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instrument Lord, make me an instrument
of your peace -- St. Francis a publication of St. Francis Lutheran Church ■ http://www.st-francis-lutheran.org ■ Easter 2003 |
Contents
Reading the BibleBy Michael Hiller Why do you want to? Read the Bible, that is. Why do you want to -- it’s an important question to ask, because the Scriptures should be approached with a clear sense of purpose and intent. If you’re having a difficult moment in life and reach to the Bible for comfort, your approach will be different than that of a person who is reading to discover the history of ancient Israel. In short, the Bible can be many different things to many different people. Being clear on your intent will help you use this wonderful spiritual resource to accomplish your purpose.
Reading it as it isThe Bible was written over a long span of time, by many different authors. Some of them are known to us; others are anonymous. In addition, over the centuries, for various purposes, many editors and redactors have pieced together materials to bring the Bible to its present form. There are several things to keep in mind as you open the Bible. First of all the Bible is a collection of materials. Some books such as Genesis and Exodus are collections of material written or transmitted over the ages and then edited -- editors ranged from the professional (for example, Jeremiah’s secretary Baruch) to those who had a political purpose in mind (such as those who were responsible for the “E” strand of the first five books of the Bible) and everything in between -- into a single whole. The book of Psalms is a collection of hymns, while the book of Jeremiah is a collection of correspondence, oracles, pronouncements, and editorials. Many people talk about the Bible as speaking with “one voice,” or more commonly refer to it as “God’s Word.” These descriptions only underscore the mistaken notion that the Bible is a single work, rather than the wonderfully woven literature that it really is. Far from undermining the authority of Scripture, the notion that the Bible reflects the voices of many different men and women from many different ages helps the book to become more relevant to us in our time. In a way, the Bible is a collection of personalities and characters, all of whom relate to God. In this collection of literatures, characters -- historical and mythic -- places, and times, we can find events or people that will speak to us in our search for God. It is also important to seek to know the purpose of the literature. For example, in reading Genesis, we are tempted to treat the writing as “history” or even as science. The trouble is that such notions were foreign to the people who prepared the materials in the first place. While some of the literature is really what it purports to be -- for example, the Books of the Chronicles are a record of the kings of Israel and Judah -- other portions of the Bible are highly metaphoric. The Book of Revelation is a coded work intended for a limited audience. So it is important that we understand what a book is all about as we read it. To list and explain all the types of literature in the Bible would greatly expand the intent and scope of this article, but you get the idea. A good frame of mind to have when reading the Bible is to remember that the author wasn’t consciously thinking, “Oh! I’m writing a part of the Bible!” So we can read St. Paul’s epistles as the letters or the correspondence that they actually are. We can read Jonah as a sermon, Genesis as the combination of several epic sagas, and some of the psalms as personal poetry -- or at least poetry that speaks about several personal and intimate moments. Someone once said that the best way to read the book of Revelation was to scream it. (We actually did that at St. Francis one November, complete with drum rolls and percussion -- it was very dramatic and, I think, effective). We shouldn’t forget that a great deal of the Bible was transmitted as an oral tradition. So perhaps a good technique is to read a great deal of the Hebrew Scriptures as story -- aloud. Look at the context and be a detective. What do you think the original purpose was?
