The Song of Ascent

My Joy

by Depeche Mode

Listen Here

My joy, the air that I breathe

My joy, in God I believe

You move me

My joy, the blood in my veins

My joy, flows in your name

You move me

I'm not a mountain, no

You move me

My joy, heavenly bliss

My joy, the pleasure I miss

You move me

I'm not a mountain, no

You move me

To your Joy (Depeche Mode), I am Rapture (Anita Baker); to your queen (Alicia Keys), you, love, are King (Sade). Together these few modern song examples form a coherent theme. Song for many is prayer; it's magic. It raises us up, outward, beyond our everyday selves. It inspires and lends insight. In the biblical Songs of Ascent there are the Psalms 120-125 of the Tanakh informing and encouraging: to be faithful, patient and true to our Lord, the one who makes, who creates with us, protects his creation, gives sight to the wise and sound to the prayerful. He is merciful and forgiving. Peace and justice are his ways; this is the way of the faithful Christian as much as the faithful Jew.

Thus the Psalm was born. Out of a deep desire for wisdom and prayer, psalms are to be chanted or sung, The following Songs of Ascent can be summarized by two great sixth century mystics, saying:

"My beloved children, I embrace you in the Lord, imploring him to keep you from all evil and to give you endurance like Job, grace like Joseph, meekness like Moses and courage in combats like Joshua, the son of Nun, mastery of your thoughts like the Judges, the subjection of enemies as to kings David and Solomon, fruitfulness of the earth as to the Israelites. May he grant you the remission of your sins with healing of the body like the paralytic. May he rescue you from the waves like Peter, and snatch you from tribulation like Paul and the other apostles. May he keep you from all evil, as his true children and grant you, in his name, what your heart requests, for the benefit of the soul and body. Amen"
--Barsanuphius and John of Gaza, Epistles

A part of the Song of Ascents follows here. For the complete Songs of Ascent, see the Psalms 120-134.

Prayer of a Returned Exile Psalm 120
A song of ascents

The LORD answered me
when I called in my distress:
LORD, deliver me from lying lips,
from treacherous tongues.

What will the Lord inflict on you,
O treacherous tongue,
and what more besides?
A warrior's sharpened arrows
and fiery coals of brush wood!

Alas, I was an alien in Meshech,
I lived near the tents of Kedar!
Too long did I live
among those who hated peace.
When I spoke of peace,
they were for war.

Love and the Fall

Those who love me, I also love, and those who seek me, find me. --Proverbs 8:17

I'm In You

by Peter Frampton

LISTEN HERE

I don't care where I go
 When I'm with you
 When I cry, you don't laugh
 'Cause you know me

 I'm in you, you're in me
 I'm in you, you're in me
 'Cause you gave me the love
 Love that I never had
 Yes, you gave me the love
 Love that I never had...

In today's English language, the pronouns he and she have been nearly stripped away. They are avoided, dis-used. Left in their place is a socio-political idea that rejects this very principle of universal oneness. There are labels and divisions, parsing the world into diverse units.
To the ancient mind, this is akin to tragedy. What could take the place of the Chinese idea of the yin and yang? Or the Hindu wedding ceremony in which bride and groom pronounce one to the other, "I am heaven, you are earth;" to which the bride responds, "I am earth, you are heaven."

Many modern minds, especially in the West, will find these ideas unintelligible, in part, thanks to science. Our rational mind does not allow us to go there. It is all myth, we say. Science, in its aims to reduce things to quantifiable matter fails, it cannot see cosmic love.

Rather, science ignores the "final cause" of creation. It cannot rationalize what something or someone was made for, its purpose, its goal, its end. This reason is the most important to creation. The Tenakh tells us that in both the historical and in the ultimate dimension, G-d is the final cause, creation the ultimate end; it is the alpha and the omega, both the beginning and end.

In this ultimate dimension, we are freed "of the dirty little dungeon of a universe that the Enlightenment thinkers" of past centuries have placed us into wholesale. Enlightenment thought, thought in which rationality and science are the reigning sovereigns, gives to modern minds "a universe in which love and beauty, praise and value are mere subjective fictions," invented by the self spinning aloneness of a human mind.

