog but a platform for self-promotion?  Well, how about this:  I’m probably going to be in The Media a couple of times in the next couple of weeks: next Sunday night on KBCS-FM and, sometime later, on KING5 TV’s Evening Magazine (they will be filming Peregrine’s performance at Bastyr University in Kenmore, WA, next Friday, February 2).

Also, our 2nd CD will be arriving next WEDNESDAY, and will be available at the concert next week.

It’s all a little weird and wonderful.  Sometimes it seems like the universe is just lifting you up on its great big loving wave.  And you think maybe, just maybe, it will keep going up and up, right on to heaven.

But I don’t really believe that.  Good ol’ Buddhism is always there, waiting to let the air out of the balloon, for which I am truly grateful.  Suffering lurks, and remaining mindful of that is so unbelievably helpful.  And just as helpful during ridiculous highs as during insane lows.

Nevertheless, I’m happy my group’s chanting is bearing fruit and getting noticed, at least a little bit.  It’s very nice to be able to share.

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My whirlwind life continues, with most of my waking hours the past few days devoted to attending the American Library Association midwinter conference right here in Seattle.  However, some other interesting developments have emerged as well.

Yesterday as I was downtown schmoozing with a kazillion librarians (a wonderful lot–I am falling in love with my job once again), I got a call from my wife who was attending a workshop on Mary Magdalene given by Cynthia Bourgeault.  She had told Cynthia about my chanting background and, as it happened, Cynthia was going to be at Elliott Bay Books talking about her recent, wonderful book about Chanting the Psalms, and, by the way, would I be interested in coming down to sing a bit as part of her presentation?  So I left the rural libraries reception I was attending, walked over to the bookstore, met Cynthia, sang some chant, then made it back uptown to the Sheraton in time for a Gates Foundation reception I was due at.  Whooey!  Talk about living the integrated life!

And tonight I was able to hear Cynthia teach about the Gospel of Thomas at St. Stephen’s Church with the Contemplative Wisdom Community.  And I must say she is the best, most egoless, funniest, wisest, most grounded teaching of Christianity in any form that I have ever encountered.  She loves chant and is delighted with the work we are doing–maybe there will be an opportunity for us to work together sometime.

Very exciting, very energizing–and off to bed I go, to rest up for one more day of library partying…after which, my radio interview on KBCS next Sunday night at 6, and the Peregrine concert and chant workshop the following weekend.  Yikes!
Cynthia talked tonight about “the single life” described in the Gospel of Thomas: integrity, wholeness, willing to embrace and live fully out of all that we are and can be.  For now, anyway, it seems to be working…

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It’s December 2; tomorrow is the first Sunday of Advent.  The cycle of the year is one of the precious gifts of the Christian tradition, far more fully developed and elaborate than the calendars of any religious other tradition (I tip my hat to the Jewish calendar, which is rich indeed–but the Christian calendar took that basic framework and made it the focus of still further elaboration).

Growing up I knew little of this richness.  As a low-church Protestant “Lent” was something my strange Catholic friends did, “Easter” was one day in the year when we were supposed to pay attention to something special going on (“Christmas”would have been the other, but was of course overshadowed by more materialistic interests in my young mind, so I’m not quite sure what we were told).

Of course there is a calendar of festivals in Buddhist traditions, New Year and  Buddha’s Birthday and the like–humans like to have such activities to celebrate.  But I would say none of it holds a candle to the Temporale and Sanctorale of Medieval Christendom.  And ever since I came across it through my study and performance of Gregorian chant, it has been relentless and compelling and inevitable for me.  My daily or weekly observance of the passage of Christian sacred time has waxed and waned through various degrees of my enthusiasm; but there is a  pulse to the turning year, underlying the chaotic meanderings of my life, that seems fundamental and necessary in some mysterious way.
Advent I: the cycle begins again, and renews the gorgeous Christian preoccupation with time.  In the beginning…at the end time…in the day of the Lord…always the passage of time really means something from the Christian perspective.  Astutely, the Buddhist framework might point out that such a forceful attachment to conceptual thought is highly problematic.