InspirationWhen I was in seminary, the big discussion was centered on “inspiration.” What does it mean when we say that the Bible is God’s Word? Does that mean that the “science” of Genesis trumps the learning of our present age? Does that mean that all the ritual laws of Leviticus should somehow inform how we live today? Does that mean that the allegories of Revelation should be something more than what they appear to be? Sometimes I tune in a “Christian” radio station here in San Francisco just to listen to how they are reading and interpreting the Bible from their (usually) conservative evangelical perspective. They have a “Bible Reading Hour” in which they literally read from one end to the other. Sitting in my car listening to a man drone on about a war with the Amorites, I had to wonder what the relevance is. It all comes back to the inspiration question. If the Bible is literally God’s Word, then every syllable must have some kind of value and worth. Or is there another understanding of inspiration that looks for a central message and hope, and less for specifics? What is your view of how the Bible was inspired? Was every word literally dictated? Or do you see the inspiration revolving around the words of salvation that the Bible proclaims? Another facet of Bible reading is the question of which translation to use. It always amuses me to hear about people and churches insisting on the King James Version. It is amusing because the KJV is still a translation, with all the limitations that come with reading any translation. Even if we were all skilled in reading Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, and ancient Babylonian, it still wouldn’t simplify the question of authenticity. We would still be faced with the question of “which one?” since even the original texts have several variants. I used to encourage students in my Bible classes to use a variety of translations. Using several translations gives us hints as to where the problems and issues are. Be careful in your use of paraphrases, such as the “Living Bible.” If words are indeed important, then paraphrases can only be useful when accompanied by a translation. Use the translation that speaks best to you, and get another one for comparison. Let there be a debate between them. The Bible doesn’t answer all questions. It poses many! Finally, read the Bible as a human being. I remember how stunned I was when I began to learn Hebrew in college. When we read an English translation the words all have a sort of patina of scripture; it was like when I first started listening to Kurt Weill and all of his lyrics sounded like German theology to me. In reading Hebrew, as in any ancient language, a word can have a variety of meanings. Their vocabularies weren’t as varied as ours is today. A good example is in the story of Ruth, and how she meets Boaz at night in the fields and “uncovers his feet.” It’s a strange story until you realize that “feet” in Hebrew is a euphemism for “genitalia.” Now Ruth becomes a woman! Hebrew (or Greek) let me see the words as purely human. I began to see all those holy people in the Bible as human beings, wrestling with all of the stuff of life with which you and I struggle. Read for curiosity, read for comfort, read for pleasure, read for assurance, read for information, read for your needs, read for the needs of others, read for a surprise. As Jesus said, following his reading the Scriptures in the synagogue: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing!”
The 'V-Team' launchedBy Fr. George Belcher Some of us older folk can remember a television series called “The A-Team.” Well, St. Francis now has the V-Team. That’s going to be our working shorthand title for the Interim Visioning Team. The team members are Fran Bridge, Michael Callahan, Susan Kools, Lynne Ohlson, Richard Penrose, Jessica Prentice, Gabriel Proo, Tom Tragardh, and Susan Tucceri. I will be the staff member relating to the team, but not a voting member. In a sense, all of us as St. Francis will be part of the V-Team. In order for us to really get a sense of what God is calling us to do in the future, we all need to be involved. Your V-Team will facilitate the process, as well as doing some of the legwork like gathering and collating data. The team’s responsibility will be to communicate with all members throughout the process, and enable everybody to be involved at all levels. The first opportunity for all of us to share our thoughts and views about St. Francis will come in Cottage Meetings. Some of you will be asked to host meetings of eight to ten people in your homes. A V-Team member will act as facilitator, and all the host has to do is provide the space, and perhaps some tea or coffee. Meetings will be held at a variety of times, and in different parts of the city, so everybody can sign up for a meeting that suits their timetable. There will be one or two during the day at St. Francis, for those who live nearby and prefer to go out in the daytime. Watch out for sign-up opportunities, in early May. We will be offering these evenings in May and early June. You only need attend one evening or afternoon session, but it is important that you do, so that we can hear the Spirit’s voice in every member. An evening of historical reflection, “History Night” for short, will be held in conjunction with our parish banquet on June 7th. It will be a festive evening, but also one where we will take a close look at our hundred-year-long history, for it is in seeing and understanding our history, that we will discover what has become important for St. Francis, and why. I’ve seen parishes look at their history and make fascinating discoveries about themselves. In a very real way our history is our “scripture,” and as we look at it, we will see how God was present and moved us from one place to another. Your V-Team encourages you to approach any one of us with questions or suggestions. We will be reporting to Council and to the congregation on an ongoing basis, using the Times, announcements, and occasionally via mail. Our goal and what has been asked of us is to have a final report for the consideration of the Annual Meeting. Before that, we will be coming to all of you in late fall with a preliminary report of what we think you (and God) are telling us the vision for St. Francis is. This will be at an all-members gathering, and will be yet another opportunity for your views and your input. From time to time, your V-Team members will be asking some of you for help in assisting in specific tasks. We hope you’ll see this as something important you can do for St. Francis and for our future together. All of you are asked to keep the V-Team and the visioning process in your daily prayers. That is the most important part of the process, and the one thing that will guarantee that once arrived at, our vision will be really ours and the will reflect the future the triune God is calling us to.
