Once in a great while we could offer a simple solo without the full orchestra - I cherished those moments. After I left FBC, I invited Janice Mossima to sing for a joint revival between us at Wilshire Baptist and University Park UMC.  It was a marvelous week, we all brought our favorite anthems and solos and our individual pastors alternated each evening.  I wanted someone totally unique to bring us a message that was transcendent and moving and totally unexpected.  I invited Janice to sing two solos on the Wednesday Evening service. I do not recall the selections, but I will never forget the response from the people. We were true soul mates and I accompanied her with a freedom of spirit that I have rarely experienced since that time. Both congregations fell in love with her. The afternoon she come over to rehearse with me for the services I was just driving up and watched as she got out of her old beat up heap of a car.  She seemed to have the weight of the whole world on her shoulders. I walked toward her and we embraced and she burst into tears and said "Oh Rick I am so weary, I am just so weary".  I just hugged her as tightly as possible and we walked with our arms around each other into the church and began to practice.  Janice was one of those individuals who came to FBC Dallas out of a sense of real need.  She honestly believed she could "pray out the demons and heresies, discrimination, hatred and spiritual blindness".  But her beautiful gifts of prayer and discernment were no match for that level of legalism.

A few weeks later I had just returned from visiting family for the Thanksgiving Holidays and there was a phone message telling me that Janice was killed instantly on Thanksgiving Day when her old beat-up car plowed head-on into a telephone pole. I had to go back to FBC for her memorial service and certainly welcomed the opportunity.  Even now almost 15 years later I remember every detail of that service. She was an "unofficial" member of a black congregation in her small town just outside Dallas and that entire congregation was seated in the first group of pews to the left.  This was the first time I ever saw that many black people present in that all white and extremely bigoted downtown congregation. I knew that I had to accompany another soprano as she sang His Eye Is On The Sparrow.  What I did not know until I looked at the service bulletin that my name had been listed by the family to either sing or play or say something.  I went into severe "prayer" mode.  I knew that the single most significant moment of my entire life was before me.  W.A. Criswell was seated in his usual chair on the platform and he had deep affection for Janice Mossima. He would have welcomed anyone to that great congregation but unfortunately in those days - the congregation was in no way open to the idea of welcoming other races and nationalities inside those historically "white"walls. Nevertheless, Janice became a catalist and spiritual lightning rod.  Most folks down there were absolutely terrified of her. She possessed a spiritual aura that was unarguably profound.  Fred McNab, choir director at FBC, would often call upon her to pray during Sanctuary Choir rehearsal and let me tell you heaven came down and she would all but pray God's wrath upon the heresies and irrelevance of that huge dynasty of fundamentalism, bigotry and hatred.

I prayed like I never prayed in my life for direction as to what to do, should I play something,  say something, sing?  What, I did not know.  The moment came and I simply got up off the bench of that enormous organ console and marched to the pulpit not having a clue what I was going to do. I nodded at Dr. Criswell and looked down at all those beautiful black folks sitting together to my left and glanced at the the rest of that all white group of people.  The first words out of my mouth were these.

"Janice was my soul mate. I accompanied her many times and it was rare that we did not cry and weep while we rehearsed and something took hold of us.  She could sing absolutely anything and had a direct line to heaven". Those black folks were saying amen and nodding their heads which just spurred me on.

I told them how I had seen her a few weeks before and she had said with such deep, deep sorrow, "I am so weary, just so weary." She is no longer weary today from fighting spiritual battles in this place and praying that we would all know the Lord as she knew Him and served so faithfully."

Do you ever have moments in your life when you know that it is that moment you have been preparing for all your life. Well here was mine.I continued...

"She prayed that this congregation would be delivered from our arrogance, blasphemy and sins of presumption. She is not in that box, she is walking around us here, watching us, listening to our thoughts, hearing our words of tribute, and she is singing this song...(I began to sing that simple gospel song)..."talk about a child that do love Jesus, here's one here's one - ever since I heard the gospel story I've been walking up the road to Glory - talk about a child that do love Jesus, here's one - here's one". Then I quietly turned to go to the piano to accompany the soloist as she sang "His Eye Is On the Sparrow."

