VIEW FROM THE PEW
Of all the experiences of these many weeks of staying separate and feeling fearful, none has underscored the stark mindset of quarantine than hunching over the computer screen watching Mass being said in a nearly empty church. Nothing has made me feel more isolated than singing “alleluia” as a solo in my empty personal space. Oh how I miss being in a congregation that loves to “sing out loud, sing out long” because the choir just inspires us and carries us along. Count yourself blessed if your family is with you watching one of the Masses being livestreamed from Hawaii parishes. I hope you are creating your own joyful noise.
There are still weeks to go in this Easter season and “alleluia” should be on our lips every day of it. But my brain has been livestreaming “If Tomorrow Never Comes.” It got planted in my head while watching a music-loaded show when the Library of Congress presented its annual Gershwin award to singer and songwriter Garth Brooks, who launched his career with that song. That was back in March when the sight of a packed concert hall and musicians hugging on stage hadn’t become a memory for the scrapbooks of our old way of life.
If you haven’t heard that song at a wedding or anniversary party or funeral in the past 30 years, I’d be amazed. The message is this: tell your loved ones how you feel about them while they are still alive. But I’ve been locked on the refrain; it’s a dire thought fueled by an overload of information about the pandemic. It’s been on my mind as I make calls to family and friends to share a few moments in this period of time standing still. No, I wouldn’t dream of adding to their anxiety by singing it.
Then somehow my mental audio got fixed on “Be Not Afraid,” a hymn by Jesuit composer Bob Dufford. Again, it’s been a struggle to absorb the prayerful message that God is with us through all life’s perils; I got fixated on the imagery of barren desert, raging seas, gates of hell. Oh my, I’m not a success at positive thinking let alone a healthy prayer regimen. Why can’t I grab onto the words, “I’ll go before you always, come follow me.”
Not as dreadful
It helps to realize this time is not as dreadful as tribulations that people down through history have endured, a train of thought stimulated by scholars on a Hawaii Public Radio program. Though they explored the cholera epidemic of the 1890s and the 1918 flu epidemic, each of which killed millions around the planet, it was an upbeat report from the perspective of hindsight. As governments learned about public health, cities were made safer with innovations such as sewer systems and water lines; society in general took a turn for the better as countries fostered health care systems.
Closer on the timeline of history are memories of World War II from those people whose homelands were conquered and oppressed and from Hawaii residents who survived the enemy’s attack then lived for years under government-imposed martial law. “The new normal” wasn’t part of the lingo then, but our ancestors have endured so much worse than bothersome masks and temporary limits on personal freedom. And they didn’t have the consolation of keeping track of each other by text, tweet, zoom, video conferencing.
Being deprived of the freedom to gather together to sing “alleluia” is something we share with our ancestors. It’s part of my ethnic history that Catholics were killed and persecuted because of their faith during a 400-year period when religion became a warped political cause. Having a priest present to say Mass was a dangerous venture. They traveled incognito, stayed in houses which had hidden rooms, “priest’s holes.”
Secret Masses were said in Ireland and England and no voices were raised in song for fear of being discovered. The first Hawaii Catholics endured a less deadly version of the Protestant-versus-Catholic plague. For 10 years, New England missionaries prevailed on the king who banished the first Catholic priests. Catholic converts here were persecuted but kept the faith without receiving the sacraments. King Kamehameha III was persuaded by the French government to change his mind and issued an “Edict of Toleration” on June 17, 1839.
Thank God for science
When pestilence and plague spread in ancient and medieval times, people flocked to churches praying to be spared but brought death to each other by gathering together. Thank God for science; he endowed humans with the ability to figure out our world and take some control of it. That’s what I think of at Sunday Mass when Bishop Larry Silva recites the pandemic prayer. It reminds us of the terrible 100-year-long leprosy epidemic in the islands, and the fact that Mother Marianne Cope offered victims spiritual support but was also a nurse who took practical steps of hygiene to prevent its spread.
Music has become the way of banding together in spirit to survive this modern pandemic, an antidote to the relentless grim information about it. It’s a work of mercy, a form of charity and love at its best, scenes of a lone tenor on a city balcony singing to his neighborhood, concerts by homebound professional musicians joining online to cheer us and raise money for frontline workers and hungry unemployed. Hawaii residents have embraced the trend to convoy to a friend’s house for a birthday serenade, minus the usual hugs.
One version of music for the homebound that I love is the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music weekly “Lean on Me” series to “shake off the safer-at-home blues.” Folks tune in for the 7 p.m. Saturday music event, send in videos of themselves singing and dancing to the uplifting popular song of the week. I was lifted out of the “tomorrow never comes” blues, thanks to whoever selected the music for Mass at the cathedral on the third Sunday of Easter. I’ve reset my soundtrack! Now it’s Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” which we sing with lyrics added by composers such as the poem “Hymn to Joy” by poet Henry Van Dyke: “Ever singing, march we onward, victors in the midst of strife. Joyful music lifts us sunward, in the triumph song of life.”
I’ve been whistling the classic tune for the benefit of my neighbors and even carried the message to the outside world on one of those uncomfortable forays into a supermarket. I’m pretty sure I was humming it behind my face mask; that must be why the guy ahead in the social distancing line turned back to smile at me. The version, by another lyricist Christopher Wentworth, sung by the cathedral cantor was all about Easter:
“Alleluia, alleluia. Hearts to heaven and voices raise. Sing to God a hymn of gladness, sing to God a hymn of praise. He was on the cross as savior, for the world’s salvation bled. Jesus Christ the King of glory, now is risen from the dead.”
“Christ is risen, we are risen; shed upon us heavenly grace … we with Him to life eternal, by His resurrection rise.”
Oh, how I long to be in a congregation and sing together. What if we could celebrate Pentecost like the disciples as they stop cowering in the upper room and are free from fear.
At least we know that this isn’t the last chance to celebrate Easter. It’s far more than a season, it’s forever. We will sing “alleluia” together … when tomorrow comes.