Renewing, refreshing restBy Phyllis Zillhart
This nineteenth-century poem by Horatius Bonar comes to us tied to the haunting and uplifting music of the sixteenth-century composer Thomas Tallis. The resulting hymn (no. 497 in the Lutheran Book of Worship) is not an easy sing. (Ah, the curse of the barely singable tune with the compelling text.) The melody goes too high for most of our voices. It’s difficult to take a decent breath without chopping the song into little phrases. No matter. The luscious, full ascending musical lines contrasted with the sparse, essential descending lines embody the longing and hope of the lyrics. You sense the strength and passion of Jesus as he reaches out with sincere concern. The music helps you feel the expectant relief of coming to Jesus -- authentically -- with your needs. This is my calling this summer, thanks to the generous sabbatical leave that St. Francis has granted me during the months of June, July and August. I will be “coming to Jesus” for renewing rest, for refreshing living water and for the guidance of the light of life. Along the way, inspired by the gifts of Bonar and Tallis, I will strive to combine words and original music for the spiritual benefit of myself and others through hymns and a liturgical setting of the Eucharist. I have a special interest in preparing sacred music that engages children and that speaks to the diversity of congregations striving to welcome all people, especially lesbians, gay men, bisexual and transgender persons of faith. Time away will also give “new” eyes and ears to engage in the discernment process here at St. Francis. While you are busy gathering in “cottage meetings” to discuss our vision for our life in ministry at St. Francis, I will be reflecting on my role here and the gifts and challenges of ministry. Upon my return, I will present a written report to the Council and the Visioning Team on my interim reflections and vision for the future. My partner and colleague in ministry, Pr. Ruth Frost, our daughter, Noelle, and our dog, Jenna, will travel to Minnesota for the month of June and early July. There I will meet with several local composers who are willing to encourage my efforts. Ruth will explore several sites that employ the visual arts to express innovative theological interpretations. We will be present with Ruth’s mother as she turns 91 and with my parents as they celebrate their golden wedding anniversary. A few days at the Frosts’ scenic lakeside cabin will round out the rest quotient of our time in Minnesota. In our absence, a student from Yale Divinity School will be staying at the parsonage and volunteering some service time at St. Francis. As an openly-identified gay man, Chris Wogaman wants “to participate in the life and ministry of congregations that have ministers from the Extraordinary Candidacy Project (ECP) roster.” Chris will certainly get that experience at St. Francis! We hope he can join us for the congregational banquet on Saturday, June 7 to learn more about us and share our history and hope. “I heard the voice of Jesus say, ‘Take a Sabbath rest. Recharge your batteries. Let the Holy Spirit move you!’” I say, yes! I also say thank you to those who are enabling me to take this break -- namely, Fr. George Belcher, Pr. Michael Hiller, Hope Levy, the Council and all of the beloved people of St. Francis. This summer, as we take stock in our gracious calling to be God’s people in this challenging time and place, may we hear the voice of Jesus calling us to rest, revitalization and guidance -- and may we gratefully respond.