That does not seem especially significant as I look back but at the time is was perhaps one of the most spontaneous, honest, sincere and authentic moments of my life.  It was a profound moment of transcendence for me.  I knew that I had one chance to say something profound that day and that I could not afford to blow it, hold back or deny the sheer magnitude of this event.

I have experienced many, many forms of transcendence but that day was and will ever be a pinnacle in my life.  My words may not have found their way into the soul of anyone present but I knew that Janice was right there.  She knew that I would be listening for her spirit and speaking words that carried her thoughts and timeless prayers for a people who were lost in their own ignorance and unending spiritual blindness.

What if we were to have a populist religious inquisition in America. Pause a moment and think about that. What if there was a religious uprising and the "right-wing"  or the "left wing" started bombing our churches, killing people as they left worship each week. I am afraid that if something is not done to quell the rhetoric and anger in the Anglican church - we could reach an impasse very soon.  I often find myself struggling to continue to give emotion and spirit in my music each week.  I am seriously looking inside to find the cause.  I often ask myself some extremely harsh questions and am highly critical of my music making.  I really, really believe that we need more than an infusion of spiritual urgency, we need a form of inquisition to force us to look around and awaken to what we do in church each week. Recently, Russ and I were performing a beautiful Pavanne by Gabriel Faure for prelude.  French music in general contains much transcendence and passion if you are willing to drag it out of the music. I got so caught up in the music that I almost forgot where I was.

I know that music communicated something to the listeners. I was a channel, so to speak - to deliver a message from my experience and from my very soul.  I am not bragging but, I simply do not want to waste my time playing music that does not move me. If it moves me it will perhaps move the worshipers. Then there is this issue of beauty, what it is or is not.

I believe entirely in cosmic forces and that those forces can affect us through music and the human voice. It is energy that must be translated through our eardrums, through our brains and into our emotional wiring.  To me that is the essence of worship. It is unique to the church - we have the freedom to explore the depths of emotion through our prayers, thoughts and liturgical recitations as a body. We do not endure long sermons full of personal opinions but, when there is transcendence behind the words, we feel it, we connect to it and it changes us.

I have come through all the loud "triumphalism' of the 80's and watched the ups and downs of modern church musical and theological rhetoric, coupled with all the control issues associated with it. We are aproaching Lent and I may really jump off the bandwagon this year and do something outrageous like scream out in the middle of a hymn "say it and sing it if you mean it, otherwise go home". Has liturgy become an "institutional" joke?  Has the Episcopal Church become a group of die-hards who cannot live without repetition and tradition?  Are we just a big old patriarchal institution that is bound to die just as we see every other institution struggling to survive...

next time Transcendence and Improvisation.

There is a spiritual lesson here.  I personally have piled up years of experiences , like we all have, that often lay far beneath my consciousness.  Suddenly, something will happen to draw back a memory or a thought I have long forgotten. I have discovered that I have a great memory for detail.  All of this snow has taken me back to my childhood days here in the Panhandle when we played outside every waking moment, no computers or TV to keep us inside. We loved to crawl inside a 55 gallon barrel and roll down the "looong" hill at Sam Houston Elementary behind our house.  Sledding in the snow down that long hill was simply thrilling. All the kids in our neighborhood had roller skates.  We got together and went caroling at Christmas ( I played the accordion!).  It was idylic in the 50's and early 60's.

My mother had songbooks full of great popular songs from the last 75 years. I would often just sit at the piano while she prepared dinner and played songs like "Tenderly", "The Lost Chord", "Moon Over Miami", "Alice Blue Gown", and one of my favorites, "All the Things You Are" written in 1939 (those marvelous chords just swept me away!).

