Come Home, My Love

In my hospice work, I share the wonderment of family members at the dying process and its surprises.  One familiar experience of the dying seems to be that loved ones who have already "gone on" tend to appear at their bedside to encourage them or perhaps to accompany the dying along their way.  In fact, I have had hospice patients try to introduce me to their visitors who remain hidden from my sight. By and large, these appearances seem to calm and delight the dying patient as the look on their face reveals a mystical serenity that seems to slow the pace of their breathing, even as they seem to "look through" their earth-bound family members and caregivers who likewise stand at their bedside.

Following the writing of "I've Gone Away," which was meant as a folk anthem to give voice to the comfort and hope that a dead young man sings to ease the grief of his intended bride, I began a process of writing lyrics for the actual dying process.  "Come Home, My Love" is the first such piece.  The tune may be familiar to you. It is adapted from a folk melody sung in the Appalachians, a variant of the earlier tune, Barbara Allen.  Now, you might hear it as the voice of Jesus, calling his disciple to enter at last into their rest.  Or, perhaps it could be heard as the song of a long dead parent or spouse who returns at the end of life to sing peace into the heart of their beloved.  

Our thanks goes again to Jeff Bush who sings with us in this death bed hymn that affirms our belief in the life that awaits us in God's keeping.

Click below to view the lyrics.

Prayer Of St. Ignatius

The song we're uploading today, Prayer Of St. Ignatius, is actually not all that new.  Inspired by St. Ignatius of Loyola's Prayer for Generosity, I wrote this piece before Michael and I began our songwriting collaborations.  I've always thought that St. Ignatius authored some of the most beautiful prayers.  His Suscipe is probably my favorite, but it already has a wonderful musical setting written for it by John Foley called Take, Lord, Receive (if you are not familiar with this classic, check it out here).

The Prayer for Generosity, on the other hand, is certainly a close second and has been a cherished prayer of mine since first hearing it used in a homily during Mass at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco many years ago.  I find that this simple and succinct plea for guidance and grace to live out the two greatest commandments is useful in all aspects of my life: as a Christian and neighbor to my fellow man, as a husband and father, and even as a professional.  Here is the original prayer:

Lord, teach me to be generous.
Teach me to serve you as you deserve;
to give and not to count the cost,
to fight and not to heed the wounds,
to toil and not to seek for rest,
to labor and not to ask for reward,
save that of knowing that I do your will.

Looking back on the piece I wrote, I don't think I would be quite brave (or foolhardy) enough today to muddle as much with St. Ignatius' words as I did then.  But that being said, I do think it still holds together pretty well and remains in keeping with the sentiments of the original prayer.  We've used this piece a number of times over the years at IHM both during our capital campaign to raise funds for the new church as well as for stewardship Sundays.

This recording of Prayer of St. Ignatius, which you can hear by clicking on either of the music players on this blog, was a solo effort on my part.  What time Michael and I have had to collaborate this summer has gone into a different project that we hope to be making an announcement about soon.  In the meantime, I recorded this song over the space of a couple months, and so in this very intentionally rare case, you have a chance to hear my piano playing.

My adapted lyrics are posted after the break.

I've Gone Away

Late this past Spring, my family suffered another loss which left us speechless and searching our hearts and minds for answers to how something of this sort could happen to one of us. My niece, Erin was engaged to be married to a wonderful young man, Robert. Most all of the plans were set in place, but for waiting for the shower and for the time to come to send out the invitations for the September wedding. Then, one afternoon in April, Erin came home from teaching school to find a coroner on her doorstep with the tragic news that her beloved 25 year-old Robert had died at work from what we would later discover was a massive heart attack.

Driving home to Illinois for the funeral, I listened to a CD of folk songs arranged for flute and guitar. One of the songs was "He's Gone Away" and it set me to thinking of how these time-tested melodies that reside in our collective unconscious seem to have the power to express our deepest human emotions. Used for generations to express realities far more vast than the circumstances in which those who sang them were living, these melodies can still speak powerfully to us during times when our poor powers of speech fail us.

Coming home from the funeral, awash in feelings of grief that I was neither able to contain or successfully expel from my heart, I returned to "He's Gone Away." Playing it over and over, I felt inspired to write an arrangement of it, using words I could imagine Robert speaking to Erin were he able to communicate with her from his place in the kingdom of heaven. We hold firm to our belief that he lives now in the presence of the Lord and the hosts of heaven; among them, Robert's own grandpa who died not so many months ago and Richard, Erin's dad, who seemed to have found his way back into our lives in the remarkably familiar personality of Robert Connor.

My hope is that these words will comfort and bolster Erin's faith and that of the rest of my family. But perhaps others in circumstances of grief and loss may find inspiration and hope in the midst of their suffering as they search for meaning for love that survives the death of the beloved.

How grateful we are to Jeff Bush for the gifts of heart and vocal prowess that he brings to the singing of this tender piece.

Lyrics are posted below after the break.

Give Me Your Breath

During the end of this Easter season as the Church celebrates the Fiftieth Day of Easter with the great feast of Pentecost, we offer still another song from our Lenten concert.  While "Give Me Your Breath" is not necessarily a Pentecost hymn, it is a "spirited" piece that is loosely based on Psalm 50 (or 51 in some bibles).  This psalm is normally sung when the Judeo-Christian community acknowledges human sinfulness while praising God's mercy in light of our continual need to experience it.  I suppose you could say that we took it in a slightly different direction.  What follows is the story of how it came to be written.