Gratitude: a practiceBy Rachel Hoobing The words “please” and “thank you” are often taught to children. We say “please” when we need something and thank you when we receive that which was given. We perform this teaching of “please” and “thank you” for many reasons, hoping that someday children might understand gratitude more fully. As I have worked with young children in my various roles as care provider and teacher, I was struck by the persistent repetition of these seemingly small words. Once, as I listened to a parent encouraging his two-year-old to use the word “please,” it occurred to me that these forms of politeness could be overused to the point of ridiculousness. For I have heard many parents encouraging children to use their pleases and thank-yous while at a park, at a store, at a restaurant or at a child’s home. It was at one such moment of hearing this father encourage his son to say please and thank you that it occurred to me this parent is only trying to encourage his child to use the word in an appropriate situation. He wants his child to grow up and be polite. I made the comment to the father (more for my own benefit) that often we adults forget to say our pleases and thank-yous. I proved my own point when I forgot to say thank you and another toddler in my life matter-of-factly and quickly corrected me. I wonder why we adults sometimes neglect to say please and thank you. Do we just forget? Do we find these words sometimes overused, abused, or absent of feeling? Please and thank you are easy words to speak, but not always easy words to say. The word “please” may be used as a recognition of dependence upon another and the need for help; saying please requires a certain amount of vulnerability. It also serves to recognize relationships and the power within those relationships. The words “thank you” carry a sense of gratitude -- a gratitude that is given voice and expression. It is something that the speaker shares with the giver. Gratitude is something that we can teach and learn with each other. We can practice gratitude by finding things to be thankful for. We can express our gratitude and therefore model it to and for others. We can learn to listen and discover the needs of our neighbors and ourselves. What we may find is that a practice of gratitude will reshape our perspectives and attitudes toward life. Once, feeling desperate during a stressful time in my life, I called Pastor Ruth Frost. She said much to me, but what I remember most clearly was that she asked me to thank God for anything that I was grateful for -- known and not-yet-known. So I did. Several days later I noticed that something had changed within me. My focus had shifted and I was more centered and relaxed. My newly refreshed spirit enabled me to get through that difficult period. (Thank you, Ruth!) A famous theologian or comedian (whose name escapes my memory) once said that there are two types of prayer: “please, please, please” and “thank you, thank you, thank you.” To be grateful is, in my view, a feeling of profound, deep and heart-warming thankfulness. It is a recognition that God is the source of life and all that is life-giving. It is powerful when we realize our interconnectedness to all that is around us and beyond; and our inter-dependence on God, self and neighbor. As Christians, we are grounded in a tradition that focuses on the power of questions and not answers. Rabbi Harold Kushner asked the question: “It is easy to see God’s beauty in a glorious sunset or in ocean waves crashing on the beach. But can you find the holiness (or find gratitude) in a struggle for life?” (italics mine) Gratitude is not always easy to find, recognize or see. This is why gratitude might best be learned as a practice. It is in our practicing that we might become more well-versed in understanding and expressing gratitude. Learning gratitude is a life-long process. By becoming practitioners of “please” and “thank you,” we may come to know the contours, depth and intensity of gratitude. Any good master of a trade knows that in order for a trade to continue, he or she must share it with the next generation. So we teach children to say these simple words. We hope that by learning to express gratitude, by living in relationships where vulnerability and gratitude are constantly expressed, they may continually see, hear and recognize the things that move us to give thanks.
Thomas Merton's ambivalent war novelBy Mark Pritchard On the first day of the war with Iraq, I stood with a friend and his 12-year-old daughter outside the downtown headquarters of the Bechtel corporation. Linking arms with others, we stood blocking the rear doors of the 50 Beale St. skyscraper, with the goal of preventing the company from conducting business that day. Over the course of the long morning, irritated office workers -- some of whom worked for other companies in the building, not Bechtel -- came up and tried to get through our lines, and we gently blocked them. In fact, by 10:00 a.m. the security guards closed the building anyway -- not in sympathy with us protesters but in fear of us, in case one of us was a mad bomber. Some of the office workers asked us why we were there, and received a flier printed with various accusations against the Bechtel company, which over many decades has been involved with, and profited from, some dubious American policy in the third world. I don’t know if we enlightened anyone, but I thought the symbolic protest was worthwhile. That protest was one of several I had participated in -- including one in February when a dozen people from St. Francis joined more than 100,000 people coursing up Market St. But my own feelings