I have layers and layers of songs in my head that I can play from memory if someone just hollers out the name.  On occasion, I go to a really great party and we gather around a piano and sing.  This is quite a novelty these days and never fails to really move people to tears as they actually sing songs from their childhood, or songs their parents and grandparents loved ( of course it helps if they have had a "belt" or two!). 

I know all this sounds pretty sappy but I honestly believe that we need a good dose of old fashioned sentimentality occasionally. We need to roll back the layers of our lives to remember moments of great emotion, passion, hope, beauty and tranquility.  There is a lot of beauty around us these days but there is also an overwhelming amount of "ugly".  We laugh at June Cleaver and Donna Reed. We snicker and roll our eyes at Lawrence Welk.

I never thought I would make fun of men who wear their pants below their butts, or women who stuff themselves in custom designer jeans.  I want to remember the days when we could not wear blue jeans to school or chew gum or wear our shirt tails out, ever! I want to close my eyes and know that I was a part of a beautiful time in history - in spite of all the turmoil back in the 50's and 60's.  We still got up every morning and looked our best. Mama reminded us to be polite, kind and mind our teachers.

Those memories are all piled up in my head and occasionally the snow melts away and I see what is at the bottom of my heart.  I see how important it is to love simplicity and authenticity.

Yes, I listen to the world around me and never tire of Lady GaGa or The View and Oprah or of hundreds of other things in this crazy universe.  I just add it all to the "pile" of my life. Take a deep breath and sip my gin and tonic.   rdl

So how are we to love.  How do we find a love that is above the childishness of those who (figuratively) use a "hidden" language to impress, annoy and manipulate vulnerable people?

Perhaps the answer is right in front of our eyes... love means being annoyed, disillusioned, irritated, gullible, abused, heartbroken, cynical and just downright weary.  amen  rdl

I chose this quote from Jack Spong's book to illustrate several key issues that bother the heck out of me. He was asked to sponsor a group discussion concerning "why worship was having such difficulty in our day" for the 1982 triennial convention.  He chose this title as the subject of his opening lecture prior to the general time of discussion. He verbally illustrated the ways in which both our worship patterns and our God concepts have changed throughout human history. "The sun was an object of worship, for example, until the mind determined that this object of worship was a material substance burning at an incredible rate and putting out an enormous amount of heat and light.  With that knowledge, the ability to sustain the worship of the sun disappeared.  This was an essential theological and liturgical principle that would be a cornerstone of all my future work".  He is actually laying the ground work to describe the "worship wars" in the Episcopal Church over their individual PERCEPTIONS of the new Book of Common Prayer.  The philosophical difference between the "right and left" back then are the same differences we are seeing in government and all over the place!  I just heard that the two extreme right wing "tea party" factions are warring among themselves. 

I was a witness to the "worship wars" among southern baptists and saw, with my own eyes, the blacklisting, name calling and venomous hatred which occurs when two left brain entities come into conflict over undefinable concepts.  It is both funny and horrible. I was also raised in the extreme fundamentalist Nazarene denomination and that gives me the inherent right to discuss this subject with some authority and experience. It is the nature of left brain/literal groups to continually fuss and splinter off one another - I have watched it for years.  There always seems to be a lower level of hatred, fanatical fear, intolerance and systemic paranoia for some left brain individuals to discover. So what is my point? Observe the evolution of hatred and eventual genocide in the Nazi Party. Observe any form of dictatorship whether it be in a small country in South Africa or a mega church in the United States. The personalities are the same and there are most certainly individuals who will fall for the power, persuasiveness and authoritarian manner of those leaders. It is human nature.  It is just a matter of time before their systems fold from within and another splinter group evolves out of the group into another dark philosophical "layer" below.

We are now seeing the irreparable damage that is done when any "literalist" or authoritarian leadership takes hold of an organization, government or group.  The extremes cause a "ripple effect" and it is rare that the organization will ever return to normalcy, ever. The deep division that takes place among individuals can rarely be healed.  The deeper, dark, natural suspicions and fears of some individuals escalate rather than subside.  I can hardly bear to recall those dark days in the Southern Baptist Convention when suddenly everyone had to take sides and the walls came crumbling down.  Now some of the "left brain" seminaries are squabbling over issues like glossalalia, healing, signs and wonders to name a few. Again the lines are drawn and the war continues.

