Neither Death nor Life

If you are an NPM chapter head or the music liaison for your diocese, you probably have already received a listing of repertory, compiled by Bob Batastini, for use during a national disaster. The list also appears on our Web site.

Drawn from GIA's hymnal/songbooks, the list provides a quick reference to items that we might use during this time of national disaster. Such lists, as well as prayer services, reading sources, homilettes, and other pastoral aids, are springing up all over the Internet.

In less than two weeks, a formidable stockpile of prayer and song has been constructed to help us in our ministry.

Have you ever felt so helpless? The gravity of the quadruple mass homicide is staggering.

The different perspective that now arises shrinks all the frustrations and angers we might have felt in our dealings with church stuff.

As I reflect on the Monday before September 11, I was in such a snit that day because the worship booklets for the diocesan clergy retreat were in such a mess with more mistakes than the stars in Abraham' celestial offspring . . . and then there was the delay in getting the electric piano fixed . . . and then there was . . . and then there was. . . . You've been there.

How all of that trivia vaporized as we watched the New York holocaust bring down two giant buildings. How awfully unimportant to almost anything we fret and fuss over.

Life and the whim of death puts the important things into accurate perspective. What we do with it depends on how we are able to transfer that anger and sense of revenge into our music ministry.

Selecting repertory to aid us in our distress and sorrow was easy. Our standard repertory abounds with hymns and songs focusing on comfort.

The next phase of out and out warfare will be the most challenging in our music ministry careers. We've never faced anything like this before-what to sing in time of war.

What items are there that speak (sing!) of life and comfort while the torturous campaigns are being waged in Afghanistan?

A country more than 50% depleted, its citizens now look to a possible reduction of their lives to next to nothing. Do you know a text and a tune that speaks (sings) of safety and refreshment while a populace awaits their execution?

As the numbers of the September 11 victims mount, so too are the numbers of those who live in agonized hope, trying desperately to believe that their loved ones will emerge.

Do you know a text and a tune that would assuage that agony? Do you know a hymn that could turn hearts from revenge to forgiveness?

As the harassment and hate crimes inflicted on the American Muslim communities-and, for that matter, anyone who looks like them-grow, do you know an anthem that would address their being demonized?

The easy part of hymn accumulation is over. Now, we face the future of battles and bombings. Especially now, we need a song, a hymn, or a text and tune, to remind us of why we are singing.

More than ever, we need song to ground us firmly in the knowledge that "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39).

That song is there. It's up to us to find it, use it, and continue to minister to our church and country. God bless us all.

You can reach Fred Moleck via email at fmoleck@earthlink.net