America The Jazzy

My friend Tim is a jazz musician. Sunday, July 2, he played his own jazz rendition of America The Beautiful as a part of the service at our open-and-affirming-all-are-welcome-at-the-table church. It was a gorgeous musical offering as we sat looking out over the spectacular Columbia River Gorge, Mt. Hood looming tall and jagged and proud in the distance. Tim’s take on this classic American song had a beautiful but subtle dissonance to it. Dissonant describes noise that is out of harmony. It paints a picture of things that are in stark disagreement.

We are out of step with our fellow citizens, our voices out of harmony, and our ways of dealing with the issues we all face often in stark disagreement. What if jazz has something to teach us about how to be better Americans together as we wake up this Fourth of July, 2023?

Not being a jazz aficionado, a quick search turned up the following: Jazz has its roots in the African-Amercian communities of New Orleans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is often characterized by improvisation and syncopation.

• To improvise means to perform without rigid preparation, and to work with what is at hand. Improvisation is an invitation to let go of the notes on the page and be led instead by your ear and your heart. It isn’t about doing it the right way but about finding your way to new, possibly-never-before-heard music.

• Syncopation means stressing the normally unaccented beats. Those that are typically the strong ones take a back seat, stressing the beats that are generally not emphasized.

What if we began improvising a new America? One in which we let go of the rigid ways of thinking and doing that got us here in the first place, and let ourselves be led by our hearts and not the party line clamoring for our vote and our dollar.

What if we began to shake up the American way? Stressing the normally unaccented beats, and not suppressing the voices that have so much to contribute to our collective music.

Improvisation can be scary as hell, with notes that occasionally hurt the ear. But if we keep going, it can bring forth music more beautiful than any we could imagine. Syncopation catches us off guard. It can knock us off of our comfortable well worn course, which is our only hope of ever finding a new one.

America The Beautiful isn’t a proclamation.

It’s an invitation to sing a new song.

Together.

May God shed her grace on all.

Rural Lessons

There’s so much to learn from our rural neighbors.

Driving through our beautiful valley at the base of Mt. Adams, when passing another car heading the opposite direction, you wave. Not a big wave. Not a royal wave. Not a political candidate wave. Not a red carpet wave. Just a subtle wave. Hands on the steering wheel, one or two fingers lift in greeting in a small gesture that says whether I know you or not, I see you, and you see me.

We need more of that in this country.

The snow is here. There’s a least three feet on the ground and it’s not showing any signs of letting up soon. Because we live on a private road the county doesn’t plow us out. Nor should they. They have more than enough work on too small a budget just keeping the roads we all depend on clear so that people can get to work, kids can get to school, and life can keep going. That means that we are dependent on the help of others to take care of our road. And they do. Whenever it snows we can count on our neighbor George. He just shows up and plows for as long as the snow lasts, and then we settle up at the end of the season. But today, after giving it a valiant effort, he told us that the snow was just too much for his equipment. As it turns out, shortly thereafter he was at our little General Store to warm up with a cup of coffee where he ran into Casey, another neighbor. George asked Casey if he could take care of our road today. Fifteen minutes later Casey showed up on his commercial grader and got er done.

We need more of that in this country.

Driving into town the other day we passed Keith. A local rancher, he and his family raise cattle, grow alfalfa and sell timber. On this particular day as we drove through their ranch, the sun hadn’t come up yet. It was cold and dark and the cattle needed feeding. And there he was, unloading bales of hay onto the ground for the waiting cattle, steam rising from their breath in the cold morning air. Staying inside for another cup of coffee or waiting till tomorrow when the weather might be a little better wasn’t an option. When you’re a rancher, it’s up to you. And because it’s up to you, you just do it, and then get up the next day, and do it again.

We need more of that in this country.

We moved here from the big city fifteen years ago, and it’s safe to say that we cast our votes differently than the majority of our rural neighbors. The lens we look through is probably quite different than theirs. After the 2016 presidential election we were heartbroken and scared for reasons that made sense to us. After the 2020 one, my guess is that many of our neighbors experienced those same feelings for reasons that made sense to them. And yet. We all find ways to come together. We help each other out, cheer for our high school basketball team, lay side-by-side on cots in the school auditorium as we give blood at the annual Red Cross blood drive, show up with our families at the annual Father’s Day Rodeo, and fly our flags for a country we all love, and are all worried about.

We need more of that in this country.

Ash Wednesday and Rush Limbaugh

Today is Ash Wednesday.

It is also the day that Rush Limbaugh died.

I was not a fan. Ever.

Mr. Limbaugh, in my opinion, used his ultra-conservative pulpit to disparage and devalue people and perspectives that I deeply value. However, my 80 year old brother Peter, who passed away recently, was one of the faithful. It was hard to fathom. And yet Peter and I deeply valued many of the same things, including this country and our democracy. I don’t think my brother and I were unique in that way.

Today, it saddened me to see gleeful messages on social media at the death of this human being, who, say what you will, was a hero to many. And someday when my hero, Barack Obama, dies, there will be many who will dance on his grave.

This must stop.

Hurling insults at those who don’t agree with us only fans the flames of hatred, widens the political divide, and pushes our fragile democracy closer to the edge of a cliff of our own making. Disparaging comments and casting blame, whether circulated publicly online or contemplated privately in our own hearts, only further feeds the beast that threatens to devour us and our democracy. Every time we indulge in the habit of fueling that fire, we are brought closer to collective ruin in our polarized country. Like a drug, it is a political habit that gets harder to break the more we engage in it.

Today is Ash Wednesday.

It is also the day which marks the beginning of the Lenten Season and continues until the night before Easter Sunday. Lent is a period of repentance and reflection, during which people often commit to a time of fasting and the denial of certain luxuries. It is a time of preparation for the ultimate transformation, when out of the ashes of death 2000 years ago, Love was reborn.

It could also be the day which marks the beginning of a new season in this country. A period of repentance and reflection, during which we commit to a time of fasting from the political junk food that is poisoning our souls, and a refusal to indulge in cheap and hateful shots across the aisle. A time of preparation for the hard work of raising up a country of Love out of the ashes of death.

May it be so.

e