were ambivalent. While I was solidly for any plan that held off the war while holding Iraq accountable for its weapons programs, I also sympathized with the suffering of the Iraqi people under a brutal dictatorship. I thought it was a terrible idea for the U.S. to attack a country which had not attacked us, but it was also obvious that “removal” of the Hussein regime would benefit that country. If it had to happen, I just wanted it done as bloodlessly as possible. And despite my better reasoning, something in me wanted to see the U.S. speed to the rescue. To someone raised on the standard explanation for World War II -- that the U.S. had entered the war to free people from the oppression of Germany and Japan, and then only when attacked ourselves -- as well as countless cartoonish melodramas, from Superman to James Bond to the Road Warrior, in which some costumed hero saves the world through violent action, that fantasy had a strong attraction. Gen. Tommy Franks and his sidekicks were going to bust down the door of a Baghdad palace and sock Hussein in the jaw! Who wouldn’t want to see that? Resemblances to a bad action movie aside, the war in Iraq offered several moral dilemmas. If it was a war for oil, that’s bad -- even the Bush administration seems to agree, since they denied that was the reason -- but will that stop American companies like Bechtel from profiting from the subsequent oil trade? If it was a war to rid the world of Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” (the chemical and biological weapons they have had in the past, and perhaps still have), what happens if we never find any? Was there ever any real connection, as the President has asserted, between Iraq and Al-Qaeda or the “War on Terror”? How much of our national willingness to start a war has to do with an American antipathy to Arabs or Muslims? And now that the Hussein regime has been vanquished, is the U.S. going to use the same logic against Syria, Iran, Pakistan and other nations? Mixed feelings about war are nothing new for Americans. Though most people remember World War II as a “good war” where Americans were clear on why we were involved and unquestioning of the wisdom of joining in, back in the late 1930s agreement wasn’t nearly as unanimous as we remember. As today, there was a great deal of ambivalence about the threats posed by an evil dictator as well as the horrific notion that a war was necessary to unseat him. As today, there was an antiwar movement on campuses in both the U.S. and the U.K., with students signing a pacifist pledge, promising to refuse induction into the armed forces. And just as today, there was propaganda and sanctimony on both sides of the debate. In those days, a young Thomas Merton -- born in France to a New Zealander father and an American mother, both painters; a teenage orphan who lived in English boarding schools; a budding novelist, and a recent convert to Roman Catholicism -- struggled with these issues. In 1941 he was a 26-year-old English teacher at St. Bonaventure College in upstate New York. That summer, a few months before he decided to enter the Trappist monastery in Kentucky where he was to spend almost the whole of the rest of his life, Merton wrote a novel, his fourth attempt at the form and the only one ever published. This book was finally published, in 1969 as the world confronted other conflicts, as My Argument with the Gestapo (New York: New Directions, 1969). Written in the form of a journal -- the original title was “Journal of My Escape from the Nazis” -- the book follows a young man as he wanders in wartime London and occupied France. The narrator, who has no name, whose occupation is vague (he allows that he is a kind of journalist, but only in the sense that he is writing a journal), and who claims citizenship only of an imaginary country called Casa -- the language of which is a macaronic blend of romance languages and English, a kind of proto-beatnik Esperanto -- documents his encounters with the populace, with soldiers, and especially with officialdom in the form of censors, detectives, and secret police. Merton’s book was written at a time when the U.S, officially neutral, was providing the U.K. with crucial support. Americans were watching newsreels of German (and Japanese) wartime cruelty and of England suffering under German bombing. The American public was expected to strongly sympathize with the English, whose stiff upper lips were supposed to be both a model of courageous resistance and a warning that the U.S. might soon find itself involved in the same fight. Merton looked upon all this with a jaundiced eye. Having lived his childhood in France and most of the decade of his teens in England, he much preferred the former; English food, fashions, habits, domiciles, and above all English kitsch and sentimentality all revolted him. As a recent and zealous convert to Roman Catholicism, he regarded England’s Protestantism as a nadir of spirituality, not to mention taste. Thus his treatment in his novel of the much-heralded British pluck is more cynical than sympathetic. His narrator has gone to London to see the war for himself. Confined in a tube-station bomb shelter with the hoi polloi, his eye and ear is merciless: “The sound of the lamentable, croaking, gay songs they have been singing, down there, to the tune of the broken accordions, makes me shudder in my sleep,” he writes.
Merton’s narrator resists nationality, in so far as it imposes any sort of emotional cant, because during wartime nationality is inextricably linked to sentimentality and to its rhetorical cousin, propaganda. He understands that “national pride” and “bravery” are just code words.
