Journeying Into Mystery

Since the insurrection of January 6th by election deniers and domestic terrorists, the urgency of voting is never more acute and important than for this coming election.

I believe the majority of Americans seek out a reliably factual voting guide as we make very important choices when we walk into the voting booth. Where can we find such a thing as an accurate, reliable, factual voting guide? It is clear that we cannot trust any of the following sources.

UNTRUSTWORTHY SOURCES

Televised campaign ads. Since the Supreme Court ruled that any Tom, Dick, and Harry dark money can form political PACS, the amount of seamy, smarmy, and illegitimate false information is contained in these ads. While the majority of these ads come from the far right, both political parties utilize these despicable vehicles of misinformation and lies. I admire Parliament governments who make it illegal for political parties to air any ads during elections.

Campaign ads in the mail. Matters not what political party. They go immediately in the recycle bin at my home. What a waste of trees!

Cable News and Radio pundits. All cable news networks are skewed one direction or another. It is clear that Fox and others like it are so skewed to the right that they lack even factual information. Others like CNN and MSNBC are skewed to the left, I have found that facts still count on those cable stations even though they are left leaning.

Polls. The way pollsters write a poll question can immediately skew poll information. People hate polls. How many people, unless forced, actually answer any poll? If they do actually answer polls its under duress and they often will say anything to quit taking the poll, like answering C,C,C,C on multiple choice tests when you don’t know the answer. When the Moral Majority use to send me polls in the mail, I use to answer in direct opposition to the political and religious positions of the Moral Majority out of spite, whether I actually agreed with them or not.

Voter guides issued by special interest groups and by religious organizations. Everyone they list as “trustworthy” only line up with their specific political goals.

So who can you trust? The answer is you, however, this means YOU HAVE TO DO THE WORK! Quit taking the lazy route by believing any of the distrustful sources listed above.

Do your own research.

Go to the website of candidates to see what they are saying and what policies they are pushing.

Actually buy a legitimate newspaper and read what is being reported there. You don’t have to agree with the editorial page. The majority of articles on the candidates will be accurate.

Get in touch with your innermost values.

BERNADIN’S SEAMLESS GARMENT OF LIFE

When I go into the voting booth I have I relied on Cardinal Bernadin’s seamless garment of life. Sister Joan Chittester OSB succinctly sums this up.

Sadly, many people equate the word Pro-Life with only anti abortion. My parents were wonderful people. However, I would never emulate their habit of being a single issue voter. This is especially so when it comes to the issue of abortion. As anyone in pastoral care will tell you, the issue of abortion is not as black and white as many people think. As one who has worked in the Church for 42 years, I have found that women who have chosen to get abortions only did so when things were so desperate that no other choice was left to them. What Sister Joan Chittister states is that which is consistent with the teaching of Pope Francis 1, who states that ALL Life issues are equally important and not one, including abortion, is more important than another.

The bottom line is that not one individual who is running for political office is going to be the perfect candidate.

Not one political party is the perfect political party.

What we must do is to do the research, reflect on the values that are ultimately most important to us and then go in and vote our conscience.

MY VALUE SYSTEM WHEN I VOTE

I use two criteria when I go into the voting booth and vote.

The first is that the United States was founded as a secular nation and NOT a theocracy. While there is freedom of religion, the Founding Fathers made it clear that no one religion would be the religion of the nation. This was to prevent the wholesale religious violence and persecution that raged throughout Europe and other parts of the world and spurred the immigration of desperate people to the United States. Though I am a Catholic, there is no way that I want the religious values of my religion to be forced upon others of different Christian denominations nor those of other world religions.

The second, and for me the most important, is the criteria that Jesus gives us in Matthew’s Gospel in chapter 25.

“³¹ “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. ³² All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, ³³ and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. ³⁴ Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;

 ³⁵ for I was hungry and you gave me food,

I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,

I was a stranger and you welcomed me,

³⁶ I was naked and you gave me clothing,

I was sick and you took care of me,

I was in prison and you visited me.’ ³⁷ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? ³⁸ And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? ³⁹ And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ ⁴⁰ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,a you did it to me.’