But there you are: in the Christian world, at least the one I most adhere to, it’s beautiful, it’s inevitable.  The first chant of the first mass of the year, “Ad te levavi animam meam”–to You I lift up my soul–is often beautifully illuminated in medieval manucripts, signifying start here–it’s going to be quite a ride!.

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I just spent a very satisfying evening with my Peregrine colleague Bill McJohn listening to takes from our recent recording session (and if you click that link, be gentle!  I know I haven’t updated the page for over a year…hoping to change that soon).  We worked with the sublime harpist Cheryl Ann Fulton and the delightfully calm and competent engineer Bill Levey, and we’re pretty pleased by the results so far.  If all goes well, and I think it will, the CD will be out in early February, just in time for, um, Candlemas.  What marketing geniuses we are.
Gregorian chant is my lifeline to Christian tradition, and putting that passion and energy to work on developing a product has been surprisingly satisfying.  Our first CD, which we did three years ago, was a bit of stress fest, so it’s awfully nice to have a different sort of experience.

Gee, maybe all that Buddhist meditation has something to do with it…

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Last night a friend of mine was involved in a performance of opera scenes, the culmination of the 10-day Accademia d’Amore Baroque opera workshop. It was quite spectacular in many ways: an orchestra pit full of early Baroque instruments (Four theorbos! Countless lutes and harps! A whole legion of viola da gamba players!), two-plus hours of one amazing scene after another from Monteverdi and Rossi, with brilliant vocalist/performers. It was a pure delight to be present.

The section that really caught my attention, however, and stirred up a number of thoughts, was a section that presented a series of sublime 17th century settings of texts from the Song of Songs, with music by Monteverdi, Schutz, and Palestrina. The music was absolutely gorgeous, sung most exceptionally well by a mixed quarter with continuo accompaniment.

But I found the staging to be a bit problematic. The erotic text of the Song of Songs was played “straight” as it were, with the lover and the beloved doing some serious panting for one other; at the end a group of heavenly nymphs bring the couple together for their consummation.

Perhaps I’m being overwhelmed by prudishness, but I felt sad that the more mystical understanding of the text that was promulgated throughout the middle ages were nowhere in evidence. Although it’s true that the world of Baroque opera is not the most spiritually sophisticated world imaginable, I just can’t believe that the authors of these settings would have been completely unaware of this deeper layer of meaning. Despite the obvious human love descriptions that lie on the surface (and which the performance heavily emphasized), there is a cosmic dimension of love and connection that seems to me to bring out the richest and most potent aspects of the text.
So at least during that section I found myself sitting there wishing and hoping for more ways to share the hidden depths of this vastly important and misunderstood text. I’ve been thinking for a long time about doing some kind of program or teaching with the many chants based on Song (and I know at least of some of those chants are the basis for the incredible settings we heard last night). So maybe this musically beautiful but conceptually somewhat frustrating and inadequate presentation will stir me up to move forward with this idea.

But despite all that, it was a rich, lush, scrumptious slice of Baroque opera sublimity. What a rare treat that Seattle has become the home for this great workshop.

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Did I mention that I love Gregorian chant?  Tonight was the dress rehearsal for Saturday’s “Medieval Christian death ritual” event, and though I was whirling and swirling through sound checks and setting up props and coaching the bier-carriers (sort of like spear-carriers, only different) and singing and coordinating clothing and sorting out processional roadblocks–though I was terribly busy and distracted I also found myself very, very moved at several points during the evening.  Yes, Christianity is stuck on this relationship with God stuff, and yes from a Buddhist perspective that can so easily become a crutch, a delusion, a fantasy–and yet the Psalms, especially in this context (“Oh Lord, do not let me go down into the pit”) that devotional longing for the Divine Other just felt poignant and human and deeply honest.

My early experiences of a personal God were decidedly mixed: in the overheated emotional atmosphere of an evangelical upbringing it quickly became impossible to distinguish between the genuine and the ersatz.  I can’t believe that in among all the many many thoughts and feelings I had during those years there wasn’t something truly precious and genuine.  But this is why precise analytical tools are so incredibly valuable: if you can’t identify what is genuine, then the true genuineness does’nt help a whole lot–you can’t ever be sure you’ve really seen it.