Perhaps the greatest irony of all is the fact that Jesus' vitriol was almost entirely directed at the fundamentalists of his day. The Pharisees, the "left-brainers". Now-a-days they yell and scream about the inerrancy of all scripture and fight for their indivual perceptions of "truth" while we all watch folk run and hide. Almost anyone can start a church these days and if you have the gift of being left-brain and are persuasive enough, there are folks who will join your club. 

I want to share someting from my personal life to illustrate thsi point.  The western astrological signs (Aries etc.) indicate behavior and  eastern signs indicate how the brain functions. To really know a person you must recognize both.  I have struggled for years trying to comprehend the minds of many of the men in religious leadership that I have worked with. Dr. W.A. Criswell, for example was a Saggitaruis/Rooster. He was born under two of the most high-strung signs, was nervous, frank, candid and totally carried away with himself. On an very simplistic level - it is easy to delve into the deepest darkest recesses of an individual by studying astrology. But boy, you talk about a serious threat to modern religion! I probably worked closer with Dr. Criswell that any other staff member at FBC Dallas.  We performed hundreds of weddings and funerals together. He was extremely dependent upon his organist for cues, momentum and direction.  He would actually yell at me across that huge sanctuary in front of 2000 people. We had just finished the "invitation" one sunday and I was contemplating the postlude and I suddenly heard him yell out "organist come alive over there!".  I looked out over that 5 manual console and there was some poor soul still kneeling in prayer beneath him - it did not bother him to yell out to me to keep playing quietly!!!  I endured many of his verbal "explosions" - but there were many others who fell victim to his accusations of being skunks, lousy liberals and infidels.  Again it was both funny and horrible.  It was not unusual for his wife Betty to lock him out of the house when he became ridiculously incorrigible or to spend weeks not saying a word to him.  At the height of the "baptist inquisition" back in the 80's it became obvious that he was nothing more than a loud puppet for a regiment of powerful religious control freaks.  Our beloved past president "W" fell victim to the same thing.

These behavioral patters are very common down through history if you know what to look for.  Dr. Criswell believed with all his heart that the bible was literally "god breathed" and anyone who contradicted that premise was an infidel...period.  There is a profound tragedy behind this story. At the heart of his astrological "wiring" - this man should never have been a pastor or even come close to anything theological. He would have been extremely successful as a pirate, prospector, performer, or peace corp volunter, but his intermidable frustrations within himself led him to open the door to the same levels of "literal" thinking as most of the religious control freaks we see in the news and at the head of  mega churches. These people wreak havoc on everyrthing they touch. Last evening, Pat Robertson expressed the belief that the folks in Haiti had a pact with the devil. As we look about us we can easily spot these people.  However, there is a point that goes far beyond these unhappy and often "sexually frustrated" men.  They have plenty of followers who are like small vulnerable children that wander in and out of church doors and institutions like zombies - ever in search of some new truth or "word from the lord".  This is a human tragedy that is unavoidable. We easily look back over history and see these powerful individuals who destroy civilizations, make a mockery of the human condition and use vulnerable people like toilet paper.  The great irony in all of this is so unbelievable I can hardly speak of it - Jesus was the arch enemy of the legalists, the "law keepers and literalists of his day".  Now these very same people defend the entirety of the bible as the only source of truth known to mankind.

Hang on to your hat - we will be discussing one of the most frustrated control freaks of biblical history, the apostle Paul. 

These individuals could not thrive and exist without the support of like minded individuals. I believe that Jesus had zero tolerance for the Pharisees - and it got him into loads of trouble.

I have watched the rise of religious fundamentalism since the late 70's - it begins slowly by reversing the common terminology, name-calling, intolerance, judgementalism, hatred and eventually zealotry.