But this novel is not just satire. By becoming a stateless person and confessing allegiance only to an inviolate country of the heart, Merton’s narrator is testing what is true and what is false about the world’s situation and that of the individual. He rejects the comforts of popular culture, especially cinema, and the easy answers it offers. After finding his way to France through a secret route, he encounters a German officer, who tries to establish his brotherhood with the narrator by recalling the anti-war film All Quiet on the Western Front. Thus Merton finds the Germans quite as sentimental, and thus as misled and misinformed, as the English. This equation of the English and the Germans, sacrilegious as it must have been in 1941, is not extended to the French, whom Merton likes better. When he steps into a Parisian café to ask directions, the narrator finds no sentimentality among its embittered patrons, only “fierceness”: “The men stand there with a strictly human and French anger in their eyes, offended, not like dogs, offended like men.” In this, too, he takes a contrary stand. The defeat or surrender of the French in 1940 was (and still is, as we can see from recent mockery) looked down upon. But for Merton it was no disgrace; it didn’t suggest anything inferior about them, in contrast to the vaunted “bravery” of the English, because the French were still confronted with -- indeed, forced by their situation to confront -- moral questions. In fact, for Merton’s narrator, the technical condition of being free or conquered is not what really matters. After being detained and interrogated about his nationality and the reason for his presence in Paris, Merton’s narrator is free to wander around the city and ponder existential questions. In the book’s most quoted section, the narrator, having admitted to an interrogator some bare biographical facts, says,
This credo of identity provides the key for his character. Beneath his swipes at English cant, fatuous Germans and the treachery of movies, Merton really does want to know what you’re fighting for, whether you’re English, French, German or from “Casa.” His fundamental concern is with personal integrity, and whether one’s principles are linked to ultimate truth. Though his references in his novel to religion are mostly veiled, we can now see -- in light of the fact that Merton was about to make the greatest decision of his life, to become a Trappist monk -- what he thought of his own situation. Finding himself in a war -- not the literal war of the French (though he was most in sympathy with them) but a spiritual war -- he dearly wished to emerge the victor. Merton’s entry into monastic life, in December of that year -- just after Pearl Harbor, as it happened, though in his autobiography he claims this did not enter into his decision -- was one victory in this spiritual war, but not the end of his struggle for integrity. At various times during the rest of his life -- as documented in letters and in the personal journal he kept -- he often wondered whether he was in the right place. Usually this ambivalence had to do with whether, in the Trappist monastery he chose, he was going to be given the latitude to pursue his struggle. Significantly, each time he came close to leaving for another monastic environment, he chose to stay put. He knew his struggle was, like his novel’s character, not dependent on place, but was in his own heart. I suspect Merton would take a dim view of our country’s justifications for the Iraq war. He would dispense with the patriotic fervor, the cheerleading and the pious talk from governments on every side; as he ignored Hitler, he would no doubt ignore Hussein as a justification. At the same time, he would question his own feelings and reasoning, and call on others to do the same. Judging from his other writings, I think his greatest sympathy would be with women and defenseless civilians. At the same time, I’m not sure he would be quick to support, for example, the dubious and poorly organized “human shield” movement, because as he learned more and more about nonviolence, he developed a great faculty of discernment when it came to activism. But whatever I may imagine would have been Merton’s reaction to the events of our day, I take heart from his cautious reaction to the war of his own day. Following his example, we should reject the clamor of news and propaganda, think for ourselves, and discover that the origin of war is in our own hearts. Then we can pray, finally, for forgiveness, and repentance.
