(Please reflect on the scripture passages and read the commentary before listening to the music.)
PSALM OFFERING 7 OPUS 7
A prayer for all those denied health care.
He has made my flesh and my skin waste away, and broken my bones; he has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation; he has made me sit in darkness like the dead of long ago. my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, “Gone is my glory, and all that I had hoped for from the Lord.” The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall! My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. (Lamentations 3: 4-6, 17-20)
And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live. (Numbers 28: 8-9)
“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. (Luke 10: 30-34)
They came to Bethsaida. Some people brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village; and when he had put saliva on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Can you see anything?” And the man looked up and said, “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.” Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he looked intently and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. (Mark 8: 22-25)
What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. (James 2: 14-17)
In nations, other than Western Europe and Canada, they are many people who go without basic healthcare. Were it not for organizations like Doctors Without Borders, countless upon countless people would die from the commonest of ailments. Up to the time of the Affordable Care Act, there were millions of people in our nation who were denied basic healthcare. Many people suffering from chronic illness, cancer, heart disease, diabetes and stroke were either denied health insurance or cut from health insurance providers. Whether these insurance companies were for profit or were non-profit, their financial bottom line was far more important than the delivering health care to those who were the greatest in need. I witnessed my own sister, who bore for 25 years a chronic illness that eventually killed her, having to fight with her health insurance provider for the medical care she desperately needed. And now, justice having been finally served to the medically uninsured, we find a Congress and a president wanting to tear healthcare away from those who need it the most.
Pope Francis I has declared healthcare a basic human right. This Psalm Offering is a prayer for all the chronically ill of our world, for all the poor who desperately need basic healthcare who have been denied this basic human right by the powerful and the greedy.
ABOUT THE MUSIC: This Psalm Offering is composed in 7/4 time. This music uses some of the characteristics of music from the Impressionistic period. Parallel V7 chords and a whole tone scale gives this music a certain uneasy feel. Unlike melodies in duple or triple meter, 7/4 time lends a sense of musical imbalance to the uneasiness. The use of parallel V7 chords and the A melody based on those V7 chords tends to obscure a “home” or primary key area to the listener’s ear. The B melody, totally based on the whole tone scale gives a “dreamlike” quality to the music. The A melody returns and moves to the Coda, ending the music without a tonal center. Perhaps, the unsettledness and lack of a tonal center best describes the plight of the medically uninsured.
(c) 2017 by BRUTH Music Publishing Company.
Scriptural Text by Coogan, Michael D.; Brettler, Marc Z.; Perkins, Pheme; Newsom, Carol A.. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version. © 2010 by Oxford University Press Inc. All rights reserved.
