Month: July 2020

At this time, last year, I was busy composing a number of poems. Having just completed three collections of music, 33 piano songs in the last 3 1/2 months, I have been pondering what to do next.

While thinking of the creativity that past pandemics had created, e.g. The Decameron by Boccacio, written during the time of the Black Death that killed a third of the population of Europe, I thought I would like to create some kind of anthology of music and poetry for the present pandemic.

I am calling this collection “Songs During the Time of a Pandemic.” To start, I began composing four poems, perhaps limiting the poems to no more than ten poems. The music I have not begun to compose.

I have below, the beginning of four poems. They will more than likely be adjusted, reworded, but it’s a beginning before they take their final form. I present them for you to consider.

PARADOX 1

A face painted with grief
Peers into the room
Through the window glass,
As the ventilator is removed
From a loved one, and
A last breath is taken.

A face painted with wonder
And excitement peers
Through the window glass,
As an infant is laid
In an incubator, and
The first of many breaths begins.

(c) 2020 by Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.

DESERTED PLACES

Long deserted, those secluded spots
where sexuality was explored,
car windows fogged over
by the breath of its occupants,
shaky adolescent hands
fumbling with buttons and catches,
a stroke here, a grope there,
an indignant slap leaving its mark
across the cheek of the offending,
a hickey, like the mark of Cain,
adoring the neck of the willing.

A pandemic plucks the blossoms
Off of young adolescent love.
Social distancing hard to attain
In even the largest vehicles,
Near occasions of sin, both
Minor and major, out of reach.
The facial mask, the chastity
Belt for exploring lips, thwarting
even the most chaste of kisses.
The buildup of hormones threaten
To burst adolescents asunder,
Confessionals as empty as
Hospital maternity wards,
I fear for the propagation
Of the human race.

(c) by Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.

NOT ALONE AND FORGOTTEN

The pandemic cuts a long swathe
Through the human population,
Bodies gathered and scattered
Through emergency rooms,
Intensive care units, and
Long lines of refrigerator trucks
Patiently waiting for its human cargo.
So many died unknown, seemingly
Forgotten by family and friends,
Their funeral, the quiet ride
To a mass pauper’s grave.
Though forgotten by humanity,
Not so by the One who loved
And named them at conception.

(c) 2020 by Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.

PARADOX 2

So many walk,
eyes cast downward,
Draped in black,
Bruised and battered
By the sting of death.
Their loved one placed
Among the community
Of the non-living, who
Will now attend
To their future needs.

Across the town,
Faces lift skyward,
Adorned in white,
Young love’s promises
Dreams to be fulfilled,
And new life generated.
They take their place
In the community
Of the living, who
Will now attend
To their future needs.

Love triumphs over death,
Plucking from death its sting.

(c) 2020 by Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.

In this part of our Paschal Journey, we begin to discern what God has planned for us in the future. We reflect on how we have changed and the gifts and the knowledge we must share with others. As you meditate on the music, think about the nudges you have felt from the Holy Spirit in your life? To what has the Holy Spirit called you in your life? To what is the Holy Spirit calling you in the present? One thing will always be true and consistent as we continue to receive the breath and the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. We will always be in a state of evolution. Just as we cannot go back to who we were at the onset of our Paschal journey, so we will continue to evolve into what God is calling us to be during our Paschal journey in life.

The music I call “Psalm Offerings” are songs that I have composed as a gift to others or in memory of those I love. I have always thought of these songs as a prayer-song for the person to whom it is dedicated. I have also found these songs to be a prayer of healing.

I would like to use as an example a song I composed in memory of my brother, Bill. Siblings are bonded together by love. As with most siblings, I loved and still love my brother, Bill. However, I disliked some of what he did with his life. Bill was addicted to two substances, alcohol and tobacco. It was his abuse of both of these substances that ended his life at the age of 68 years.

Bill’s abuse of alcohol damaged the relationships he had with others, specifically, his family. It is well known that alcohol has a devastating effect on the brain, and the ability to think clearly. Over a long time, alcohol alters the personality of a person. So it was with my brother, Bill. Alcohol sabotaged his ability to work, his ability to think clearly, and his ability to make good choices. When drinking he was verbally abusive. He was, deep inside, a good person, but alcohol prevented that side of my brother to come to the fore. Alcohol amplified all the worse qualities of my brother and smothered the good qualities.

When I received the news that my brother died, I was not surprised. The effects of tobacco and alcohol over many years of life had destroyed his health long before. I felt two distinct emotions, namely, sadness and anger.