⁴¹ Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels;

⁴² for I was hungry and you gave me no food,

 I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,

⁴³ I was a stranger and you did not welcome me,

naked and you did not give me clothing,

sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’

⁴⁴ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ ⁴⁵ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ ⁴⁶ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

_{Coogan, Michael D.; Brettler, Marc Z.; Perkins, Pheme; Newsom, Carol A.. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version (Page 1785). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.}

The political candidate that comes closer to what Jesus deemed most important criteria of living the Gospel is the one that I use, regardless of what any guide urges me to use.

Last but not least, vote!

In today’s Star Tribune, one of the front page articles was describing the great anxiety surrounding the Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine that is in the midst of the war in the Ukraine. As has been reported in the news, there are nuclear reactor inspectors going to the site, under incredibly dangerous conditions, to check on the status and safety for this nuclear power plant.

Vladimir Putin is like the perpetrator of domestic violence who decides that if he cannot continue to abuse and control his victim it is far better to kill the victim and himself. Lobbing artillery shells in an around the nuclear power plant is Putin’s way of demonstrating that if he would prefer to blow up Ukraine and put it under a nuclear cloud, then allow Ukraine to have its own sovereignty.

What this crises demonstrates so clearly is the dilemma in which the world finds itself these days. As the disasters that have occurred at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima among other nuclear power plants have shown us, nuclear power, while giving us non-carbon emitting power possesses in many ways is more dangerous and destructive. The half life of the plutonium waste ranges from 10,000 years to 24,000 years.

I remember an article written by a photojournalist who took pictures of the town of Chernobyl many years after the nuclear disaster (level 7). The photojournalist had to wear very special protective gear that measured the amount of radiation being received. The photojournalist had to leave the site after 30 minutes when the radiation levels were getting dangerous. There are still about 100 people living on the fringes of Chernobyl, and animals, e.g. horses, fox, rodents etc, abandoned by the fleeing human population, are thriving, it is unknown how long they can survive such a dangerous environment. For the most part Chernobyl is a nuclear ghost town.

Years after the 2011 nuclear reactor disaster at Fukushima (an earthquake triggered an enormous tsnuami that flooded the nuclear power plant resulting in the meltdown of the reactors, the radiation is still so intense within the shells of the reactors that unmanned robots melt down unable to measure the damage done to the reactors. The land and the water have been poisoned by the radiation caused by the meltdown.

With Putin threatening to destroy the nuclear power plant in Ukraine, the question must be raised as to if the danger of nuclear power plant meltdowns is a better alternative than the destruction of the environment by carbon burning power plants.

It has been very clear for many, many years that obtaining energy from carbon burning power stations, and carbon powered engines/motors is destroying our planet. Droughts lasting five to six years, far more destructive and frequent hurricanes along our coasts, the melting of both the Arctic and Antarctic polar ice caps is raising the sea levels precipitously throughout the world.

In 2021, severe flooding, as a result of global warming, destroyed German towns. This year Germany and France is hit with a severe drought pretty much drying up the Loire River, pictured above, and lowering levels so great on the Danube River that the rusting hulks of German WW2 war boats scuttled by the Nazis, are now revealed.

On the other hand, severe flooding is destroying property, crops, and the lives of people all over the world. In the United States, pick your state in which severe flooding has occurred in recent days. It is ironic that while Arizona, Nevada, California are suffering from multiple droughts so severe that the bodies of Mafia victims and those who died by drowning/suicide are being uncovered in Lake Meade; while, at the same time entire communities both urban and rural are being flooded out in many Midwestern States.

We are literally caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, for it appears that if we try to address the need for power by continuing past practices of burning fossil fuels to get that energy, we doom our planet and ourselves. And, if we try to address the global warming disaster that is occurring by utilizing non-carbon burning nuclear fission, we will eventually suffer a nuclear disaster, aka Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, caused either by war, as in the present crises in Ukraine by Russia, or by natural disasters such as the tsnuami that destroyed the nuclear power plant in Fukushima. The paradox of a natural disaster destroying nuclear power plants is that the destructive forces of nature will be caused by global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels. It seems like we are “damned if we do and damned if we don’t.”