But in there somewhere, something rang me like a bell and helped to wake me up–I’m convinced of that–and tonight I felt it again.  If that touching poignant sense of connection to what the Sufis call the Beloved can be purified, clarified, exposed to analysis and evaluation, then I’m sure it’s something like that enjoyment body the Buddhists like to talk about: the beatific vision.  Cosmic union.  Really reaching out and touching all that is.  Because what is the romance of the syrupy religious experience but the by product of the shedding of ego and a sign that one is indeed moving closer to one’s center?  It’s just important not to confuse that romance of the Thou with the reality of the One.

Looking back at my first sentence, I’m not sure that in this case it’s really Gregorian chant that I love.  I think what I love, at least at this moment, is the Christian liturgical vision.  When I can just be with it in its purity, it speaks to me with such simplicity and profundity.  Very, very good stuff.

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We just got back a couple of hours ago from our semi-annual Gregorian chant retreat at St. Andrew’s House on Hood Canal. We had 25 happy retreatants, and we are pretty happy too. The weather was sublime (cool, mild, breezy, but sunny: the Olympics and the Canal were splendid ["canal" is a most unfortunate name: it's really more like a magnificent fjord]). This is our seventh retreat, and it really feels like the rhythms and processes by which we produce and facilitate the event have settled into a place of maturity and clarity. Our hosts at St. Andrew’s House (and Harmony Hill, where we had seven retreatants in a very nice “spillover”) cottage were kind, effective, and unobtrusive.  Very lovely.

And as usually happens, I come away from the weekend feeling most impressed of all by the power and wisdom and grace of the Divine Office. The hours of prayer flow so naturally, synch up so beautifully with the rhythms of the day: that is truly the star of the show.

The other consistent experience is that each retreat has a decidedly distinct flavor, influenced in part, of course, by the particular group of folks who happen to be there, but in large part too, I am sure, by the particular feast we are exploring. Other retreats have been more emotionally exhilarating, or more demanding, or more solemn, or have led to higher states of consciousness (even a vision or two). I’d describe the characteristic vibe of this one, for the group as a whole, as “grounded, and clear, and simple.” And maybe that’s an insight into an aspect of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Hmm, purity, clarity, freedom from the entanglements of human obscurations–that sounds just about right.

We offered a bit less specifically spiritual teaching this time: the group seemed to be mostly interested in exploring the nuances of chant performance in its musical and practice-oriented aspects. That was fine with me: it felt just right. I was able to engage in a couple of nice one-on-one conversations that elicited some reflections from a Buddhist perspective, and I was happy to be able to do that as well.

As I’ve been noting in recent days, doing more chant in preparing for the retreat–and certainly the many hours of chanting we’ve been doing since Friday night–stir up in me a stronger sense of connection with the Christian part of myself. This weekend, a lot of that experience, for me, was about Mary. Given that this is the seventh retreat we’ve done with Mary as the focus, that might not be surprising (including retreats on the “common” chants for Mary, the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Sorrows of Mary, the Assumption, and now the Immaculate Conception). But I must say that this weekend was uniquely moving for me. I know a big part of it was the image I chose–Victoria prepares many images from traditional and contemporary art on the theme of the retreat–a sculpture by Robert Graham from the Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels in LA. Here’s a somewhat different view of the same statue.

This image really spoke deeply to me, communicating as it does the power of purity in making oneself available as a channel of divine energy.

As the leader of the group I certainly feel an obligation to focus on others’ experience during the weekend. But this Mary connection seemed to be some sort of sliver of interesting possibility to explore in my own experience. And as usual, my strategy is likely to be: hold myself open, notice what’s happening, and allow whatever needs to express itself to unfold.

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The other night I saw, for the first time, The Song of Bernadette.  It surprised me: truly a great religious film–great because of the wonderful music, wonderful script, wonderful presence of Jennifer Jones (OK, she’s a babe, but a convincingly transcendent babe).  But also great because the whole production manages to express the jaw-dropping wonder of ultimate reality intersecting with human life, with the greatest of subtlety and respect.  The film was made in ‘43: how come *that* war, on occasion, managed to elicit such sublime expressions of the triumph of the spirit, while *ours* just keeps slogging deeper into depression?

