“The Talk”- The Sacrifice in Giving

This collection of songs has been assembled with particular attention paid to women and children. More specifically the battle women have trying to protect the survival of their children. The thread tying all these pieces together is an illustration of the terrifyingly helpless position mothers are in. The dual pain of physically giving birth combined with the pain of trying to guard against a world that thrives off destruction is in some way prevalent in this particular collection of music.

In one piece of music, a child is sold in the same manner you would a farm animal. In another we experience mom's grace while still feeling her edges of life's grind. After that we are presented with a lullaby of reflection on the birth of a child. Only for it to be followed by the reminder that mother's children are equal children of lesser status. The music that follows unravels the reasons those children suffer many afflictions. Somehow, through it all, something, somewhere, for whatever reason, seems to prevail through all of it. Thus far, there are still survivors left. As a result, faith endures.

Denial: (Spiritual) How Come Me Here

Composer: Traditional African American Spiritual

In an operatic aria, a singer expresses a singular intense thought or feeling about someone or something. If Spirituals are America’s arias, the Spiritual Lord! How Come Me Here stands out. Where the text may seem simple, the challenge is to have a delivery born out of deep sincere conviction. As a work performed by a female soloist, the very first sound can be a trickle of anguish, or a waterfall of pain. The verses in Lord! How Come Me Here speak of a brutal human experience. The singer says, “They sold my children. I wish I never was born. I wish I never was born.” The utterance of conviction in every word from the singer tears open the soul, eloquently begging for the justification of torment. What did I do to ultimately deserve this? Can this really be happening? Is there hope beyond the denial of my own lived reality?

Sadly, there are such real moments in human history. In those moments in life, people have responded by singing. I have wondered, why sing? All the evidence I have come across points to the same conclusion. In such moments, singing is the most authentic and naked representation of your humanity, it is the only thing you have left. The exhalation of honest dignity.

If fortune can change like the wind, by singing, we hold a vacant hope within the puff of our last breath. Buried within that breath is the shred of hope that some ear, some force, someone or something, real or metaphorical will receive the trickling river of our diminishing heaving gasps. It is that even deeper buried hope in the midst of our suffocation, that the slivers of wind floating our last plea will conjure and invoke change.

Anger: (Classical) Mother’s Sacrifice

Composer: L. Viola Kinney

(1890 - 1945)

L.Viola Kinney lived in Kansas and taught english and music at a school. Aside from that we don’t know a whole lot about her. Mother’s Sacrifice is her only surviving work. L. Viola Kinney was awarded a prize for this composition that was written when she was 19. Had she not won the Inter-State Literary Society Original Music Contest held in Omaha, Nebraska, it is quite possible the world at large would never have known of her.

Originally, this piece of music was written for piano but it has been transcribed for String Orchestra. It has three sections. The first and third section mirror one another. Both are reflective and contemplative in their nature. The middle section contains a very pulsating and stormy waltz. So stormy, that harmonically, Ms. Kinney dares to place minor second intervals against one another that result in some very dissonant passing tones.

What is Mother’s Sacrifice? What is the sound of pain and anger in that struggle? How quickly does it pass? What does it feel like on the other side? Who are we when we stop to take notice and reflect? When we do all of that, will we understand what she gave up?

Rev's Comments: Associate Chaplain Rev. Molly Doreza

The words flew by me like a hawk circling for the kill. My daughter was shrieking, and yet I could not grasp the meaning of her words: “He’s dead, mom!!” From deep within me I knew that this truth would forever change my life - and I grasped feebly for some anchor to hold, a way to un-truth what I was hearing. 

Thirty six years earlier I’d held his squirming, wet little body to my breast in astonished wonder. His cry was life, and my tears were of joy. Now, in the first few moments of this awful truth, I struggled to understand how I would never hear his voice again. In agony hot tears seared my face. 