So what do we do? It is clear that we cannot choose between the better of these two evils. They both ultimately lead to the destruction of life on our planet. We can either: a) accept our fate and adopt the defeatist “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you die” attitude of Medieval Europeans being decimated from the Bubonic Plague; b) combine our sciences, our knowledge, and our resources with other nations, and fast pace our ability to harness solar, wind, and water power to provide us with an inexpensive, renewable source of power. This will require us to use both nuclear and carbon burning methods of providing energy for a time, with the goal of reducing these sources of power significantly over the next 20 years. While we can dream of using fusion instead of fission to generate power, it seems that that technology is still beyond our present reach. What is important is that we begin this process now.

To entertain the notion that we do not have a problem with global warming, that time is over. All politicians, all people who embrace that false doctrine need to be jettison from the very needed conversation and policies required to save our planet and ourselves. If we do not, then our future, regardless of where we live, will resemble that pictured above.

Lest we throw our hands up in despair, sit in sackcloth and ashes on the dung heap our world has become (e.g. Job), I wish to end with the wisdom of a Medieval anchoress and mystic, who, in the midst of the enormous loss of human life by the Bubonic Plague, by war, and religious persecution wrote these brilliant words.

“And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered generally thus, ‘It is all that is made.’ I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God.

In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it.”

“And all shall be well. And all shall be well. And all manner of things shall be exceeding well.” (Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love)

I offer to you this conclusion. Let us pray to whatever “Higher Power” in which we believe to guide us and guard us, AND, use the abilities with which that Higher Power has blessed us and seek together the science and means by which we can save ourselves, our planet, at the same time provide for our energy needs.

Last week, I completed all the piano songs in the song cycle, Songs of the Servant Opus 17. They have been registered with the US Copyright Office, and are now digitally being distributed to all the various streaming services, e.g. TicToc, iHeartRadio, YouTube, and being available for sale on Amazon Music, and soon, on iMusic.

The music was created to accompany a Holy Week retreat written by Dick Rice, who is a retreat master, spiritual director, educator, and former Jesuit. The last time Dick and I met, he had completed the first three segments of the retreat based on the first three Servant Songs of Isaiah, and was completing work on the fourth Servant Song.

In terms of the music, I fell back on the influences of the many composers I studied as a piano student, such as JS Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Faure, Ravel, Debussy, Chopin, Johann Strauss Jr, and Sousa, to name a few. Included within the music are preludes, fugues, waltzes, mazurkas, lullabies, love ballades, marches, variations on a theme, and grand thematic music.

While the music is programmatic, meant to reflect the various themes and/or movements inherit in the Servant Songs, it is not necessary to know or study the Servant Songs to enjoy the music. The music has been composed to stand alone or accompany the texts of Isaiah.

CD Baby is distributing the digital files to all the streaming services, Amazon, iTunes etc right now. If anyone wishes to have a CD of the music, you will need to contact me. They are being created as I write this and I will get them around the end of August.

So what’s next? Borrowing an image that Stevie Nicks used in the song, “Edge of Seventeen”, with me on the cusp of seventy, I am thinking of composing a number of songs I will call “From the Threshold of Seventy.” Being on the threshold of seventy is far different in many aspects than when I was on the “Edge of Seventeen”. However, the one thing that is held in common is Ruthie.

On the edge of seventeen, I first met Ruthie and was trying to figure out how to date her. On the edge of seventeen, I no longer need to plan how to date her, but continue to bask in her presence. While I am far more crippled these days, in regard to Ruth, I am just as excited to be in her presence as I was when I was seventeen.

In closing, I will enjoy completing Songs of the Servant and look forward to how the Holy Spirit will inspire me with the next set of musical compositions.

SONG 10: Isaiah 53:10b-12
When you make his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days; through him the will of the Lord shall prosper. Out of his anguish he shall see light; he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Living a life in loving service to others will entail for us a degree of suffering. There will be those who will reject us and our service to them. Often, in service to others we will find that like empaths, we will take on the suffering of those we serve. A life of service will always carry with it, a degree of sacrifice. There are times when a great deal of our time is consumed by those we serve, providing little time for self-care and little time spent with our families. There are times when our own health, physical, spiritual, and emotional may be adversely affected by our service. And, at the very extreme, we may find our lives threatened and endangered by our service to others.

