Choir, Choir,  Putin's War

We in the Sanctuary Choir are always on the move. That is, we are always jiggling or tapping, or swinging our legs in time to the internal melodies we each hear. Yesterday , during mass I watched a jiggling foot in the front row, while behind him sat two foot- tappers, and then there were my fingers playing on the keyboard etched on my arm. There was also an occasional foot stretcher, in time to what must have been a stirring Largo, Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance perhaps. 

The movements of music, the rhythmic patterns which carry listeners through time , the push and pull of harmonic dissonance and consonance,  are encapsulations  of life itself. They communicate struggle and pain, or tranquility, love  and at times peace. Battles are fought and conflicts are resolved on the pages of a music score. Sometimes life is portrayed in periods of intense musical dissonance accompanied by jarring rhythms, with only occasional moments of serenity.  I imagine  the first hearers of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring were caught off guard by the portrayal of clashing forces they heard.  And then there is Elgar, who creates such tender and sweeping beauty that clashes and wars can be moved to a more distant place, and what is wonderful  in life is recalled.

Both Elgar and Stravinsky linger in memory, though I never catch myself humming The Rite of Spring. These days though, I’m not humming at all.

Putin’s war has overtaken my own senses, like a wave that threatens to engulf a fishing vessel in the North Atlantic during a storm. The sheer evil of what we are seeing has placed me in a kind of ferocious symphonic movement that threatens never to resolve and come to rest. I tried to pray a rosary tonight and I couldn’t  get images of fighting and frightened children and merciless bombing out of the way.

That of course is my own human limitation. In God's Providence there is always a cadence promised, even if it doesn’t occur during our lifetime. And then there is the resurrection, the ultimate cadence to a long and tortured symphony.

I try to pray for the people of Ukraine, that God will hold them close during this time of terrible tragedy. And for the people of  Russia, that truth will dawn in their hearts and will move them to rebel against an evil regime.

Do I pray for Putin as well? Yes, though probably not as often as I should. 

And for myself, I pray that my own courage and faith during difficult times will not waver. 

To return to the foot tappers, the foot stretchers, though the individual music we hear varies constantly, the deeper harmony of truth remains. Sometimes, only occasionally, that inner  music pauses. Then I  can only breathe an Ave, or lift up my heart in love and gratitude. And  I can say the words God has given me to say, the Lord’s Prayer, and this act  is carried to heaven without music or emotion, but only grace.