With my dad, mom, and sister, Mary Ruth, dead, Bill was my last surviving family member. I loved my brother and was saddened at his dying. He was now absent from my life. I was angry at my brother because he had so much going for himself. He was bright and ambitious when younger. He had a heart for just causes and worked to better the common good when he was younger, even though, like Cervantes’ hero, Don Quixote, he was a bit quixotic in charging windmills. He had a wonderful wife, three wonderful kids. All of this he abandoned because of alcohol. It was as if his love of alcohol, overruled his love for his family and everything else. I could see it. His family and friends could see it. However, Bill was unable or incapable to see it. I felt anger because Bill had seemingly wasted his life away.

Of course, no one’s life is worthless. Bill had contributed to the world three wonderful human beings, his daughters, Joan and Nora, and his son, Joe. They are truly remarkable people whose lives have made the world so much better. I know he loved him them dearly, and said as much to me. However, from my point of view, his addiction prevented him from expressing that love clearly to them.

It has been a year and three months from the time of his funeral in April 2019. I still felt these two conflicting emotions of sadness and anger toward my brother. I have always remembered my family members by name in praying night prayer. This has not changed now that Bill has died. At the moment of my brother’s death, our loving, merciful and compassionate God healed Bill of all that had broken Bill’s life. I know that Bill is at peace and healed. So, it is not Bill who needs healing. I am the one who is need of healing.

As I was composing the music for A Paschal Journey, I composed a prayer-song for my brother, “At Prayer in the Kidron Valley.” In the composing of this music, the anger I felt toward my brother softened. As my brother is at peace with God, now, so I am at peace with my brother. I still love him and miss him. I regret that his life was ruined and shortened by his addictions. But, I am at peace with him and have moved on.

Here is Bill’s song.

Toward the end of his life, the Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner, began to write about the “liturgy of the world.” Simply stated, Rahner was saying that the action of liturgy is not isolated to the four walls of a church building. Rather, all of life is one grand liturgy.

When I was a kid, my dad use to talk about Sunday Catholics. When I asked him what he meant by that, he told me that there were some people who were Catholic only during that hour when they were at worship on Sunday. Outside of that one hour a week, you would never know by the way they acted that they were Christian at all. Dad taught me that what we did on that one hour a week was to shape how we lived all the rest of the hours outside the church during the week. In Dad’s own way, he was saying the same thing that Rahner was saying.

We like to compartmentalize things in our life. For years the Catholic Church was no different. The Church like to separate things including music into compartments of that which was profane and that which was sacred. For instance, all music in duple meter (e.g. 2/4 or 4/4 meter) was considered the “Devil’s Meter”, and all music in triple meter (eg. 3/4 or 6/8 meter) was considered “Sacred Meter”, because three beats in a measure was deemed Trinitarian. Of course, that was all nonsensical.

In its simplest form, and applying this to music, Rahner is saying that the music of our lives is “liturgical”. In other words, a song does not necessarily have the word “God” or “Ave Maria” attached to it to make it liturgical in a broad sense.

For some Christian traditions, dance music and dancing is discouraged, even sinful. Why? It goes back to this unfounded notion that dancing is evil. Dance music is in the realm of the Devil. This is believed, even though, music and dance plays a huge part in the liturgical life of our Jewish brothers and sisters in the Hebrew Testament. As a good practicing Jewish man, Jesus would have danced at weddings and other Jewish liturgical celebrations.

I am calling this new collection of music “The Celestial Dance”. While there are many forms of music in this new collection, it is primarily a collection of dances. Estampie, Sarabande, Jig, Blues, Polonaise, Tango, Tarantella, Galop, Waltz etc.

Below is a Tarantella I composed for this collection. I dedicate this song to my good friend, Joey Nytes.

We hear this story of the Ascension of Jesus from the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. “As they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. ¹⁰ While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. ¹¹ They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” ¹² Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away. ¹³ When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. ¹⁴ All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.” (Acts 1:10-14)

The last part of our mystagogy is meditating on what are we to do now? Given the transformation that has occurred in our lives because of our suffering, the dying of some parts of our lives, and arising again, what is the ministry that awaits us? We are reminded in this stage of our Paschal journey, that everything remains encased in mystery. Who we are now, and what we are to do next will be revealed to us, but not by our command to be revealed, but at that time when we will be most receptive for that revelation. During this time, it may seem to us that we, like the apostles are just standing around and looking up in the sky. As the two angels remind the apostles, we just can’t stand there looking up in the sky. As Luke illustrates in his account here, ALL of the disciples went back to Jerusalem to the upper room, and prepared themselves for that revelation in prayer.

As you meditate on this music, what are the steps you have used to prepare to receive the revelation of “what’s next” for our life? How do you pray in preparation? How do you feel? Frustrated? Anxious? Peaceful?