As we discover in meditating on the four Servant Songs, the life of the Servant of God entails much sacrifice on the part of the Servant, even, in the end, requiring the Servant to die and be buried in disgrace among the worse of humanity. Others behold the Servant and seemingly think that God has abandoned the Servant, as expressed by the psalmist in Psalm 22, in the Book of Job, and especially in the passion accounts of Mark and Matthew. However, as Psalm 23 reminds us, being Servants of God does not mean we will avoid suffering and death. Rather, during the darkest and cruelest moments in life, we do not suffer in isolation. God may seem silent to us in our suffering, but God never abandons us. God is present to us and sustains us in our suffering.

What this part of the fourth Servant Song also reveals is that the death of the Servant is not the end. It is through death that the Servant enters glory at its fullest. The suffering and death of the Servant opens up that path of glory to everyone. As is expressed at the end of Psalm 22, in the story of Job, and in the passion and resurrection accounts of the gospels, the story does not end in misery and death. The story ends in a glorious new life.

So often in our own suffering, while we may find our abilities lessened as a result, the suffering is a catalyst in opening up for us abilities and possibilities we would not otherwise have discovered. Suffering can lead us into living out more fully our lives and positively impact the lives of others.

THE MUSIC

This last song in the Songs of the Servant is a Rhapsody. Like a Fantasia and an Impromptu, Rhapsodies don’t really have a designated form or meter. There is a sense of improvisation in a Rhapsody.

In this last song there are two dominant motifs. The first, the “suffering motif” is in a minor key, at a slow tempo, and is very solemn. The second, the “glory motif” is in a major key, at a very fast tempo, and is more dance like. The first motif represents the suffering of the Servant, and the second motif represents the glory of the Servant. As the text of this last part of the fourth Servant Song points out, it is through the suffering that the Servant is led to glory. So, we will find encased within the fast, “glory motif”, a restatement of the “suffering motif”, albeit at the fast tempo of the “glory motif.” The song ends with a triumphant restatement of the glory motif. For those who find this interesting, this Rhapsody is based upon two elements present in the modern day Polish dance, Mazurka. The slow “suffering motif” is based on the Polish dance, Kujawiak , and the second “glory” motif based on the Polish dance, Oberek.

SONG 9: Isaiah 53:7-10a

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain.

Of all the movements in the Fourth Servant Song of Isaiah, this section is the most upsetting to the human spirit. Not only does the Servant absorb the hatred inflicted upon him in silence, the Servant does so knowing that the end is bleaker than the torture and death inflicted upon him/her. At the time of Isaiah, there was no after life, no Heaven and no Hell. We hear mentioned in the psalms of a place called Sheol, the realm of dead in which the shades/ghosts of the dead wander aimlessly and formlessly. The realm of the dead seems similar to that of that pictured in Greek Mythology of Hades. Yet, in spite of such a bleak and hopeless future, the Servant remains dedicated and resolute, enduring torture and death. The words that leapt out of the text for me are, “By a perversion of justice he was taken away.”

This section of text from the Fourth Servant Song is similar in content to that of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me …”. Were just this part of the Fourth Servant Song and the opening passages of Psalm 22 read, we would be filled with despair. Yet, these lines are not the end. God’s love is far more enduring than despair and death. The utter defeat and destruction of the Servant will end up, as we will see in the final section of the Fourth Servant Song, being the pathway to ultimate victory and glorious joy.

Of all the music in this collection of songs, this song was the most difficult to compose. In composing this song I ended up discarding and erasing many attempt to capture the text. I zeroed in on the words of the Servant being “led away”. With a Christian predisposition of seeing in the Servant the person of Jesus of Nazareth, along with the narrative of the Passion and Death of Jesus in the Gospels, images of an armed cohort leading Jesus away dominated my meditation. This armed cohort, first, that of the Temple guard leads Jesus to the court of the Sanhedrin to be beaten and interrogated, and following being tried before Pilate who ordered the torture of Jesus and subsequent sentencing to death, Jesus is led away by Roman Soldiers to his execution on Golgotha. These images being led away suggested to me a macabre death march.

