How Then Shall We Live?
John Coltrane
Galatians 5:1-5 . . . It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
Never the Same Twice:
Grace and the (Divinely) Inspired World of Jazz
“I’m not supposed to be playing, the music Is supposed to be playing me.”
By Sam Bush
For decades, a legendary trumpeter has taught an Improvisational Jazz course at the University of Virginia. He’s known internationally for being an accomplished player, but known locally for being a kind man who loves teaching. I fondly remember taking his class, watching him walk in ten minutes late each day and giving his undivided attention to a group of students whose talent ran the gamut from “promising virtuoso” to “amateur hack” (that would be me). He would often speak proverbially, offering silver bullets of wisdom. One of the lines that has lingered is, “You’re only as good as your last solo.” It is a humbling and haunting bit of truth for players of all stripes.
My professor knew that the nature of jazz lies in the moment. Once that moment passes, it’s gone. Such is one’s experience when climbing the ladder of success (i.e. the ladder of law that, as Bob Dylan says, “has no top and no bottom”). Whether you are a preacher delivering sermons, a teacher giving lectures, a pitcher starting games, or a detective solving crimes, you’re only as good as your last solo. The advertising legend Don Draper may have said it best: “Even though success is a reality, its effects are temporary. You get hungry even though you’ve just eaten.” He’s right. The temporal world is the stage of finite accomplishment.
While the pleasures and successes of this life are both real and wonderful, their shelf life is rather short. The fact that you are only as good as your last solo applies to everyone, providing a sweeping condemnation to both the virtuoso and the hack. Many a one-hit wonder has been haunted by the need to recapture that stroke of brilliance that launched their successful career. Whether it’s a relationship, an accomplishment, or a memory, many of us spend our lives doing the same.
And yet, the spontaneous, inspired spirit of jazz music itself tells a different story. John Coltrane’s masterwork A Love Supreme gives an account of being transformed by the grace of God:
During the year 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music. I feel this has been granted through His grace. ALL PRAISE TO GOD.
This is where God’s grace offers relief from the long slog of matching your personal best. Whereas upward mobility can often resemble Sisyphus’ punishment, an action marked by grace is unselfconscious. Coltrane’s inspired work is in response to what was accomplished on the Cross. While his own accomplishment may not last (although I think it probably will!), there is a freeing realization that it was never his to begin with. Rather than being the driving force for Coltrane’s justification, the accomplishment is allowed to be an expression of joy and gratitude.
In Christianity, works are not the engine but, if anything, the caboose. The legendary saxophonist Sonny Rollins once described the spiritual element of playing jazz in this way: “I’m not supposed to be playing, the music is supposed to be playing me. I’m just supposed to be standing there with the horn, moving my fingers. The music is supposed to be coming through me; that’s when it’s really happening.” Such is the inspired work of God. It’s never the same twice! As polish poet Stanislaus Lec once said, “The finger of God never leaves identical fingerprints.” Just as a seasoned jazz master, God’s Spirit moves on from one inspired note to another, not bothering to stick to the script. In both jazz and Christianity, the left hand often doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. And yet, by some miracle, the result is amazing.
Of course, you may be thinking, doesn’t it depend on who’s playing? Coltrane playing jazz sounds different from an amateur hack playing jazz (take it from me!). So, yes, it is good for one to be proficient in their profession. The theologian and the musician should both have appropriate training to do their jobs well, but the training is only the first part of the equation. As Charlie Parker once told a group of aspiring musicians, “You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.” One reason why people love jazz music so much is that it is infused with the Holy Spirit. It is informed by Jesus’ words, “Don’t worry about what you will say or how you will say it” (Mt 10:19). If jazz is too scripted it will lose its magic. There is an essential element of improvisation and surprise in order for it to have lasting value.
Thankfully, Christianity is not a craft to be proficient in but good news to receive. Every accomplishment, every good solo, is an echo of what God accomplished in Jesus Christ (Eph 3:11). While the effects of your accomplishments may only go so far, the purpose of his accomplishment is eternal. When we are given the grace to know and trust in the one needful thing — Christ crucified — we are free to forget everything else and just wail.
Symphony and Trinity
By Steve Bell
I never became a Christian because of a convincing argument. The reason is simple, I have always felt “known.” I have always sensed that from somewhere deep in the cosmos I am known and cherished; not always deservedly so, but known and cherished none-the-less. And that’s pretty much the whole of it. The fact that this has resulted in Christian conviction in particular is simply because my parents were Christians and the story they told and exemplified about who God is resonated with my experience.
It’s not that I haven’t had my doubts along the way, but those doubts have been more about details, interpretation and practical consequence than the essence of what my soul seems to be incapable of not knowing.
Three years ago, I received a call from the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra (WSO) asking me to consider doing a concert of my music with them at the Centennial Concert Hall in Winnipeg. The call seemed to come out of nowhere. It was not a direction I had even considered pursuing in my wildest dreams. But the invitation was accepted and with the exceptional gifts of my piano player Mike Janzen, we produced symphony scores for a dozen of my songs. And on November 17, 2007 (my birthday) we joined the 60-piece orchestra and 2,300 extremely animated concert goers for an evening I will never, ever forget.