But I’m really not feeling blue: I’m feeling inspired, both by the film and the related-but-different work I’m doing putting together our recreation of a medieval monastic death ritual for this Nalandabodhi program on August 19.  I am feeling once again inspired by the beauty of the tradition and the beauty of its ritual.  It’s quite reliable, really: I work with chant and I get inspired.
In writing about his music for the film, Ernest Newman said that he listened to “great religious music” by composers like Mendelssohn and Wagner, but it all left him cold.  he found his key by realizing that what Bernadette Soubirous witnessed in that cave near Lourdes was not, as she described it, so much the Virgin Mary as simply “the lady”.  So his music went for that: the encounter with beauty.  Not with dogma, or a religious figure, or heavenly creature.  Just beauty.

And when I am immersed in the chant and feeling its wisdom and power, as I have been today, it seems very similar: an encounter with nothing other than beauty itself, just as it is.

Why would I ever stop?  Why would I ever need to explain it in any other way?

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Among the many twists and turns of my spiritual journey was a brief, intense, and profoundly influential period at Seattle’s Center for Spiritual Living, nearly ten years ago now.  CSL is part of the New Thought movement, a profoundly American spiritual phenomenon that has its roots in the philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson and has been deeply influential over the whole realm of “New Age” spirituality and much mainstream American “positive thinking” as well.  New Thought is fascinating historically, but is also probably the most well-organized progressive/metaphysical spiritual movement in contemporary America.  Many interesting ties with Buddhism, though probably rather more Hindu than Buddhist in its emphasis on the “Divine Spirit” that lies behind all things.  For me personally, my encounter with New Thought was a pivotal phase in reorienting me toward my own spiritual journey, and was a proximate cause for helping me turn my attention more deliberately toward Gregorian chant as a spiritual, and not just a musical, phenomenon.
My New Thought experience was brought to renewed life today when I went to Seattle Unity’s Sacred Music Leadership Forum.  Unity is another New Thought institution which I’ve mentioned here before.  The event was almost entirely attended by Unity and Religious Science (the CSL “denomination”) music leaders.  I thought there might be a more diverse group there, but in fact it was quite a lot of fun to hear from folks about their experiences in their congregations large and small.  The organizer of the event, Erin McGaughan, is a truly wise and wonderful leader and teacher.  She was kind enough to include a slot on the program for me to talk to the group about chant, and the ways chant forms might have a place in their communities’ spiritual life.  We had a lively discussion, and though in general New Thought music tends toward the upbeat/gospel/contemporary, there seemed to be a general interest in the possibilities inherent in musical forms that involve slowing down and being present to the stillness.

I have taking my chant story to a lot of different venues; each of them has its potentials and its limitations.  New Thought adherents in general tend to be somewhat hostile refugees from Christianity, and also to be decidedly non-traditional (I guess that’s why they call it “New” Thought…).  Nevertheless, from today’s encounters I felt more uplifting and stimulating energy than the dreary sense of disconnect that has happened on other, seemingly more promising, occasions.  A few interesting possible connections emerged.

And I confess to feeling some long-forgotten stirrings of fondness for the carefully coded language of the movement: “Spirit expressing through me,” “as I think it, so it is” and so forth.  Amidst our fragmented and belabored religious landscape, there’s a sweetness and purity of intention that is really quite lovely.

In my encounter with the Center for Spiritual Living a decade ago I ended up turning away because what felt like an insufficiently rigorous attention to problem of ego in New Thought philosophy.  With my newly acquired Buddhist glasses–which give me a great deal of rigor (at least potentially) around the ego issue–I find myself feeling less uncomfortable with that.  I would call the NT teachings very useful tools for getting to what my Tibetan friends would call a relative level of truth.  Shunyata, the absolute emptiness of Mahayana Buddhism, doesn’t really get play–but good tools for relative truth are precious, and good tools that sprang up on American soil and have an American flavor might be very useful indeed.

So I am grateful to the 30 or so passionate New Thought music leaders I met and communed with today.  I think their work is an important and very interesting strand in the tapestry of current sacred music activity, and I feel delighted and honored to renew my acquiantance with that particular “scene”.

And who knows?  Maybe there’s some chant teaching I can offer to help provide these fine folks with some useful nurturance and support.

