Month: May 2021

Susanna (artist, Francesco Hayez)

INTRODUCTION

The song is the Canticle of Susanna. It is a Biblical story not known to most Jewish people or Protestants. The story can be found in the Deuterocanonical books of the Catholic and Orthodox scriptures, but is not found either in the Jewish canon nor the Protestant canon of scripture. You can find the story at Daniel 13.

I first learned the story of Susanna singing Carlisle Floyd’s Opera “Susannah”, an American opera based on the story of the rape of Susannah. (I was in the chorus, and had a minor solo role as one of the Southern farmers convinced that Susannah was a shameless hussy). When I was playing and leading the music for many Catholilc school Masses, every other year the story of the Rape of Susanna would be a part of the cycle of readings at the Masses. Teachers were always upset when the priest would insist on the reading be read.

BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF THE STORY

Susanna is a beautiful woman, beloved by her father, her husband and her children. The word that best describes Susanna is the word faithfulness, faithful to her father, her husband, her children, and most importantly to her God. As the story goes, her community has elected two elders to act as judges. Unbeknownst to Susanna, the judges are voyeuristic leches who lust after her. They stalk her every move, and habitually place themselves in hidden places to watch her. One hot midday, she decides to bathe in her courtyard. She sends her servants away as she bathes herself in the heat of the day. The two judges approach her and sexually assault her. If she doesn’t regularly engage in sex with them, they will tell the community that they caught her in adultery, which will result in Susanna’s execution. She refuses to be coerced and tells them she would prefer to die than willingly violate her religion and her vows to her husband. They subsequently gather the community and publicly condemn her for adultery. At her trial the next day she brought before her family and community, stripped naked, and has to endure the lies that the judges lay upon her. She cries out to the heavens calling on God to defend her, but, of course, no voice from the clouds is heard nor does anyone come to her defense. She is led to her place of execution at which point God begins to speak through a young man, named, Daniel. Daniel isolates the two judges and interrogates them separately. Seeing that their stories do not agree, he announces the deceit and treachery of the two judges who are then executed, and Susanna is freed to return to her family and restored to her community.

AS YOU LISTEN TO THE MUSIC

This music has certain motifs or musical themes to represent Susanna and the events happening in the story (think of the way John Williams weaves musical themes representing Princess Leia, Ewoks, Hans Solo, Luke Skywalker throughout the Star War films). Technically, the song is in Rondo form (think of it as a refrain with different music for each verse). Susanna’s theme is expressed in a waltz melody in a major key, meant to establish how beautiful and blessed a person she is. It seques to a sharp dissonant melody, to represent her rape and subsequent accusation of adultery by the judges at her trial. Susanna’s theme returns only in a minor key as she cries to the heavens her innocence, only to have the second melody with all its harsh dissonances return. This begins to change as Daniel steps to interrogate the evil judges and in a loud flurry of notes in a major key reveals their treachery. Finally, Susanna’s theme returns in full in a major key signifying her vindication by God and once more is beloved by her family and all in her community.

THE SONG

POEM REFLECTION ON THE STORY

CANTICLE FOR SUSANNA

Where to begin this song?
Your story just one among
so many biblical heroines,
lost and hidden in ancient manuscripts.
There are those, mostly male,
who attest the historicity of your life,
and others, mostly male,
cite your life as nothing more
than a mere allegorical fable.
What impact do the opinions
of stodgy, old males, bedecked
in clerical or academic robes,
have on your life’s story?
No importance whatsoever.

Beautiful, the adjective
most often used to describe you.
How is beauty defined?
Is it all about the shape of a woman’s body,
her skin’s complexion, flowing, long hair,
dark brown eyes and pouting lips?
Is beauty really just measured
upon mere physical superficiality?
We all know better.
Beauty is defined by the character of one
who loves and is loved in return.
The true measure of your beauty
is in your love for your father,
your husband and your children,
and most importantly,
the love for your God.

Too often we entrust power
to those who betray our trust.
A horrific weapon is power,
especially in the hands
of unscrupulous men.
How were you to know that
those to whom your community
entrusted such trust and judgment,
elders who sat in power over others,
would cover their voyeuristic lechery
under a cloak of respectability,
and, seemingly, impeccable character?
Were you aware their eyes stalking you
lustfully following your every move?
The way your hands smoothed
the drape of the clothes on your body?
The way you brushed your hair.

How were you to know,
as you bathed yourself in the garden,
their eyes eagerly following
the drops of water trailing
down your body in the heat
of the noonday sun?
Like animals in heat,
nostrils flaring, they leap upon you,
their words and lust,
an aural sexual assault
upon you as you sit before them
naked and vulnerable.
Their words rip at your dignity,
raping your heart, as much
raping your body.
Their eyes rake and claw your flesh,
demanding, coercing your compliance
to their rape, or face public shame
and execution for adultery.
The importance of fidelity and love
to God, to husband, to children,
far outweighs the shame
with which you are threatened,
death preferable to unfaithfulness.

