Tucson -- A Sacred Harp Song

Sunday’s Sermon -- Grace is Righteousness, the sign read at the entrance into the parking lot of Mountain View Church of Christ in Tucson. I found a parking spot easily as a sporadic showing of vehicles left many empty spaces. The only reason for this showing was that I must be early. And I was by a half hour. A fat lady with long hair in a long pink dress greeted me from a plastic chair as I opened the glass door in my blue jeans, green cotton dress shirt, and new white gym shoes.

“Welcome,” she said. “You new here?”

“Just coming for a visit,’ I answered.

“Welcome,” she again said.

It’s been over five years since I had been to a Sunday service. I had at one time made a commitment to myself to never return to any building that was a part of any institutionalized religion. I’ve had share of burdens within these institutions, and the biggest kick in the pants for me to stay away was when I slowly watched over the course of years the massive cover-up of the abuse of children in the Catholic Church. These type of places just seem to swarm with a system full of middle managers that keep the gears of society in line while judging us from books and brain tweaking the truth of who the Spirit that dwells within us truly belongs to. I’ve been to many places like this and even though the beliefs may change their purpose doesn’t. In the end they work for the powerful and make sure we all see that it’s not anyone’s fault when bad things happen to someone in the course of a day. We have a Devil or a Shatan or Karma to blame it on when all things go astray. It’s all laid on some entity somewhere but never on our own actions which may have played a part in it all. And when things like the incident in Tucson happen we are never quick to judge ourselves but allow the finger pointing to begin first into our books of law and then at all others. The question why is reserved for them and not what dwells in our hearts, minds, and spirits.

But this Sunday, the day after the Tucson shootings in Tucson, I was the first to take a pew in a small church called Mountain Avenue. It was clean and modern. The building couldn’t have been more than twenty too thirty years old. And as buildings go, since we’ve been building them, that’s pretty young. And as I sat alone and read the banner on the altar; This Do in Rememberence of Me, I wondered what it was like to see this building threw Dorwin’s eyes. What he truly thought of the whole system of religion and society and the people that came here to worship.

The half hour went by quick and I noticed that in every pew there was more than one person sitting in them. I wondered if it was just me with my go-tee, and long hair, that may have scared some away from filling in the empty space between me too the other side of the long wooden empty bench. But that couldn’t be right because right in front of me sat a man and his wife. One couldn’t get any closer. They were an older couple. He looked European with short gray hair, and she was Latino with dark hair that covered her shoulders. I watched in vane as her hand caressed his back thinking of how lucky the man was to have a woman that wanted to feel close to him. And then I saw another man like me with long hair. And he found company in his pew.

Like cymbals ringing through the sound of an orchestra tuning their instruments, a group of children bounced up the aisle, and were led to the first pew. People that were still standing and talking to each other, now, began to find their seating for the Sunday service. I was still sitting alone in my pew as a man approached the microphone and asked the people to open up their hymnals to the song; We will Rise Up. I stood and listened to the people sing and they sang in the old fashioned way of the Sacred Harp singers, a way in which the voices blend and rise and fall in unison to a single one/two rhythm.

The song lifted my Spirits and cut into my emotions. I cried for a moment listening to them singing this type of loud and balanced harmony. Once they ended that song another song arose; There’s a Stirring. And as heard this song I was caught by where we are today in America, the melting pot, about to be stirred together, no one Spirit greater than any other. A song to stir, to become truly one, must be out there somewhere even in the form of Sacred Harp singers. That is what this is all about == The great stirring… the final judgment into ourselves in heart and mind and Spirit.

As the song ended, a tall thin man in a black suit, polished black dress shoes, grey collared shirt, and red tie, approached the children and began to sing the song, “Jesus loves the little children, all the little children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are sacred in his site. Jesus loves the little children of the world.” He then went into the same song and began it with Jesus died for all the children. He ended his song beginning with Jesus rose for all the children. He then told them all to raise their hand and wiggle a finger as he was doing. Some children in the front did what he said, others steered with a dull look, and others just looked around to see what was happening behind them. The man then began singing while wiggling his finger and bobbing up and down; “There was a fuzzy catapiller stuck up in a tree, he wiggled once, he wiggled twice, and then wiggled right at me. I put him in a yellow box and said don’t you away, instead he turned into a butter… and I don’t know the rest of the song.” The church erupted in laughter as the man briefly laughed at himself. He was lost for words but not finished and he carried out the song by singing, “Only God in heaven can make a butterfly.” Placing his hands on his hips he then looked down at the children and said, “And who makes butterflies?”

“Caterpillars do,” one children remarked.

The church stirred for a moment as the man fidgety around for words, and
then said, “No, no, no… God makes the butterflies.”

“No.” The child said, “Caterpillars do.”

The man waved his hand at the child and said, “You’re right! You’re right! But who makes the caterpillar?” This was getting interesting to me. A man dressed as a sales man talking theology stumped for a moment by a child on who makes a butterfly. That was already resolved and he lost that battle of wits. And I watched as the child in her pretty little dress, and her hands on her lap, looked at the man deeply searching for a truthful answer. And into her eyes the man did stay with the true subject of how we are made. “That’s right!” he said, “God does.” If she would have only known that two butterflies make a caterpillar she would have walked away crowned. I was sure of it.

The children were then led away and the man approached the microphone and informed the congregation that the sermon about grace and righteousness would be postponed and that the service would now be one of devotion. A prayer was read, and then a piece of scripture. He then asked us all to stand and greet each other in peace.

The man in front of me turned around and reached out his hand. He had blue eyes. “Hi, I’m Ben,” he said politely and then introduced me to his wife Maria. She smiled and I nodded my head and smiled back as she moved out into the aisle and began talking with another woman. Ben continued, “What’s your name?”

