Lord, for thy tender mercy’s sake, lay not our sins to our charge,
but forgive that is past,
and give us grace to amend our sinful lives.
To decline from sin and incline to virtue,
that we may walk in a perfect heart before thee, now and evermore.

The opportunity to make sense of a church service came rarely to me as a child.  When it did, it was usually in the context of song, in the harmonizing of hymns.  These were occasional pearls sprinkled among the standard rota of guilt, judgment and substitutionary atonement.  Our Church of Christ in Mississippi was proud of its a cappella singing in between its bible-thumping, and I was momentarily transported when given the chance to float an alto harmony into a beautiful hymn like Fairest Lord Jesus.

I dreamt of the angelic voices from the boys choir in Vienna, far off and unreachable.  As an adult, I had little knowledge of the breadth of this marvelous polyphony until hearing the Tallis Scholars for the first time.  I nearly drove off the road, I can remember it so clearly, the soaring straight tone of sixteen voices committed to each pitch and rhythmic line, weaving in & out of one another in a blend of multiple melodies.  Most of their work is from the English church and Catholic traditions of southern Europe from the sixteenth century — Spain, Italy and Portugal.

Amid the early fits & starts of my spiritual growth, choir played an essential role in squaring me toward the godhead.  Tears were shed singing Palestrina, and anthems like Lord, for Thy Tender Mercy’s Sake by Farrant and If Ye Love Me by Tallis.  In addition to the music, there were kindred spirits in choir, a sense of community and shared experience.  The way polyphony is delivered in a blended sound complements community.  Perhaps that’s why I’ve always preferred it to operatic arias or cantoring.  The space that emerges from the organic balance of choral singing evokes the Holy Spirit moving within the group.

Give a listen to the Dale Warland Singers, Westminster Cathedral Choir, the Voices of Ascension, the Cambridge Singers, the Huelgas Ensemble, The Sixteen, the Cambridge Singers — especially during the high holy seasons of Lent, Advent & Christmastide.  Their unwavering tones amid majestic cavernous spaces will transport you to the altar of God.

Mary, the maiden who said, “Yes” is elevated to propriety and transcendence for good reason.  The Holy Spirit spoke to her as a vessel for God.  Frightened, awestruck, tingling with forbearance, Mary perceived the aura of God upon her who came to envelop the womb and bless the seed within it.

Does this make Mary divine?  Or without sin?  I think not.

The profundity of Luke’s tale resonates so well because Mary was one of us.  This roots the incarnation of Jesus in our humanity, renders him an infant son who cried real tears clinging to his mother and father in the wake of life’s cruel turns.  Jesus paid attention to the rabbis around him, and grew into knowledge and presence to become the creative Christ of our making.  While Mary took pride in her son, she could not at the same time become God alongside him.

It is my position that the supernatural persona we place upon the Virgin Mother of God robs her of personality and strength.  Instead, we are left with a polychrome icon who greets us in gentle perfection at the altar.  If we exalt this feminine model, we begin to see our women in the light of unattainable glory, placing them upon a pedestal that manifests itself in the virgin bride and the homecoming queen and the blond anchor on FoxNews and the fetching girl playmate next door.

No woman can become fully human attempting to sustain such a model.  See how far Marilyn fell on account of the demands we placed upon her.  Popes Pius IX and Leo XIII elevated nineteenth century mariology, purified from the original blemish of Adam’s sin, to the highest heights in spite of modern science suggesting, “If Mary had complete x & y chromosomes, from where did the male ones come?”  The Vatican has a way of circling the wagons when threatened with truth.

On the heels of a vivid dénoument from a yoga session last year, an epiphany struck Jane Moss — yoga as an interior sacred practice had become an essential respite from the cacophony of modern life.  That singular moment of introspection and inspiration now culminates in her new creation: the White Light Festival, three weeks of artful music dedicated to sacred programming at a most secular performance arts institution — Lincoln Center in New York City — where Ms. Moss serves as vice president of programming.

According to Jane Moss, the festival is trying to achieve “focus on personal interior spaces where all music starts.”  For a festival to be scheduled at all during the height of the fashionable fall season, much less a sacred one “devoted to spiritual expression and the illumination of our large interior universe,” is a bold and highly unusual move for Lincoln Center.  The “relentlessly imaginative” Moss has gathered an array of incredible artists — the Hilliard Ensemble, the Westminster Cathedral Choir, Meredith Monk, the Tallis Scholars, and other notables — for an ambitious program shaped by advising author & theologian (and GladdeningLight fave) Karen Armstrong.

All around us, there is spiritual hunger in evidence.  Some are drawn by artistic means to the secular corners toward the liminal divine.

(Note: source quotations from The New York Times)

www.lincolncenter.org/Press_Release/White_Light_Announce_PR_FINAL.pdf

www.new.lincolncenter.org/live/index.php/white-light-2010-conversations