Dragged by your accusers
before your family, your community,
you face them all,
stripped of any defense or witnesses,
as surely as the clothes
are ripped from your body.
False accusations land upon you
like the lashes of a whip,
wounding you, crushing you
under their blows.
Head lifted, you cry aloud to the heavens,
calling to God to be your defense,
to witness to your innocence,
yet, God’s response is muted
unheard by your ears
and the ears of your community.

Resigned, led to the place of execution,
you await the end of life.
God’s love did not abandon you
to loathsome treachery, no.
God begins to speak,
not from some cloud in the heavens
but in the voice of a young man,
one possessed of great wisdom and faith,
a fearless witness of God
who would later stand
unscathed amidst a den of lions.
His words strip from the elders
their cloaks of respectability,
their naked deceit and leachery
exposed to all the people,
whilst revealing your great love
and your faithfulness
to God and all you love.

Susanna, your story concludes
with you returned to your family,
restored to your community.
All stories have a lesson,
all fables a moral.
What moral does your story teach?
Those who love God greatly
are loved far greater in return by God.
Susanna, in this present time,
when love and faithfulness
seem unknown by so many,
or if known, discarded or ignored
as an impediment or irrelevant,
your story is more than just
a mere allegorical fable.
It is the way to live our lives.
© 2021, by Robert Charles Wagner. All right reserved.

Miriam is the big sister of Moses and Aaron. In the Hebrew scriptures, it is Miriam who places her baby brother, Moses, in the basket of reeds and sends the basket floating down the Nile River to save her brother’s life. Miriam is regarded a prophetess, and is most famous for leading her people in a great song (canticle) celebrating God saving the Israelites allowing them to pass through the Red Sea, and the destruction of the Egyptian forces in the Red Sea.

The song is in two parts. The first melody depicts the safe passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea and the destruction of the Egyptians. The second part is the great canticle of Miriam and she leads the Israelites celebrating God’s victory over the Egyptians and freeing the Israelite people from slavery. Within the second part, the first melody is recapped before the ending of the song.

Canticle for Miriam (c) 2021 by Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.

Here is the poem I wrote reflecting on this scriptural story.

CANTICLE FOR MIRIAM

Standing on the banks of the Sea,
you gaze upon the bodies of Egyptians
washing up on the shore.
Your memory sends you back
to the shores of the Nile,
standing amongst the bulrushes
you placed your infant brother
in a basket of reeds,
and sent him floating
upon the waters of the river.
You trusted the unnamed God
of your people
to save the life of your infant brother,
just as now, you and your people
trust your unnamed God
to save your lives.
Your infant brother, now a man,
with a Divine mandate,
armed with a staff of death for oppressors
and the freedom for your people,
gazes upon the might
and the justice of the God
who frees those who are enslaved.
And, now, the bodies of those
who sought to destroy you,
float lifeless, bobbing like buoys,
upon the surface of the Sea.
You turn your back on the floating death,
the fish of the Sea,
 and the animals along the shore
will soon disappear the evidence
of the holy violence that took place.
You lead your people,
a song of joy, wild with victory,
stirs your heart, and your throat
in a dance of great abandon.
There are days ahead,
over which hangs a veil of mystery,
in which joys and great sorrows reside.
Your people’s trust in your unnamed God
will be tested,
you will be greatly tested.
However, this night, you know
that whatever awaits in the future,
you will die a free woman.

© 2021, Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.

CANTICLE IN PRAISE OF HER

I began composing this piano song on Tuesday this week and completed it on Thursday evening. The “Her” to whom I am referring is the Holy Spirit. The inspiration and a brief commentary on the music follows the song.

THE MUSIC

This song is autobiographical in that it is based on a deeply spiritual experience I had while spending five days at a hermitage on the shores of Lake Elysian in Southern Minnesota in May of 2004. I present to you a poem I composed describing what I experienced during my stay at the hermitage.

THE POEM

CANTICLE IN PRAISE OF HER

I remember when I first identified your voice,
that early May morning in two thousand and four,
at the hermitage upon the shores of Lake Elysian.
It is not like your voice had been absent to me
those fifty-two years prior.
No, your voice was always present,
whispering in my ear, guiding,
 teaching, challenging,
pushing me along in my life.