If we could go back and observe that concert objectively, I’m sure we would find it to be full of awkward and less-than-flattering moments. I was very self-conscious and unsure of myself. But the energy of the room, the rich texture of symphony and the flagrant presence of the Transcendent One is still palpable, obliterating most everything but the memory of pure beatitude.
Within a year we had produced a CD of the Concert material and booked a swing of eight consecutive Christmas concerts with the WSO: three concerts in Winnipeg’s concert hall and four in rural Manitoba communities. It is one thing to perform a single symphony concert, and quite another to do eight in a row. Typically, as the orchestra players get used to the guest artist, and to the material, there is an increasing investment of the individual players. And for me, as I felt an increased relationship/friendship with orchestra itself, I felt myself to gain increasing freedom and confidence. By the last concert, at a small little theatre in Virden Manitoba, it no longer felt like us (my band) and them - but a joyful unit of musical energy.
The hall in Virden was tiny – a bit of a disappointment for a last concert. It held only 250 people. The stage was so tiny there was talk of sending some of the orchestra home for lack of physical space. But no-one wanted to go home so we all squished onstage for what must have looked like something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Mike had to play a digital piano and was perched precariously on the very edge of the stage. Without moving from my stool, I could reach behind and grab the knees of the viola section, or scratch the unshaven face of my drummer Daniel to my left. To my right I could have reached past Rei Hotoda (conductor) to poke my bassist Gilles in the eye. We were ridiculously cramped – but it was great fun.
But from the very first note of the violins we all knew this would be the highlight of the tour. The volume on the tiny stage and the proximity of the overwhelmed audience made for an almost raucous energy that built over the course of the evening.
At one point of the concert, in the middle of a piano solo Mike really started to dig in. I immediately dialed right into him and we locked eyes as I tried to support and react (on guitar) to whatever he was playing. We got into this really interesting rhythmical dialogue and I suddenly realized that simultaneously he was reacting to me as much as I was reacting to him – we were both following, no-one was leading. It was a moment of what I can only call “mutual othering.” And here is the experience I want to tell you about: Right at the moment that I realized what was going on, it’s like the whole scene froze and was suspended in time. And in that suspension, I sensed God say to me “Steve, pay attention to what is happening here. This is who I am; a free mutuality, an insoluble communion born of loving self-donation for the other.” The freeze frame held for a moment then suddenly released and I found myself back in real time right as Mike and I, Rei, Gilles, Daniel and the rest of the orchestra all intuited a dynamic gesture that was not written or rehearsed. Honestly, the whole group on stage was so dialed into each other that we all had the same intuition at the same time. It was an ecstatic moment of pure beauty and unity unlike that I have never experienced before or since. And as I remember it, I swooned – not physically, but spiritually, or psychically (not sure what to call it.)
I was actually quite shaken by the experience. I’ve since read the phrase ‘the wound of beauty’ in a book title and I think I know what that might mean. For weeks after the concert, I was a bit of a mess; awestruck, weepy, desperate to experience something like that again. Everything that I saw, touched or tasted that spoke of mutuality, whether a great meal with friends, a perfect match of melody and lyric, or a nuanced balance of colors in a painting – all filled me with joy and hope. Every hint of discord, whether it be in my family, on the news or on the street stabbed me like a knife.
I’ve since reflected on the experience a lot. Of course, as a Christian, the language of Trinity is what best approaches description. And I believe it with all my heart, that God is a unity of persons, and this unity, mutuality and love has always been. If God were a uni-person, God could not be love, only will, and hence the primary action of God would be power not love. If God were a personality-less benevolent energy, all particularity, distance, distinction, and ultimately all individual consciousness would eventually cease or at best be meaningless.
Imagine a world where each person harbors the other at the center of their being. Imagine a world where community is honored without loss of personhood. Or where the individual and the particular are valued without the collective being treated with suspicion or even. Imagine a world where big “T” truth is apprehended not as static proposition, or a relative thing, but in dynamic relationship. Imagine a world where peace (shalom) is given in love and not taken and secured by force.
I think that this is the world God once “rejoiced into being.” I think this is the world that was lost to autonomy and egoism. And I think this is the world God refuses to abandon and so is committed to its healing and restoration. I think this is where we’re heading - of which we get the occasional foretaste. At least, my experience leads me to think so.
Robert Capon . . . We strive all our life to see ourselves as keepers of rules we cannot keep, as loyal subjects of laws under which we can only be judged outlaws. Yet so deep is our need to derive our identity from our own self-respect – so profound is our conviction that unless we watch our step, the watchbird will take away our name – that we will spend a lifetime trying to do the impossible rather than, for even one carefree minute, consent to having it done for us by someone else.
We need more than occasional suspensions of the rules. We need grace. And grace is not the offer of an exception to the rules; it is a new dispensation, entirely. It says nothing about the rules (indeed, it leaves them intact); it simply says that since, because of our weakness, the rules can never be the basis of our acceptance, God is not going to make them such anymore.
But all the while, there was one thing we most needed from the start, and certainly will need from here on out into the New Jerusalem: the ability to take our freedom seriously and act on it, to live not in fear of mistakes but in the knowledge that no mistake can hold a candle to the love that draws us home. My repentance, accordingly, is not so much for my failings but for the two-bit attitude toward them by which I made them more sovereign than grace. Grace – the imperative to hear the music, not just listen for errors – makes all infirmities occasions of glory.