For further readingThe best introduction to Thomas Merton is his autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain, considered a 20th century classic, in print since it was first published in 1948. Also recommended is The Thomas Merton Reader (New York: Image Books, 1974) with articles, poems, and excerpts from his journals. My Argument with the Gestapo: A Macaronic Journal (New York: New Directions, 1969) is available, with all Merton’s other work, at Thomas Merton Books online. Merton websites: Firewatch; the Thomas Merton Studies Center; the Thomas Merton Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Making and Remaking: the Many Masks of Thomas Merton, an essay by Michael Higgins. Merton’s Columbia classmate and lifelong friend Ed Rice was profiled in Columbia University’s magazine in May 2001. A new book, The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage, looks at the lives of four prominent American authors who were Roman Catholics -- Merton, Dorothy Day, Flannery O’Connor, and Walker Percy. Upcoming eventsWe look forward this season to: Spring Fling, Wednesday, May 14. This annual banquet and silent auction benefits the Friends of St. Francis Childcare Center. The center, which operates as a separate nonprofit corporation, was started 25 years ago by St. Francis members and receives important support from us. This year the event will be held at the Atrium, 101 California St., San Francisco. For tickets or more information, call Sally Large. The annual congregational banquet of St. Francis Church will be Saturday, June 7. This year the event will start at 4:30 pm for special discussions on the history of St. Francis (see the article “The V-Team Launched”). A potluck dinner will follow, commencing at 6:30 pm. The event is held in the Parish Hall at St. Francis, and all congregation members are strongly encouraged to attend. Dale Wood, composerRenowned composer, organist, and choral director Dale Wood died peacefully April 13, 2003 at his Sea Ranch, Calif. home in the company of his dear friend and companion, Ivan de la Garza. Wood suffered from esophageal and lung cancer. Wood was known by members of St. Francis as the composer of the hymn tune St. Francis, which we know as "By Paths As Yet Untrodden." With lyrics by Pr. Michael Hiller, the hymn is sung every year on the last Sunday in December to commemorate our expulsion in 1995 from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Wood was known throughout the musical community as a master of melody and "the difficult art of simplicity." In addition to his prolific volume of published choral works and hymn tunes, his compositions for handbells, harp, and organ are performed on a regular basis throughout the world. Every Christmas, Easter, and Sunday morning, one can expect to hear his music being sung or played somewhere by small church choirs, renowned organists, symphony orchestras, and choral groups as large and well known as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, which has performed and recorded many of his works. His sparkling, exuberant, and readily-identifiable style caused many to refer to him as "Mr. Joy." Numerous Dale Wood festivals are regularly celebrated with -- on one occasion -- 3,000 handbell ringers gathered to rejoice in his music. Dale Wood's career as a composer was launched at the age of 13 when he became the winner of a national hymn-writing competition for the American Lutheran Church. His first choral anthem was accepted for publication one year later. Wood was for many years organist and choir master in San Francisco at the Episcopal Church of St. Mary the Virgin, as well as director of the Grace Cathedral Boys Chorus. He served in a similar capacity in Lutheran churches in Hollywood and Riverside, California. He was executive editor of the Sacred Music Press from 1975 to 1996. He published numerous articles on worship, liturgy, and church music and was a contributing editor to the Journal of Church Music for over a decade. His monthly column appeared in the Methodist journal, Music Ministry, for three years. He lectured and conducted at choral festivals throughout the United States, Canada, and Northern Europe, served as editorial consultant for several hymnals, and made numerous contributions to the Inter-Lutheran Commission on Worship. Four hymns in the Lutheran Book of Worship are set to his tunes: #268, "Now that the daylight fills the sky" (Laurel); #367, "Christ is made the sure foundation" (Eden Church); #393, "Rise, shine you people" (Wojtkiewiecz); and #416, "O God of every nation" (Tuolomne). His hymns are also published in Worship II (a Roman Catholic hymnal), Seventh Day Adventist Hymnal, The Presbyterian Hymnal, The United Methodist Hymnal, the Agape Hymnal Supplement, the Moravian Book of Worship, the Chalice Hymnal, and several hymnal supplements. He is the author of a music notation textbook, Hemidemisemiquavers. The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) honored Wood annually since 1967 for his "very important contribution towards the creation and development of contemporary American music." He was also awarded the title of "Exemplar of the University" by the Board of Regents of California Lutheran University, which cited him as "an example of excellence in service and a worthy model of a good and useful life." In addition to Mr. de la Garza, Wood is survived by his former wife Gloria Wood and his sister Fern Lazicki. He was proceeded in death by his brother Walter Wood.
As information becomes available, memorials will be announced on his website. Contributions in the name of Dale Wood may be made to: California Lutheran University, 60 W. Olsen Rd., Thousand Oaks, CA 91360. (Information compiled from Wood's website -- Ed.)
instrument Editor:
Mark Pritchard This
Easter 2003 issue was completed on 24 April 2003. Produced
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