And yet science through all its triumphs has not been able to extinguish an ancient, almost primordial instinct from the deepest places in our soul, to realize love as the highest wisdom and meaning in a life. So then the Judeo-Christian Bible, or Tanakh, in its entirety is to be read with imagination, with myth and analogy as a divine love story, says Peter Kreeft.

In both the Jewish and Christian telling of the story, the Word contained in the book is a covenant, an agreement between G-d, the Lover and his beloved; the persons he created, the Jews and all who come to him in the Spirit of the Oneness (adonai echad).

The word of G-d here is the Christ, the unity of G-d, the Creator. And to the Christian mind, among other names we may call this oneness, the Christ, love incarnate. Christ has proved G-d's love for his creation by the example of the Cross. He has come because of, and for love, alone. He comes out of love.

Other manifestations of love are found in the connection between the "fall" from the garden of Eden. The connection here is found between the fall and freedom. Love does not enslave; love makes free. Because you are the Beloved, you are free. We are not the Creator's pets; we are meant to be G-d's lover.

In the redemption, love manifests. G-d's love is powerful and in full display as soon as Adam falls. He makes a mistake, he falls away from the covenant that he made in free will with G-d to obey.

As covenantal people, Jews traditionally see the "law" of the Torah as an expression of G-d's will. It is their joy to learn, to know this will. Thus they see their holy book as a love making manual, if you will.
In the ten commandments, the Decalog,  the principal covenants presented to creation by G-d, the Creator, are laid out. In essence, they form the whole of the "covenant-contract." G-d is to have this agreement with his people, who in free will grow to abide by this contract, or rule. In following the way of G-d in divine law, more love is made. Human-kind is "fruitful and multiplies."

Caring for the garden, the world of Creation, is so that human persons may learn to be more like Creators. G-d wishes to teach love through loving the world and the soil it comprises, to raise a crop to the benefit of all of creation. This is stewardship in its most wholistic sense.
The Creator starts small and then moves through the world until his love reaches the ears of his perhaps, most complex creation, mankind. As a lover, G-d is not jealous. Sharing in oneness is the essence of all.

"And the forbidden fruit of Adam and Eve is to teach the Beloved the reality of pure, 'blind,' love."
If they had been told that the reason (a rational idea) was that the fruit was poison, would not Adam and Eve have obeyed; not from a trusting, free love, but from a selfish fear?
Yet G-d did command them, and asked for their love in return for no other reason than love itself. This is covenant. When we "fall," we lick our wounds, we gain a sense of the real, we dust ourselves off and remain in the moment, rather than a self-serving, spinning mind.
Thus we again realize the fall as a direction back to the source, back to the Creator and we, are his Beloved. 
This love is not sentimental, it is not cheap, easy or compromising. This is love in totality. You are the deepest secret of G-d's heart. --Peter Kreeft

Mankind Waits For You

Kadosh Kadosh Kadosh Adonai Tz'vaot / Melo Kol Haaretz Kevodo.--Hebrew Kaddush

Humming bird
performed by Seals & Croft
Listen here

Mankind was waiting for you to come along...
Lend us your wings
let us soar in the atmosphere Lift us to the Heaven of holiness

Oh, source of our being, hummingbird...

Have you noticed the days are getting longer
somehow keep getting longer?
The spirit son is stronger
And a new day is dawning for us all...

The ancient prayer the Kaddush comes to the Christian believer from ancient roots of the father, Judaism. It remains essentially unchanged for thousands and thousands of years. The words are from the Bible, Isaiah 6:3. In current use this same prayer also called by its Latin name the Sanctus, is a cornerstone of devotional prayer. It becomes one into trance, into mystery into prayer. 

Its theme is the simple chant of Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts... The Bible refers to it a number of times; in Corinthians, in the Apocalypse of John, in Matthew 21, in Isaiah. A prayer of hope of open hearts, the Sanctus calls to the holy one to descend upon the faithful with Spirit and grace.

The theme of a bird in the lyrics above bring this prayer to mind. While the dove is the more usual bird, why not another, like the Humming bird? It 's a beautiful and inspiring creature widely present in the temperate regions of north America and elsewhere.

Dust

"Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return."

