April 29 & 30, May 1: My Religious Phase, Music in the Church, Reset Button

Merton goes through his adolescent religious "phase" . . .

And the mentality of the red-faced, innocent English boys was a change.  They seemed to be much pleasanter and much happier--and indeed they had every reason to be so, since they all came from the shelter of comfortable and secure homes and were so far protected from the world by a thick wall of ignorance--a wall which was to prove no real protection against anything as soon as they passed on to their various Public Schools, but which, for the time being, kept them children.

On Sundays, we all dressed up in the ludicrous clothes that the English conceive to be appropriate to the young, and went marching off to the village church, where a whole transept was reserved for us.  There we all sat in rows, in our black Eton jackets and our snow-white Eton collars choking us up to the chin, and bent our well-brushed and combed heads over the pages of our hymnals.  And at last I was really going to Church.

On Sunday evenings, after the long walk in the country, through the lush Surrey fields, we gathered again in the wooden drill-room of the school, and sat on benches, and sang hymns, and listened to Mr. Onslow reading aloud from Pilgrim's Progress.

Thus, just about the time when I most needed it, I did acquire a little natural faith, and found many occasions of praying and lifting up my mind to God.  It was the first time I had ever seen people kneel publicly by their beds before getting into them, and the first time I had ever sat down to meals after a grace.

And for about the next two years, I think I was almost sincerely religious.  Therefore, I was also, to some extent, happy and at peace.  I do not think there was anything very supernatural about it, although I am sure grace was working in all our souls in some obscure and uncertain way.  But at least we were fulfilling our natural duties to God--and therefore satisfying a natural need:  for our duties and our needs, in all the fundamental things for which we were created, come down in practice to the same thing.

Later on, like practically everyone else in our stupid and godless society, I was to consider these two years as "my religious phase."  I am glad that that now seems very funny.  But it is sad that it is funny in so few cases.  Because I think that practically everybody does go through such a phase, and for the majority of them, that is all that it is, a phase and nothing more.  If that is so, it is their own fault:  for life on this earth is not simply a series of "phases" which we more or less passively undergo.  If the impulse to worship God and to adore Him in truth by the goodness and order of our own lives is nothing more than a transitory and emotional thing, that is our own fault.  It is so only because we make it so, and because we take what is substantially a deep and powerful lasting moral impetus, supernatural in its origin and in its direction, and reduce it to the level of our own weak and unstable and futile fancies and desires.

I have gone through many phases in my life.  Unlike Merton, when I was an adolescent, I went through a "nonreligious phase."  I would head out early on Sunday mornings, telling my mother and father I was going to an 8 a.m. Mass.  Instead I would hit Mr. Donut or Hardee's, and then drive around for a couple hours, eating and listening to the radio.  So, my Communion involved cream-filled pastry and sausage biscuits, washed down with Diet Coke. 

I'm sure my mother knew about my heathen Sunday mornings.  Nothing much escaped my mother's notice.  She never said anything to me, however.  I was the last of nine kids, and she had pretty much seen it all.  My refusal to go to church was small potatoes, I guess.  I wasn't doing drugs (much) or drinking (much).  I wasn't having indiscriminate sexual encounters (not from lack of trying).  No, I was just driving tree-lined roads and paths, ignoring God.  My mother knew that, eventually, God would catch up to me. 

Now, some 30 years later, I can say that God did get me.  He turned me into a church musician.  (I use the pronoun "He," even though I don't really place a gender on my Higher Power.  God, for me, is both paternal AND maternal.  I mean, God gave birth to the universe.  Nothing more maternal than that.  No, using a male pronoun is just a matter of convention, like eating turkey on Thanksgiving.)  Music has kept me close to God for over three decades now.  Up until the pandemic hit, I was playing on a fairly regular basis for three churches of three denominations (Catholic, Methodist, and Lutheran.). 

Of course, I have no idea how this pandemic will shape music in church when we return to communal worship services.  It is going to be far different in form and practice, I'm sure.  Large choirs (or even small choirs) will be a thing of the past, for a while, at least.  In fact, I'm not sure the singing of congregational hymns will be a sanctioned practice.  Too much air intake and expelling.  Too much chance for asymptomatic transmission of the virus.

Make no mistake.  Music will still certainly play a part in worship.  What part it plays is the question.  It's kind of difficult to breathe through a face mask, let alone sing.  And I truly believe that people are going to be very leery of large gatherings for quite some time.  At least until some kind of viable Covid-19 vaccine is in widespread use.  Even when a vaccine becomes available, I don't think that the world will go back to business as usual.  That would sort of be like TSA agents disappearing from airports after the 9-11 attacks.  It's just not going to happen.

I've been thinking about the post-pandemic world quite a bit.  Losing sleep over it.  Before you start calling me an alarmist, let me give you some statistics.  Of those diagnosed and hospitalized with Covid-19, insulin-dependent diabetics die at a rate of 29%.  For some studies, that rate climbs up to 42%.  Having been an insulin-dependent diabetic since I was 13 years old, those odds frighten me more than a little bit.  I think about this shit a lot.

Another little piece of information: I have a friend who's a nurse.  Early in the outbreak of the pandemic in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, she was diagnosed with Covid-19.  She hasn't been back to work yet.  It has been almost two months.  I can only assume that she's still testing positive for the disease.  That's a long time, and she doesn't have diabetes.

The world is a very different place than it was two months ago.  In another month, it will look different again.  The citizens of this planet have been pretty complacent about our place in the universe.  Feeling safe.  Self-satisfied.  Superior.  Not so much anymore.  The universe has set the reset button, and the Himalayas can now be seen again in India.  The pollution of the human race is lifting.  I think we're being given another chance to get things right.

In the end, God may hand us this shiny new thing, like some polished lake rock, and say, "Don't fuck this up again."  It's our second chance.

We will interact with each other differently.  Worship God differently.  Exist on this third rock from the sun differently.  Writer Annie Lamott says this:

You've heard it said that when all else fails, follow instructions.  So we breathe, try to slow down and pay attention, try to love and help God's other children, and--hardest of all, at least to me--learn to love our depressing, hilarious, mostly decent selves.  We get thirsty people water, read to the very young and old, and listen to the sad.  We pick up litter and try to leave the world a slightly better place for our stay here.

Those are the basic instructions, to which I can add only:  Amen.

Saint Marty is adding his Amen to that tonight, as well.