E Ala E: The heavens declare the glory

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I learned the Hawaiian sunrise chant "E Ala E" at an unlikely place -- the parking lot of a hotel on Kauai. It was taught by a Niihau native who was a Marriott employee. She teaches the sun chant to tourists at the Kauai Marriott.

The Niihau islanders bring this chant, every month, to healing ceremonies for Kaho' olawe, the island sacred to Hawaii's ocean god, which was desecrated and finally abandoned by the military.

A week later, on the island of Maui, we drove to the top of the volcano Haleakala for sunrise, and as gold and red colors filled the sky, a ranger just behind me sang the sun rise chant, with rabbinical power, a goosebump moment.

Last week in our PUMC Discipleship class we studied the Creation stories, including Psalm 19, 4b-6. "In the heavens he has a set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy, and like a strong man runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and nothing is hidden from its heat." I had paired that Psalm to a sunrise photo and liked the bridegroom/wedding canopy image and "strong man runs the course with joy."

Last month we had two wonderful sun-rise encounters, while on a Tauck America's Canyonlands Tour. At the Grand Canyon, we arrived at our lookout point in pitch dark, dressed for the chill, to watch the wonder unfold.
At Bryce, the light cast on the hoodoos was also well-worth losing sleep.

It was a spiritual experience, deepened by opportunities to interact with Navajo guides who shared their faith. Thanks to YouTube, here are sun-awakening songs from Native Americans who have somehow, in a white man's world, retained their inner strength and harmony with God and nature.

This Comanche Peyote song greets the dawn on Sunday morning. From the caption: It is to be sung on the birth of a new Sunday. When the sunlight hits the sky in the early dawn morning. When the very edge of the sun rays meet the silver glimmer of the clouds and the sky. It's lyrics are in reference to the beginning of a new day. A new day that brings comfort and happiness. This songs asks for God (The Creator) to make the prayers a reality.

Here is an early morning blessing from the Navajo.

After these glories of Creation, it seems small-minded to worry about whether to interpret the Genesis Creation stories literally. To quote from the Disciple study: "The Jews, who have lived with Genesis for a long time, are amazed that Christians want to literalize the poetry...The symbol of seven days is a faith statement...seven days are poetic symbols to show form and to remind us to order our lives as God has ordered the universe."

As suggested by Psalm 90:4: "A thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night."

In other words, worry less about creationism vs evolution and more about keeping the Sabbath, more about blessing each new day, especially on the seventh day.

One more -- a beautiful Cherokee morning song.

Well-Planned -- or Summoned Lives?

Should you plan your life out in your 20s, like Harvard Business School prof Clayton Christiansen advocates? Or let it happen according to circumstance? David Brooks, in today's New York Times oped piece, presents the contrast:

The person leading the Well-Planned Life emphasizes individual agency, and asks, “What should I do?” The person leading the Summoned Life emphasizes the context, and asks, “What are my circumstances asking me to do?”

Instead, I think the best answer is, like Dion says, "Both."

Reading Christiansen's lecture reveals that, when he was a Rhodes scholar, he dedicated an hour every day to "reading, thinking, and praying about why God put me on this earth." He says that a shocking number of HBS students have not contemplated their purpose in life.

People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers—even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.

Another Christiansen quote from this well-worth-reading essay:

If you want your kids to have strong self-esteem and confidence that they can solve hard problems, those qualities won’t magically materialize in high school. You have to design them into your family’s culture—and you have to think about this very early on. Like employees, children build self-esteem by doing things that are hard and learning what works.

Christiansen essentially teaches in parables: When people ask what I think they should do, I rarely answer their question directly. Instead, I run the question aloud through one of my models. I’ll describe how the process in the model worked its way through an industry quite different from their own. And then, more often than not, they’ll say, “OK, I get it.” And they’ll answer their own question more insightfully than I could have.

How to choose between the Well-Planned Life (which Brooks attributes to Christiansen) and the Summoned Life (a roll-with-the punches approach)? I would say you can do both. Think ahead what your moral, ethical, and religious guidelines are going to be. Then adapt and stay fast on your feet.

Bay Head and Rokeby

Bay Head -- those in our family know what Bay Head is.

Rokeby is the 43-room house on the Hudson River owned by Livingstons and Astors, now inhabitaed by impecunious descendants. Very different. But in a New York Times article today, there are a couple of points worth taking note of:

"Like most family histories, Rokeby's story is wildly subjective, and its 'truth" depends on your vantage point."

"It's the place that makes my heart sing and my head ache. But it's kind of amazing that 50 years later, Rokeby is intact, family owned, and debt free."

Here's the line we might need to heed:

"The tension...is between people needing space and the stuff needing space, because nothing can be thrown away."

Think: Attic.

Creating Sabbath Peace

Creating Sabbath Peace Amid the Noise is an article I want to ponder.

Rituals -- family and monastic

Procession is a form of ritual walking. A family may process into the dining room on a special occasion. A procession invites the spirits of the occasion to be present, and it renders the place of gathering the hopeful goal of labyrinthine mystery. Thomas Moore, Meditations. p. 60

Tradition is a pool of imagination, and not a basis for authority. ...Traditional rituals and images rise out of an historical fog in which founders and authorities are more mythological than persona, and in which so many different layers of meaning lie packed together that the sacred literature becomes genuine poetry. ...We could be guided by countless generations of ancestors without becoming oppressed by the words and structures they have left behind." p. 84

Why I like Gregorian chant

Modal chants mirror and model the monastic life. "It doesn't have the drive toward ending or the insistent relationships between notes and chords that modern music has. Endings and climaxes appear melodically, for the most part, with a felt lift in song and a sure entropy in musical energy. Thomas Moore, "Meditations," p. 38

Sometimes...monks wil land upon a note and sing it in florid fashion, one syllable of text for fifty notes of chant. Melisma, they call it. Living a melismatic life -- we may stop on an experience, a place, a person, or a memory and rhapsodize in imagination (draw, contemplate, build, paint, or dance). (Versus living one point after another,) ...stopping for melisma gives the soul its reason for being. p. 44

"Silence is not the absence of sound, but a "toning down of inner and outer static...allows many sounds to reach awareness...(nature) was well as conscience, daydreams, intuitions, inhibitions, and wishes. One cultivates silence not by forcing the ears not to hear, but by turning up the volume on the music of the world and the soul. p. 68

Monastery bells: "Overtones are those elements in every experience that last long after the literal act -- memories, shock, emotional residues, reactional behavior. They are also the meanings and implications of deeds, their nuances and reverberation...Monks are more interested in these (overtones) than in the literal facts. They are professionals in spiritual resonance. When the bell rings, they stop and listen." p. 98

Listening, obeying

"Obedience means to listen closely to others for words of direction. . . I can see the deep will that guides me in the thoughts and reflections of my neighbor." Thomas Moore, Meditations, p. 12

"To have a conversation with Christ...just keep listening until you hear something, said my novice master...Now, having read Jung, Ficino, Yeats, Rilke, and Dickinson, I've discovered how to listen meditatively." p. 13

"Wasted time is usually good soul time... But there is something especially fruitful in a regulated life...The ritual quality of appointed times releases us from the burdens of free will." p. 83

"The truly artful life, not the merely aesthetic one, is religious, and vice versa." p. 105