The groans of childbirth and of a mother’s grief are curiously similar. They begin in a low growl - unbidden and unfamiliar - and push up through the soul with a violent intensity, giving wordless voice to the assault on the body, raging against death. While the groaning of childbirth finally gives way to inexpressible joy, the groaning of grief gives way to the staggering silence of inexpressible loss. 

“O Lord, out of the Depths cry! Hear my voice!” (Psalm 130:1) 

I would like to imagine that this psalmist was a woman, a lonely, heart-broken mother, groaning in private agony at the violence done to her child as he was ripped from her arms. 

A mother should never have to endure the death of a child, they say. I would also add that a mother community should never have to endure the violent deaths of any of her children. It is a devastating sacrifice, a scarring wound on our history and consciousness - birthing in us a collective groaning too deep for words.

Bargaining: (Jazz) A Child is Born

Composer: Thad Jones

(1923 - 1986)

Across all of planet Earth, women are the cradle of the universe. The first thing any human being hears is the mother’s heartbeat. For this reason, the idea of rocking a baby to sleep to a rhythm is universal across the world. The Jazz Standard A Child is Born is written in ¾. Also known as waltz time. However, it is not a waltz. It is a lullaby for a newborn. The text speaks with affectionate appreciation for the tiny hands, one pair of eyes, and small beating heart of a newborn baby. It is a lullaby of celebration. This piece is often played during the Christmas season.

Anyone who has held a tiny baby can grab onto this moment, especially parents. When children are in crisis, parents sometimes look backwards hoping for second chances as they wrestle with moving forward. If life speaks in rhythms of its own, the patterns that occur for a second chance, are a divine act.

Weighing the deals to bargain to attain forgiveness can lead to new opportunities. But first, we must first learn to be still. Our second obligation is to quietly listen to the rhythm. When we have found that space we can rock it like a sleeping child, pulse it like a heartbeat, and the instructions on our next steps will begin to speak.

Rev's Comments: Associate Chaplain Rev. Molly Doreza

Until my son was a year old, I rocked him to sleep. “Rocky rocky, Mommy?” He’d ask as we approached bedtime. In the low light, as he drank his final bottle of the day, I watched his eyes get heavy and his chubby hands drop in sleep. I loved those moments as much as he did, and I’d give anything to have them again. 

If you want to find yourself - rock a child to sleep. In those tender moments, we find our own vulnerability. As we hold the not-yet formed body of another human being, we confront that which is unformed in ourselves. The treasure in our arms transforms us - we ask for forgiveness, promise to be better. And we begin to imagine a brighter tomorrow, for the babe and ourselves. 

The prophet Isaiah says: “And a little child shall lead them” (11:6). His wisdom invites us to gaze at the sleeping face of a baby, where we are transformed by possibility, unmoored from the divisions and despairs of the day and, finally, rock hope into our own weary souls.

Depression: (Blues) Aunt Hagar’s Children’s Blues

Composer: W. C. Handy

(1873 - 1958)

W. C. Handy has been called the father of the blues due to the number of Blues pieces he wrote in his lifetime. Not all Blues music is sad. Some Blues is actually happy blues. Aunt Hagar’s Children might qualify as a happy blues. In this Blues piece Aunt Hagar is sitting in church, listening to the church deacon instruct them on proper living. Aunt Hagar draws the line at music. Her children have just come home from the war. Not only is she glad to see them, but she is excited to "dance to this new music on the radio”.

The name Aunt Hagar is an interesting choice by Handy. Hagar in the Bible is Sarah's servant. In a way Handy might be suggesting Aunt Hagar, like her Black religious kinfolk, are considered and treated as an equal child of lesser status due to race. Or possibly does her sinful love of blues music make her an outcast in a religious society that sees the Blues as improper? Or is it the fear of celebrating too loudly, bringing unwanted attention and possible violence to the community that marks her as an outcast?

The joy of Aunt Hagar's exuberant "razzin" because "her boys have just come home" might suggest more about loving all of who you are in challenging times than it does about the rejection of religious moral decency or societal conventions expected of a women. In the end, her "razzin" is a fight and victory over depression.