What was it? What identified you,
whose voice I had been listening to all those years?
Was it the sound of the wind blowing
through the budding branches of the trees
 along the shores of the lake?
Or, the sound of your voice
in the quaking of ducks on the water?
Was it in the melodious sound
of the Robins, and Wrens, and Cardinals
high up in the branches of the trees?
Or, was it the combination of all of nature
in full song that day along the shores?
I found it ironic that after years of theology,
in which Divine Mystery was supposedly imparted,
it was not in those hallowed, holy halls
of seminaries nor in the books
resting on the darkened stacks
of theological libraries,
that I identified your voice.
But rather, in the sound that you
created along the shores of Lake Elysian.

You have been known to many people
by different names:
Ruach, Breath of God,
in which you breathed upon the void,
your breath stirring the dark waters
from which all life began to evolve.
Or, Sophia, Wisdom of God,
the gift given to Solomon,
and that dearly sought after
by many philosophers and theologians.
Were you Lady Poverty,
with whom beloved Francis fell in love
and sold everything he had
in order to court you?
The name by which I identified you
that day along the lake shore
was my Mother, my Divine Mother.

Yes, Divine Mother, for like all Mothers
you love unconditionally your children,
whether we are stupid, or naughty,
obedient and complying.
By our side, you are always present,
your love and inspiration softly,
gently caressing our souls,
challenging us to grow,
to face our fears, to encounter
new experiences and open our eyes
to the splendor which you have created.
I have come to recognize your voice
in the people most important to me,
my wife and children, my parents
my teachers, the poor, and the homeless,
the immigrants, and the suffering,
through them you have taught me so well.

And lastly, Divine Mother,
I hear you in music.
I remember that night,
driving home from a theology class,
along Mississippi River Boulevard,
listening to Copland’s Appalachian Spring.
In that chord, that one chord,
I heard your beautiful voice
that touched my soul so deeply,
that I pulled over to the side of the road,
and I wept for a period of time.
I remember when first I began
to compose music in earnest.
Like Samuel, I was awakened
in the middle of the night,
and not in some fog of near sleep,
but clearly knew instinctively
that you wanted me to compose music.
My purpose was not meant to be famous,
nor to enrich my life with wealth.
The task you gave me was simply
to compose music, and nothing more.
And, so, I gift this song to you,
in thanksgiving for all you have given to me,
in love, as a son to his Divine Mother.
(c) 2021 by Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.

A SHORT THEOLOGICAL COMMENTARY

From the first chapter of Genesis, Judeo-Christian religions have chosen to anthropomorphize Divinity. We are told in that first chapter that we, male and female alike, were made in the image of God. Because human society has largely been under the throes of patriarchy for thousands upon thousands of years, it has been presumed that the image of God is primarily male. Of course, it is foolishness to attach a human form to Divinity, a Divinity that is pure Spirit. Yet, the smallness of our minds and the great human need to form relationship with a corporal body (e.g. the love relationship that exist within humanity), we need a God in human form. For Christians, we believe that the greatest translation of Divine Love came in the form of Jesus. Jesus expressed a great bond of love to God as that between a father and the father’s beloved son (see the Last Supper Discourse from the Gospel of John). Artists have portrayed the first person of the Trinity as an old man with a long white beard. Of course, Jesus continues to be portrayed in human form, alas, too often not as a man of color from Palestine, but as a Northern European. We do like to make God in our own image after all.

However, if we explore Hebrew scripture, we find a many faceted portrait of who God is that is far more close to the God of Creation in whose image we all are made, both male and female. If you pay attention to the tense of the words to describe God, you will find God as Spirit expressed by the feminine tense word, Ruach, meaning “Breath of God.” It is Ruach that breathes upon the waters of creation from which all life evolved. In Ezekiel, it is Ruach that breathes upon the dry, broken human bones lying on the floor of the valley and restores them to full life. In the Wisdom literature, God as Wisdom is again expressed in the feminine tense, Chokmah (later translated as Sophia in Greek). It is Chokmah that humanity desires in the book of Proverbs, and Chokmah, who is the bride whom Solomon is courting in the Song of Solomon. The Hebrew scriptures instructs us that God is more than just the image of a human male that looks like Gandalf the Grey from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, or more recently, Dumbledore from the story of Harry Potter.

In the early Church, those baptized on Easter were said to have been born from the womb of the Holy Spirit. The Mystagogia that followed baptism was described as spiritually nursing from the abundant breasts of the Holy Spirit. As the Church became more dominated by males and thus more clericalized (the tragic state of the present day Catholic Church), male church leadership first neutered the Holy Spirit, translating Spirit into the Greek word, Pneuma, and, later, somewhat in a form of transgender spirituality, turned the Holy Spirit into a male, translating the word Spirit, as the male tense word, Spiritus. Since, the Church already had two male figures (the old, white bearded “Father”) and Jesus, the Spirit was reduced to the image of a male white dove, who hopefully does not dispense “Grace” as birds tend to do on our cars).

