Music for some reaches the level of spiritual experience and practice. Rev DJ Don discusses this beautiful phenomenon. Featuring music by Stevie Wonder, 10,000 Maniacs, and Elgar.
Columbia Memorial Hospital faced the Catskills in the distance and stood just a half mile from the first living room I remember. The apartment possessed only two bedrooms, already too small for my father, mother, two older sisters, and newborn me. In a couple years, when my dad got a better job, we’d move. If child-bearing wasn’t what it was (and remains), I imagine my mom might have walked me home that week. But childbirth, rightly called labor, exhausts thoroughly. And with three kids all under five years of age and with a husband often working, parenthood never stopped exhausting my mother. April 10 th of 1971 brought unseasonably wintry weather, a pointed, probing wind across the river and our city of the same name. And the alley off of Worth Avenue in downtown Hudson, New York included a steep hill up. My mom didn’t walk me home. 1971, historically speaking, isn’t notorious or notable for things like military or terrorist attacks, political assassinations, or the end...
I have a friend, a dear friend in fact, someone I respect and admire. I’ll call him as I often do, G. When rarely the subject of religion comes up, G half-jokingly and half-proudly will declare himself a non-believer and anti-organized religion. He’d agree with Gandhi who’s been purported as saying, “I like Christ but I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” At the same time, G profoundly loves music, Gospel music included. This love reaches the level of the sacred to him. Music provides him meaning, comfort, and joy, as essential to him as God is to others. G and I disagree when it comes to religion and God. But when it comes to music we are in sync. There is common ground there. Music is sacred to me, essential, a source of meaning, comfort, and joy. And G and I agree on the spiritual and musical genius of John Coltrane who composed and performed the musical masterpiece called A Love Supreme. The 4th and final movement of A Love Supreme ends with...
We come now to a narrative that in some ways is the worst story in all of scripture. The reason it is so bad is because many trace the present-day conflict between Jews and Arabian peoples back to the story, the narrative of Abram, Sarai, Hagar, and Ishmael. A deadly feud that is always in danger of breaking out in full out war, like now - that many see this story as the start of it all certainly makes it a haunted story. It all begins in Genesis 16. The story basically goes like this: Abram and Sarai grow increasingly impatient that the child God promised them isn’t arriving. Sarai especially is having difficulty waiting. Without consulting God, Sarai hatches a plan. Have Abram marry one of their enslaved. Hagar is chosen. Hagar and Abram consummate their union and indeed a child is conceived, a boy who will be named Ishmael. But as the story goes in Genesis 16, the pregnant Hagar makes her lack of fondness for Sarai increasingly known. Sarai responds in kind and worse. A feud begin...
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