It is very difficult to confront a zealot.  Our most intelligent, thoughtful and ponderous words will never move or change their minds. Compassion and kindness are a  meaningless waste of time.

I believe that Jesus was born to confront the zealots for all time and  to assure humanity that we need not fear them.

To me, Christmas stands for spiritual liberation. Liberation from legalism, tyranny, ignorance, apathy and intolerance.

"Then Jesus returned to Galilee, filled with the Holy Spirit's power. Soon he became well known throughout the surrounding country. He taught in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, he went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures.  The scroll containing the messages of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him, and he unrolled the scroll to the place where it says:

THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME,
HE HAS APPOINTED ME TO PREACH GOOD NEWS TO THE POOR.
HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM THAT CAPTIVES WILL BE RELEASED,
THAT THE BLIND WILL SEE,
THAT THE DOWNTRODDEN WILL BE FREED FROM THEIR OPPRESSORS,
AND THAT THE TIME OF THE LORD'S FAVOR HAS COME.   Luke 4:14-19 NLT

In holy scripture we read hundreds of details concerning the private lives of old testament prophets, kings, queens, priests, rulers et al.  There are some pretty "seamy" activities in the private lives of the most powerful people down through history.  Does this have any relevance whatsoever during this season of Advent in the year 2009?   You bet it does! 

I was watching the history channel last evening and the subject was concerning the profiles and lists of activities kept by J. Edgar Hoover on practically every noteworthy individual in this country.  These documents can now be viewed and examined and we now know that he used this information to literally control not only the rich and powerful but his job at the FBI and his own personal privacy concerning his homosexuality.

There must be a point at which our humanity becomes irrelevant and our personal and private behavior is of no interest to anyone as long as it is credible, safe and legal.  Sex among Americans in general has been an inherent subject that is radically misunderstood.   Men seem to need more of it than women.  It drives "religionists" crazy. Sex coupled with anger has resulted in unspeakable behavior and death. We are inundated with sex in advertising - it sells. Everyone deserves to have their own individual sexual proclivities. Now it seems that parts of the Episcopal Church is going nuts and realigning themselves with African entities that are 800 years behind the times. The common folk down there are as vulnerable and easily manipulated as perhaps any culture on earth. It now appears that several American evangelical control freaks have influenced some of their like minded religious leaders in Uganda.  The judgements against LGBT individuals in Uganda is almost beyond belief - we have had international wars to stop genocide and yet this kind of thing is still around...now Ugandan fundamentalists want to kill and imprison individuals over who has sex with whom or who loves whom!  

I never cease to be amazed at the constant political issues surrounding national leaders, senators and congressmen who have sex with other people.  Perhaps we are missing something here? 

I would like to suggest we all take a private little test. Ready, here we go.

1. Describe your own individual sexual and emotional needs.

2. Describe your personal definition of guilt or remorse.

3. Describe your expectations of others based on your own personal religious, educational and ethical beliefs.

4. Have you ever consciously or subconsciously judged, critisized, maligned or spread false rumors about anyone?

5. If and when you feel vulnerable, alone and afraid what do you do?

6. Do you believe that sex is a social, religious or personal matter?

7. Have you ever considered your own personal vulnerability as a human being before establishing an opinion concerning the behavior of other people?

These questions actually have nothing to do with sex, religion or human behavior - these are questions concerning the basic way our brains function.  We have not yet evolved to the point where we understand that the brain is the "source point" of all human behavior. We put people in categories, races, colors, denominations, class, ability, on and on ad infinitum. 

I suggest a simple solution to our obessions with all human behavior...in the words of Jesus Christ - "he who is without sin let him cast the first stone". 

In this season of Advent, perhaps we need a strong reminder that Jesus brought to us a whole new way of thinking and we as "christians" of all people, after 2000 years need to stop running around like a bunch of pious hypocritical self appointed judges of humanity!