As you listen to the music, note how the march begins at a pretty fast tempo. While it begins pianissimo (very soft) the volume of the music increases until it reaches fortississimo (ridiculously loud) and the music becomes more chaotic and jagged in sound. Then, abruptly, the tempo slows to a crawl and eventually ends as softly as the song began with a three octave sound of the pitch, G.

SONG 8: Isaiah 53:4-6
Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

In the text of this song, we discover the great love of the Servant for us. How much as the Servant of God loved us? The Servant of God has loved us so much, that the Servant, like an empath, has taken on all of our hurt, all of our sorrow, all of our brokenness as human beings, and in taking on all of that cuts us down, shares in that pain in solidarity with all of us. In the Servant, we all come to know we do not suffer alone. We do not suffer in vain. The overwhelming love of the Servant assures us of this. This is the message that Servant bears to us from God. God does not abandon us even when at the times we feel the most unloved and the most abandoned.

As I composed this music, I envisioned it as the last love song of the Servant sung to us before the death of the Servant. As such, there is no violence, there is no horror of that which the Servant has absorbed from humanity. Rather, what is expressed here is the great love the Servant has for us, a love so great, that the Servant participates in our pain. There is a bittersweet quality to this song as we all come to know how greatly we have been loved and ARE loved.

SONG 7: Isaiah 53:1-3
Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?  For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account.

In the Servant Songs, the narrator changes from God to the Servant, and now to us. In this song, we look upon the Servant. As we apply the what we, as human beings, value as important, we find that the Servant lacks all those attributes we value. In spite of the Servant being the “arrow” of God shot into the midst of humanity to give us the message of hope and love from God, we, like so many others before us reject the Servant and the message the Servant carries from God. The concluding line of this section of text says it all, namely, “We held him of no account.”

I meditated long on this text as I began to compose the music. this is no more than a simple Prelude, the shortest of all the songs in this collection. In its brief duration, it speaks volumes.

As we read and reflect on the four Servant Songs of Isaiah, over time there appears movements spiritually and emotionally in the texts of the Songs. I have tried to reflect those movements in the way I have composed music for these songs. Here is how I see the songs reflecting these movements in the Servant Songs of Isaiah.

he First Servant Song has one song.

The Second Servant Song has two songs.

The Third Servant Song has two songs.

The Fourth Servant Song has five songs.

The Fourth Servant Song

I reflected on five different movements within the Fourth Servant Song of Isaiah. Here is the text for the first of the five movements.

SONG 6: Is 52:13—15

See, my servant shall prosper; he shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high. Just as there were many who were astonished at him —so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of mortals— so he shall startle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him; for that which had not been told them they shall see, and that which they had not heard they shall contemplate.

My Poem reflection on this passage

The ways of the earth
Have been irrevocably altered,
The ugliness of its greed,
Its cruelty, its violence
Has been absorbed by you,
My Beloved, and imprinted
Upon your body so that
All who behold you
See upon your body
That which they carry
Within themselves.

By you, the World has been re-ordered.
Emperors, Kings, Presidents,
Prime Ministers and Premiers,
Who revel in their absolute rule,
Look upon you and realize
Their power is impotent.
This understanding, this insight,
Is not isolated to one moment
In the long string of days in
Chronological Time.
No, It will continue
To be perceived by the eyes,
By the ears, and in the hearts
Of people for ALL AGES.

Fantasia in B

I approached this first part of the Fourth Servant Song from the standpoint of John’s Passion. In John’s Passion, Jesus does not die in despair, nor resignation as in the Synoptic Gospels. Rather, in John’s Passion, Jesus dies in victory. Jesus’ last words are, “It is accomplished.” Notice how, in this Passion, the centurions look upon the crucified Jesus in awe.

In spite of how marred and harmed the Servant appears, the powerful and mighty are in awe of the Servant. They discover in the suffering of the Servant, a greatness and glory they are unable to achieve. In the suffering of the Servant, the glory and majesty of God shines.

I composed this song as a Fantasia. In Classical music, a Fantasia does not have any strict musical form. Like the Impromptu it is improvisational and can take many forms.

I chose not to compose this in the standard meter used often for music, e.g. duple, triple, and quadruple meter (think the meter for a march, foxtrot, waltz). I chose 5/4 meter which to the ear sounds different.