By the way, one of the most interesting possible outcomes of the day was the potential for this group to form a “sacred music leadership” nucleus that might attract chant practitioners (for example, the kirtan and zikr folks) to become part of a more explicit and conscious community of practice.  Given the currently fragmented and disconnected state of these activities outside of the narrow “silos” of each tradition, that would be something special indeed.

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This Saturday I’m participating in another event at Seattle Unity, put together by the lively and thoughtful Erin McGaughan.  The Sacred Music Leadership Forum is a gathering of music leaders from a variety of what I would call “alternative” spiritual communities, mostly (I think) of the Unity/New Thought orientation but possibly stretching beyond that.  I hesitated at first but then thought, “Wait a minute–I guess I *am* a sacred music leader,” both within my circle of chant students/retreat participants but also at St. James, St. Mark’s and beyond.  So it’s taking a bit of a shift of self-identity, or maybe a bit of waking up, to get me there.

You just never know, but I do look forward to meeting a new group of folks and seeing what happens.  I might talk a bit about my electronic music, maybe offer a bit of chant: we shall see.

Hmm.  Sacred music leader.  Interesting…

On the Buddhist front, during my hiatus from my Monday night class I am re-reading the beginning sections of the Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche’s book Wild Awakening.  A lot of very familiar material from the class; one of my favorite sections has to do with his comparison of the dharma to pure, clear water that might be contained within a porcelain teacup or a glass mug or a styrofoam cup: different cultural containers, but the same pure water within.  It is a question of ongoing fascination to me what form the dharma will take on this North American soil.  At any rate I appreciate my teacher acknowledging the relativity of the Tibetan “container” up front.  A grounded honesty that I find consistently in his teachings and that helps his presentation feel safe and approachable and useful.  Which draws me in and then allows me to engage with the profound challenge presented with ever so much subtlety and gentleness.  Very nice indeed.

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The last few weeks I have been reading portions of the Book of Revelation in my daily practice, and just completed it this morning. Its vivid and extravagant imagery could make a Tibetan Buddhist happy, and might make fodder for a mighty fine tantric practice. Even given its grim dualism (it’s practically continuous: angels and demons, the whore of Bablyon and the woman clothed with the sun, the chosen few and the suffering damned), there is rich imagery to stimulate an imaginative response, which is at least part of what tantric Buddhism is about.

The part that’s missing, though, is the phase in tantric practice where all the imagery is dissolved into pure white light. The Book of Revelation doesn’t do that. Right up until the end the good guys stay good and the bad guys stay bad: “Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righeous still do right, and the holy still be holy.” (22:11)

From a Buddhist perspective, dualism is a game–at times a useful game, as in the practices of “relative boddhicitta” I’ve been learning about at Nalanda West. A practice such as tonglen, giving blessing and good karma and taking on suffering in exchange, is recognized as a thoroughly dualistic practice. But within Buddhism it’s explicitly understood as just a tool, a skillful means to trick and entrap the mind–in fact, to make use of the mind’s dualistic tendencies to transcend those very same tendencies.

John P. Keenan’s commentary on the Gospel of Mark proposes a similar understanding of Jesus’s teaching. But it’s hard, if not impossible, to see the Book of Revelation that way.

Whatever else it might be, for me reading Revelation is a trip down memory lane. Evangelicals love the book (think of the success of the “Left Behind” series) and we read and thought and talked about it all the time when I was a kid. There may be no book that more perfectly captures the ethos of my religious milieu. It’s no wonder that I get a little wound up and take things to extremes!

This passage in particular (21:23, 27) stirred up the Sunday School memories:

“And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb….But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”

The Lamb’s Book of Life! Wow, does that take me back! I sweated a great deal about whether my name was in there or not; it was clear that I wasn’t to be fooled by the apparently innocuous, even fuzzy, qualities a Lamb might have. If I wasn’t on the list things were not going to go well for me.