Acceptance: (Soul) Little Child Running Wild Ghetto Child

Composer: Curtis Mayfield

(1942 - 1999)

Curtis Mayfield’s music was and continues to be popular. During the 1970’s he was the composer for a film that would become extremely popular in the U.S. The Blacksploitation movie Superfly is about a cocaine dealer named Priest trying to make fast money so he can retire from being a dealer. Having grown up in Chicago's Cabrini Green Housing Projects, Curtis found writing the soundtrack to Superfly to be particularly easy. As an explanation about the existence of Priest, Curtis offers us the piece Little Child Running Wild sub named Ghetto Child.

In the opening bars the strings stutter, shimmer and shriek. He gives us a driving bass line with a slightly uneven stress in the pulse. Over that, Mayfield sings a ballad unraveling the causes, places, people, and things that give rise to the "nothing child". The music of Curtis Mayfield was often championed by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. As a songwriter, Curtis was extremely good at writing songs that had a deep social justice conviction and songs about hope for social change.

Curtis Mayfield's ballad about Priest, is a lesson in looking past addiction and despair, and focusing on the root causes that give rise to them. Mayfield's Ghetto Child tells us people are living consequences as a result of root causes. Sometimes these root causes are difficult for us to accept.

Rev's Comments: Associate Chaplain Rev. Molly Doreza

The young boy had been running wild for years. He’d lied to his father, stolen from his brother. Finally, one dusty evening, he came to the river of no return. On one side lay his drugs, his paraphernalia. On the other side, redemption. On one side, despair - and on the other, hope. And right there in the middle, acceptance. 

Jacob, son of Isaac, was predestined, you could say, for a hard life from the start. (Genesis 32:22-32) His older brother had been gifted with his father’s privilege. And Jacob, the second son, couldn’t see a way out of the dismal life of servitude which lay ahead. It was understandable that he would want to take matters into his own hands. And that he did, wildly. 

But trying to steal back privilege is life sucking. It drains the soul, and is never able to undo injustice, nor deliver the justice needed - no matter how hard one tries. And, sadly, (at least on this side of eternity) people always manage to create a first and second born son. 

But that night, at the Jabbok River, Jacob faced off with God. All night long he struggled - with the injustices done to him, and with his own demons. Finally, he gains himself and his soul. And, despite the “painful rip in his upper hip” he is given a new name - and privilege - which he’d never imagined. He becomes “Israel”- the father of his people. 

Acceptance comes in honest struggle with God. It is a life’s work, for those lucky enough to survive. Acceptance is learning to live with questions not always answered. Wounded, we pray for the courage to cross the river which separates us from despair and hope - a river which separates us from one another. And in that river, in the struggle, we find ourselves and, ultimately, God.

Faith: (Gospel) We’ve Come This Far By Faith

Composer: Albert A. Goodson (1933 - 2003)

The hymn We've Come This Far By Faith has an accidental but purposeful history. The composer Albert Goodson had just moved to Chicago from L.A. He was feeling lonely and while tinkering around on the piano at a friend's house, the words and the music for the song fell right into place. "We've come this far by faith. Leaning on the Lord. Trusting in his holy word. He's never failed us yet."

To the surprise of Goodson, no other song he wrote matched the popularity of We've Come This Far By Faith. The song is so popular, that it is frequently used to open worship across all seven Black American Christian denominations that make-up The Black Church in America. With its gospel-march like flavor, its crossover appeal represents the successful combination of Goodson's Pentecostal upbringing and his childhood efforts to sneak away to the Baptist churches to hear their choirs rehearse.

"Oh can't turn around, we've come this far by faith." Although the scripture reference that inspires the song comes from the New Testament, the song speaks to an Old Testament experience. Black Americans see themselves in The Exodus from Egypt. In this way Goodson's piece acts as an ode to the pillar of fire & pillar of cloud. Goodson makes it clear you can see faith at work in the rear view mirror of life but you cannot drive backward and relive what has passed.