The initial melody is full, glorious, triumphant reflecting the glory of God shining through the Servant.

The second melody keys in on the words, “Just as there were many who were astonished at him —so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of mortals.” It begins quietly and somberly in a minor key, but does not remain quiet and somber but gradually gets louder and grander as those who behold the Servant see in the suffering of the Servant a glory absent in the suffering of most humans.

To end the song, the first melody returns.

The Song

Fantasia in B, Songs of the Servant Opus 17 (c) 2022 by Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.

When I began composing the music for the four Servant Songs of Isaiah, I reflected on the different movements within each Song, the relationship between the Servant and God, and the emotional content that I felt is expressed between the Servant and God. We are all “Servants” of God, each of us having in our relationship with God, moments of exhilaration, a sense of a life’s mission, and all the events of living out that mission with its disappointments, joys, love, anguish, doubt, anger, confidence, assurance and at times, anxiety, and desperateness.

The music is meant to act as aural iconography. The purpose of an icon is to draw the one meditating on the icon to a deeper truth that exists beyond the two dimensional image. The same is what is intended for the listener of the music, that is, to draw the listener deeper into the spiritual experience. In a seminar a long time ago, John Michael Talbot said that music is in the language of the Spirit, expressing that in which words are far too limited to ably express.

The Text

SONG 5: Is 50: 7-9

The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me. It is the Lord God who helps me; who will declare me guilty? All of them will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up.

POEM – Prelude (minor key)

Like stones, rebukes are hurled at me
From the mouths of those oppose me,
Their vitriolic words hang in the air
Like a poisoned cloud.
Yet, I remain unharmed, no sign
Of their mark appears on me.
It is You, I AM, who is my help,
Who at my right side shields me from harm.
They dare not confront me,
Nor attempt to wrong me,
For You stand with me in all things.

Variations on a Theme

In this second part of the Third Servant Song, the Servant is being attacked by those opposed to God’s mission, experiencing many different forms of abuse, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Yet, the Servant is at peace knowing that God’s love and vindication of the Servant remains present with him/her. The Servant notes that God’s love is everlasting, and those who are inflicting abuse upon him/her, will die and be forgotten.

The confidence and trust of the Servant in God is first stated in the melody. The joy of the Servant in God and also the hardships and injuries that Servant suffers is expressed in the seven variations on that first melody. The first two variations are stated in a major key and have a joyful quality to them. The next four variations in a minor key expresses the sufferings of the Servant. The final variation returns to the joy and the confidence of the Servant in God.

Variations on a Theme is exactly what the title implies. A “theme” or melody is stated, and what follows are musical variations on that melody, changing meter, major and minor keys, forms etc. Some of the more famous variations in music are Mozart’s Variations on Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, Beethoven’s Eroica Variations, and Mendelsohn’s Seventeen Variations on a Theme. In more popular musical forms, variations are heard in the improvisation of Jazz, Blues, and Rhythm and Blues music.

Over the past couple of months I have been working, in collaboration with noted spiritual director, Dick Rice, in composing music to accompany the writings he is doing on the Servant Songs of Isaiah.

The music below is based on the first part of the Third Servant Song of Isaiah.

Here is the text.

SONG 4:  Is 50:4-6

The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens— wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward. I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. (NRSV)

I composed a poetic text based on this reading.

Oh my people,
As a mother hears the cries
Of her children, so have I
Heard your cries of pain.
Your misery, upon which
My gaze has seen, moves
My heart with compassion.
The despair of being forgotten,
Forsaken by the One
From whom you were created,
Swells within you, but
I have not forgotten you,
Nor will I leave you forsaken.

I wear your image, and,
In total solidarity with you,
Have put on your pain
Like one putting on a coat.
Its heavy weight of shame
hangs from my shoulders,
Memories of the blows from abuse
Rain on my back
like the lash of a whip.
My words to you are a balm,
Like that gently wiped
On angry welts
Raised upon the skin;
A source of hope to lift
Your beaten spirits from the dust.
For I do not count you
Among the disgraced,
But among my most beloved.
And hold you as close to me
As my breath.
(c) 2022 by Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.

Here is the music. It is based on the form of a Prelude and Fugue. The only difference is the Prelude is recapped, ending the song.