Reading Revelation makes me think about the church people I grew up with, but it also makes me think about the author and the people he wrote it for. There is an unmistakeable anxiety, a millennial wishfulness that brings to mind the extreme Islamic and Jewish fundamentalism of today. Perhaps there’s some room for compassion for the text and its creators, and its readers both ancient and modern. Maybe there’s a way to recognize the dualism and make use of it (skillful means, remember?), and transform it–not in a condescending way but with good grace and good cheer and an open heart.I mean, how hard could that be?

One other story I have to tell:

My dear wife was raised Catholic and, like most Catholics of her generation (and umpteen generations before them), she grew up untroubled by any particular knowledge of Scripture (the missal and the catechism were perfectly good enough, thank you very much). So when I mentioned the passage above to her, the one engraved on my heart and brain, she thought I’d said “the lama’s book of life”. Now there’s a book I’d very much like to see myself written up in!

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Last night I participated in “Chant: An Interfaith Crossroads” at Seattle Unity Church with Devorah Gottesman and Gina Sala.  I have done a fair number of interfaith hootenanies in the past several years (including the legendary Mystical Chant happenings at St. Mark’s from 2000-2002, and the sublime 24-hour chant for peace at Great Vow Zen Monastery in Oregon).  Lots of good stories to tell about all those events, from the afore-mentioned sublime to the patently ridiculous.  Someday I hope to write a book called “Tales from the Interfaith Frontier”.

Last night’s event was something pretty special, both for what it was and for what it was to me.  What it was: three potent chant practitioners (well, two of them anyway, plus one white-boy piker) sharing and interweaving the music of the Jewish, Hindu, and Christian traditions.  The crowd was small, maybe 75, but there was a very good sense of connection in the room.  Certain moments were exquisite.  After taking turns with invocations, we each spent about 20 minutes exploring our own roots (in various, more and less traditional ways), and then concluded with an improvised collaboration, singing snippets of chant in Hindi/Sanskrit, Hebrew, and Latin in turn, building on one another’s energies in a very satisfying way.

A favorite moment for me, and certainly germane from a Buddhist-Christian perspective: as we were trading chants in the improvised section, Gina sang a bit from the Gospel of John (was it “I am the vine and you are the branches”?)–very characteristic of her effervescent and somewhat unpredictable performance style!  So I felt I needed to migrate away from the Latin chants I had been doing (I didn’t want it to seem like the Christians were monopolizing things, as they usually do).  And wound up with Joan Borysenko’s version of the Buddhist metta prayer:

May you be at peace.
May your heart remain open.
May you awaken to the light of your own true nature.
May you be healed.
May you be a source of healing for all beings.

And that’s the way it ended.  Very nice.  I was very happy to get a Buddhist word in there.

Much more to be said about the vibrational, energetic, cultural possibilities and implications of our gathering to make music from different religious traditions together.  To me, each of these events is one small piece of a very large project that will probably take centuries to unfold.  It’s a privilege to be part of such a massive and centrally important project.  In its own way, this blog is part of the same work;  from time to time, though, it’s most excellent to gather with some folks and party about the possibilities.

For me personally, the evening was a big, big stretch.  I am unaccustomed to standing on a stage surrounded by drummers and a bassist and boom mikes and cords everywhere, singing into a mike myself, seeking to hold the exquisite fragile energy of Gregorian chant in the midst of a great deal of energetic activity going in many different directions at once, not least of which is the work of two gutsy experienced performers.   And just to make things a bit more interesting, I chose the occasion to debut some ambient/electronic backing tracks I’ve been fooling with.  Pretty modest, a first step only, but that added quite a bit to my, well, fear factor.  Nope, I don’t usually do that.

So for my willingness to step out and take risks, I give myself a big A+.  And the results were generally pretty good.  The crowd was happy, and I was happy.

By the way, to get ready I did a couple of vocal coaching sessions with my long-time chant collaborator Bill McJohn, who is a phenomenal undiscovered talent as a coach, which didn’t surprise me a bit–it was lovely to be able to prepare with his help.  I’m also grateful to the ever-professional Erin McGaughan of Unity for pulling the event together and holding the space with enthusiasm and aplomb.

And finally the other thing I debuted was my new Virgin of Guadalupe shirt, which I got at a wonderful Latino clothing store in Burian, WA.  It was very helpful to stabilize me and keep me grounded in the midst of this high-energy and fairly buzzy scene.  Nice!

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