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Today as a post-communion song, I had played the piano song I composed for mom as a birthday present back in 1990. It is Psalm Offering 1 Opus 4, “Meditation on an Asian Madonna.” If you look at the picture of my children below, you will see the picture of a Chinese Mary holding a Chinese Baby Jesus. This was one of my mother’s favorite paintings and followed her from house to house. The music you hear is based on a pentatonic scale, a 5 pitch scale in contrast to the normal Do-re-mi scales we know that have 8 pitches. If you play the black keys on the piano starting with the first of 3 black keys and then play the remaining 2 black keys, you have a pentatonic scale. While not exclusive of Asian music, we often associate the pentatonic scale to Asian themes. The music you hear below is my musical interpretation of that beautiful painting.
Meg, Luke, Andy with Beth, 1984.
Psalm Offering 1 Opus 4: Meditation on an Asian Madonna. (c) 1990 Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved
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Deacon Bob
I am a composer, performer, poet, educator, spiritual director, and permanent deacon of the Catholic Church. I just recently retired after 42 years of full-time ministry in the Catholic Church. I continue to serve in the Church part-time. I have been blessed to be united in marriage to my bride, Ruth, since 1974. I am father to four wonderful adult children, and grandfather to five equally wonderful grandchildren. In my lifetime, I have received a B.A. in Music (UST), M.A. in Pastoral Studies (St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity, UST), Certified Spiritual Director. Ordained to the Permanent Diaconate for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, in 1991. Composer, musician, author, poet, educator. The Gospels drive my political choices, hence, leading me toward a more liberal, other-centered politics rather than conservative politics. The great commandment of Jesus to love one another as he has loved us, as well as the criteria he gives in Matthew 25 by which we are to be judged at the end of time directs my actions and thoughts.
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Meg, Luke, Andy with Beth, 1984.