Dust In the Wind

by Kansas

Listen Here

I close my eyes, only for a moment,

and the moment's gone

All my dreams, pass before my eyes,

a curiosity

Dust in the wind,

all they are is dust in the wind

Same old song, just a drop of water

in an endless sea

All we do, crumbles to the ground,

though we refuse to see

Dust in the wind,

All we are is dust in the wind

Don't hang on, nothing lasts forever

but the earth and sky

It slips away, all your money

won't another minute buy

Dust in the wind,

All we are is dust in the wind

Dust in the wind

All we are is dust in the wind

All we are is dust in the wind

Dust in the wind

Everything is dust in the wind

Everything is dust in the wind

This song always gets to me. It reminds me of the facts of my life, the base simplicity of it. We are, after all, dust. Fashioned from the elements of the mother earth, one with Her and our Creator. A creature among other creatures is our lot. We all, can and do, get caught up in distractions. Be it work, relationships, intellectual pursuits, political activity, or any other thing that removes our mind from  just this moment, who I am. Pray for me, brothers and sisters.

And our pride may swell; we forget that dust made us, and the earth that sustains us. The world gets a little hazy, technology makes it fuzzier. We imagine things to come, things to be, and things that just may not be true at all. We are afraid; we're angry. Our love is thwarted. We want to hurt, to injure, and then it happens: the call comes to tell us someone is suffering; they're dying, someone is dead. Our world re-focuses; it re-balances, like the earth spinning on its axis. In a second our perspective is turned, forced to turn to the most basic, the most immediate, just this moment. That is the moment we have, the moment we have been given.

 Lent, is a season guided by the sun and the moon, its date changing annually as a result, and we are ritually turned to these basic facts of life. Forty days of meditations, penance, revelations, a return to the most basic, to the center; it culminates in the Easter of the Lord. The resurrection and revelation by the Spirit. We celebrate its joyful arrival in a ritual of prayer and song.

The Lent as we know it has ancient roots stretching back to the Hebrews. The Torah tells us of a need and time for repentance. "Man begins from dust and ends in dust" Genesis 3:19; "the breath in our nostrils is as smoke... our body shall be turned to ashes, and our spirit shall vanish as the soft air... our life shall pass away as the trace of a cloud... and shall be dispersed as a mist... for our time is a very shadow that passes away."  Wisdom 2:2-5, [Sirach]

What do we want our time on earth to be for? Will we come to the end of it and discover that we spent our time mostly breathing and eating? Surely the Lord of Hosts has made us for better, for the good? While we may hide from the facts of our life for a time, in the end we will be called; to what do we wish, to be attached to our name; our dust is in the wind.

Giving to the Poor, Variation of a Theme

They'll Know We Are Christians
Lyrics by Carolyn Arends
Listen Here

We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord
We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord
And we pray that all unity may one day be restored
And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love
They will know we are Christians by our love

We will work with each other, we will work side by side
We will work with each other, we will work side by side
And we'll guard each one's dignity and save each one's pride
And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love
They will know we are Christians by our love
By our love, by our love

And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love
They will know we are Christians by our love

We will walk with each other, we will walk hand in hand
We will walk with each other, we will walk hand in hand
And together we'll spread the news that God is in our land
And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love
They will know we are Christians by our love
By our love, by our love
And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love
They will know we are Christians by our love 

We cannot ever overlook Tzedakah, charity to the world as the Jewish faith teaches. What  our Christian inheritance contains is a teaching of charity according to the ancients that helps first and foremost the giver; the focus of the teaching is upon the giver. Some are materially poor, others are poor in spirit; while still others are poor in mind or health. All of us experience some form of poverty in our lives.
Charitable behavior is central to Jewish ethics and thought. It is rooted in the concepts of fairness, justice and equity. Notice that nowhere in this idea do we find the words pity, sorrow or giving favors. And central to this idea is that all are deserving of charity in the way of food, clothing and shelter. It is rectifying an injustice to another, giving what all should have in the first place. And there is poverty of several types. Thus a just society is one adjudged to have complete charity for one and all. Perfect  karma.

The Last Judgment Matthew 25:

The king will say, you have my father’s blessing! Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. I was hungry and you gave food; I was naked and you clothed me; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you welcomed me. And when I was ill or imprisoned, you visited with me.[In the end] we will answer for our brothers; as you did for the least of them, you did for me.

Matthew 25:31-46