I answered, “Pete.”

“Where ya from, Pete?”

“Originally from Chicago but lived in Cincinnati for the last twenty some-odd-years. That’s where I came here from.”

“Bad time to come to Tucson.”

“Well looks like there’s a lot of opportunity for me to learn something.”

“I’d say so. Been here long?”

“Just a week,” I said then asked the man about Dorwin. “Did you know the man that was killed yesterday?”

“Yeah. Good guy. Really liked by everyone.”

“That’s why I’m here today. I want to know something of this man. What he
saw. Who he knew. And grieve with the people.”

“Ok. Your welcome to stay.”

“I heard he was a preacher here.”

“No, he wasn’t a preacher. He would just help people.”

“Like minister in acts of compassion?”

“Yeah. I guess you can say that.” Ben waved to someone across the room and then looked back at me and said, “I have to talk to someone. And nice meeting you.”

We shock hands, and as he walked away I sat back down in my empty pew and watched the people mill about until another preacher came up to the lectern to speak. He had grey hair, a grey beard, and was dressed in a polished grey suit. He looked short from where I was sitting. And as everyone saw him on the stage he called out for another song to be sung in Sacred Harp fashion. The people went back to their pews and sang the song that the preacher asked for; God is a River, Glorious. Straw brown baskets were then passed around, and I pulled out my wallet, and grabbed a couple dollars, and some change, and dropped it in. And once the song was over the preacher began talking about Jesus and the Last Supper. He then read out of the bible the story of the Last Supper. Silver trays were then carried out and on the trays were white wafers of bread, which were small and round and they look like after diner mints. I ate one and then from the other silver tray I grabbed a small thimble sized plastic cup of grapefruit juice. I drank it and placed the empty cup back on the silver tray. When I did this, I thought about my days being raised Catholic and at the same time I didn’t want to eat this bread or drink out of the cup, but I did, not because I believed that this was the body and blood of Christ or even in remembrance of Christ. I did in remembrance of Dorwin. It was his church and his peoples and to respect the memory of who he was, around the people he cherished, I celebrated life as he would have, and left it at that.

As the ceremony ended the preacher in the grey suit was replaced by the skinny preacher in the black suit with the red tie who sand the caterpillar song. He stood behind the lectern and began to preach and he spoke about Dorwin and how Dorwin’s wife wanted to go see Gabrielle Gifford speak and tell the congresswoman what she thought about a certain issue that was on her mind. When they went and the bullets started flying Dorwin pulled his wife down to the ground and covered over her. She was shot in the leg and he was shot in the head. The preacher then said, “The press asked me, what did you feel when you heard about this? And I hate that question because I felt like I fallen into a hole. And they asked us what you going to do for services? I said, I don’t know, I have never been affected like this before in my life. All day yesterday I watched the news, and it feels like when the twin towers were blown up. We couldn’t believe it. We couldn’t pull away from it. But this morning I don’t have a magic pill. I don’t have an answer. I don’t have the right scripture. I have nothing for you. And I’m going to assure the news media that this is not going to be a political circus. A man was taken from our reigns and I don’t ask God why. How dare I ask him why? Because God would say, why do you live the life that you live Michael?"

Why? That word stayed with me throughout the rest of his sermon. When he talked about the row of marks high on the back wall that were put there by a falling ladder that Dorwin was on at the time, I questioned why and thought about the fall of world religions. And when he spoke about the impact that Dorwin and his wife had across the United States before Dorwin was killed, and how he didn’t know that they were out there helping others, I questioned why, and found that a private matter between a man and his works of charity is his alone. Why did Dorwin jump on his wife to save her? Because of instinct to protect a loved one or because he believed in Jesus. And when the preacher blamed this incident on the Devil, and not on how this society has become one to blame things on all others as bullets fly from our tanks and airplanes into the lives of many more innocent human beings around the world. I question why. Why the preacher doesn’t question why to himself so deep to where his God dwells. Maybe it’s the life he’s living and he can’t see that the answer is waiting for him if he could only be trusted to judge himself truthfully enough and with great cherishment. And after his sermon was over we sang; I’ll Fly Away. During this last song I rose from my lonely pew and walked a few steps towards the door past the ladder marks on the wall and wondered, why fly? Why fly when life waiting for me is only a step away.

That night, I stepped back into my bedroom and searched around the internet for a song that was sung in Sacred Harp style – Looking for one that would be inclusive and have the ability to question everyone’s judgment for themselves. And I found one, and as I listened to the words of these Americans singing, I thought to myself, why. Why do we allow others to judge us and we lower ourselves to their standards and demons. Politics of greed win when we don’t even know how to rightfully judge ourselves, because the truth we seek in sound judgment is given to us from those with self interest who use laws from confusing as hell books.

Verse From A Sacred Harp Song
And am I born to die?
To lay this body down?
And must my trembling spirit fly?
Into a world unknown?
A land of deepest shade?
Unpierced by human thought?
The dreary regions of the dead?
Where all things are forgot?
Soon as from earth I go
What will become of me?
Eternal happiness or woe?
Must then my portion be?
Waked by the trumpet sound?
I from my grave shall rise!
And see the Judge with glory crowned!
And see the flaming skies!

Judge yourselves before you allow others to judge you and what you are really in need of…

Be crowned with thorns or feathers or glory or a floppy blue hat with a yellow
band around it to block the flaming sky from blinfding your eyes?

Why do I ask this? Because the choice is all yours.

I like the floppy blue hat and like to see a blue sky if there's flame in it or not.
Right now, that's the truth of how I wear my glory.

Who knows?

Grace is knowing the difference between wrong and right…

Maybe a feather one day… why maybe a thorny crown… who knows?

But right about now I'd choose the feather.