Within a few circles of Traditionalists and Restorationists within the Catholic Church, they try to compensate for the lack of a Divine symbol of female, but attempting to deify, Mary, Mother of Jesus. Fortunately, the leadership of the Church has thwarted this attempt to strip Mary of her humanity. Hence, I believe there is a great need to restore imagery that has been with us and present to us in the Hebrew scriptures.

FOR THE MUSICAL NERDS AND GEEKS

This piano song is in three part ABA form. The A section is in 7/4 meter (seven beats to a measure, the quarter note getting one beat). The number 7 has sacred significance in the spiritual numerology of both the Hebrew and Christian religions. The creation was accomplished in 7 days. The highest form of heaven is the 7th level (ever hear the expression of being in seventh heaven e.g. the highest form of happiness). Jesus speaks of his disciples forgiving people 7 times 70 times. The Greek name Jesus Christ equals the number 777, while the name, Nero (the Beast) equals 666. Paul writes in his pastoral letters of the 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit. Hence, I intentionally composed the first section of this song in 7/4 meter. Also, 7/4 meteris something outside the ordinary meter in which we usually hear music (e.g. 2/4, 3/4, and 4/4). As you listen to the song, you know that there is something different about the melody that is not ordinarily heard. For whatever it is worth, the 7/4 meter can be grouped into a subgroup of beat as 123 456 7, with the heavier beats (accents) falling on beats 1, 4, and 7. The first section is in the key of F major.

The middle section is in 2/4 meter (two beats to a measure the quarter note getting one beat). There is really no strong theological reason behind the meter change of the middle section. The only caveat would be that the running sixteenth notes in both hands giving an aural image of the Holy Spirit stirring things up in human life.

Following the middle B section, the A section returns in 7/4 meter, with some additional decoration to conclude the song.

I know that I have not contributed much to my blog over the past several months. I think it a part of a general malaise that has settled over me. Just this past week, there was a psychologist who, noticing a similar malaise exhibited in many people, has called it “languishing.” This languishing is not depression, but a general lack of ambition, a lackluster way of being, that this psychologist says has been brought on by the pandemic. We just don’t feel like doing anything and are compelled to do something only by necessity. In Minnesota, it is somewhat akin to what we might label as “Cabin Fever” which generally sets in during the interminably long month of February (Admittedly, February is the shortest month, but in Winter seems the longest of all months.). What does this general languishing have to do with Celtic Knots, much less the readings of this past weekend?

The unique art of the Celtic Knot is that a Celtic Knot, in whatever form it takes, is one endless line. If you examine the art of the Celtic Knot, it is a line that never has a ending point. It has been used to describe the Christian theology of the Trinity, in which Father, Son, and Spirit are one and the same. It has been used describe love, which never ends. It has been used to describe the relationship between lovers and friends.

The Celtic Knot is a wonderful symbol of what universal humanity is experiencing in this pandemic. The common bond of “languishing” is mutually being experienced by us all, regardless of where we live in the world. The endless line of the Celtic Knot is a great representation of the interconnectedness that exists among all of humanity that transcends the borders of nations, the multiple languages and customs, and the multiple theologies of all humanity. The Celtic Knot is a beautiful symbol of the interdependency of humanity, especially evident now as one nation comes to the aid of other nations (see how other nations are shipping canisters of oxygen, and vaccines to pandemic ridden India). What this pandemic has demonstrated is how that pandemic in one nation effects all nations. All nations, cultures, languages, ideologies are all a part of the endless line of the Celtic Knot.

I wonder if the Celtic Knot had been known in the Palestinian Judaism of Jesus, whether Jesus would have used the Celtic Knot rather than that of the Vine and the branches. What stood out for me in the Gospel from this weekend is how the lives of all humanity are interconnected through Jesus to the life that exists to the intimate relationship of Trinitarian love. If we are not a part of that vine of life, or, to use the Celtic Knot, part of the unending line of life that is God, we are lifeless. We do not exist. What all three readings from this weekend make very clear (Sadly, the Gospel does not include the fullness context of Chapter 15 from John), is to be part of this living vine, to be part of this living and endless line, is the living out of Jesus’ Great Commandment of love. We MUST love one another as Jesus loved us. We MUST love others unconditionally as Jesus unconditionally loved us. This is what is required of us to be part of the living vine, the endless line of love.

Remarkably, this unconditional commandment to love one another is expressed in the majority of human religions throughout the world. Whether one is Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or some other religion, the commandment to love is paramount in all these religions. Like the endless line of the Celtic Knot, this commandment to love as God loves, is that which leads us to life in God.

As Jesus concludes (15:9-10), If we wish to remain in his love, we must love as he loves. When we do this we will find joy and our joy will be complete.