I've written before that in addition to my involvement in the music ministry at IHM, I am a hospice chaplain for Compassionate Care Hospice, a hospice that specializes in providing end of life care for those who wish to die in their own home.  One of the great benefits of a job like mine is that I get to meet a myriad of people from different faith traditions and various walks of life.  One such person, was a patient of mine named Carolyn.

Carolyn was that person in her church who published the church's bulletin and each day she would scour the internet for stories that inspired her and then she'd send a mass email to the members of her congregation.  Soon after meeting her, she begin including me in her distribution list.  She was an inspiration (a word that means taking in breath) to others and she certainly inspired me.

She confided in me that she had two very real fears as she looked at the end of her life.  She was fearful that her children would stray from their faith once she was no longer here to guide and encourage them with her own incredibly strong faith.  But as she was also suffering from ALS, she possessed a deep seated fear that she would come to the end of her life in a conscious thirst for air, drowning in her own fluid which she might no longer be able to swallow.

I grew to love this lady and in reflecting about it, I think what really hooked me about her was this combination of faith and fear that she so courageously shared with me as I too, am so often a complicated mixture of fear and faith.  We prayed about this frequently during the months that I was graced to know and care for Carolyn. 

So that summer Michael and I wrote this piece with her in mind and about a month before she died, I took two colleagues with me to sing it to Carolyn a cappella.  She had wanted me to sing it at her funeral, but in all honesty, I didn't have the courage to sing a gospel-style song as a solo.  Thus it was that when Carolyn died, I thought that was the end of this song, but we had occasion to bring it out again when a member of our parish's music ministry developed lung cancer. 

James Cunningham, a longtime, much beloved member of IHM had only in the past year and a half begun playing congos with us.  When he succumbed to the cancer that he had courageously battled, we realized that this hymn mirrored the experience of his prayer at the end of the winding journey that was his life.  In the end, so many of our music ministers took off work on a weekday to come and honor him, that we were able to sing it at his funeral.

The night of our concert from which the recording is taken, James' family were in attendence and we dedicated this song to both him and  Carolyn.  As it happened, the two chaplains who had gone with me to sing "Give Me Your Breath" to her were also able to be present.  Having my fellow chaplains Elaine Hoffman and Lesley Brogan with us that night was another of God's unexpected gifts to me like the opportunity to have known Carolyn H. and to have played music in my parish with the great James Cunningham!

Lyrics posted after the break...

Lord Say The Word

The piece I’m uploading today, Lord Say The Word, started as a prayer for patience and humility during a period of personal struggle for me.  My hope is that we’ve made it general enough that others may find it useful in their own prayer lives.

Last Advent, as Catholic churches across North America transitioned to the new English translation of the Roman Missal, I found myself reluctant to embrace this change.  For the first time in my life, I felt as though I were on the outside looking in to the Church.  What a terrifying place to be!  But in those moments of struggle and doubt, we always have recourse to pray.  This song was my prayer for joyful acceptance of all the things in life, great or small, that I cannot change.

The beginning of the refrain was inspired by one of my favorite responses in the old translation of the Missal.  The verses were very loosely inspired by the story of St. Paul’s conversion and the notion (that I first read in C.S. Lewis) that our own conversions, the acts of dying to our personal prides and selfish desires, are painful experiences, but necessary and worthwhile and joyful, nonetheless. I would humbly suggest that this song is most applicable as a Communion meditation.  For what better opportunity do we have to truly die to ourselves than to willingly and completely participate as a member of the body of Christ in the great sacrifice of the Eucharist?

The recording I’ve uploaded today was made at our 2012 Lenten concert.  Michael wrote the gorgeous string and woodwind accompaniment.  I would normally envision the counter-melody sung by the male voices as entering on the refrain after the second verse to help the song build a little more and as a way to better invite the congregation to participate more fully from the beginning, but in this setting we decided to use the counter-melody from the start, and it worked reasonably well.  In case you're interested, the lyrics are printed after the break.

Receive Who You Are

Last year, while researching a talk I was to give to our catechumens, I stumbled upon a quote from St. Augustine in the Catechism of the Catholic Church at paragraph #1396. At the time of his writing which would have been in the 4th century, Bishop Augustine composed a mystogogical reflection to help his neophytes understand the meaning behind the Eucharist that they had just received for the first time. What struck me upon reading it was how completely fresh and modern it sounded to my 21st century ears. Though 1600 years have passed, there is still much meaning to be contemplated within Augustine's description of the mystery of Christ's presence in the Eucharist. This is what I read:

"So now, if you want to understand the body of Christ, listen to the Apostle Paul speaking to the faithful: you are the body of Christ, member for member. {I Cor. 12:27} If you, therefore, are Christ's body and members, it is your own mystery that is placed on the Lord's table! It is your own mystery that you are receiving! You are saying, "Amen" to what you are: your response is a personal signature, affirming your faith. When you hear, "the body of Christ," you respond, "Amen." Be a member of Christ's body, then, so that your "Amen" may ring true." SERMON #272

In the recording from our Lenten concert this year, you'll hear a couple of our choir members really shine. The main soloist on this piece, Sarah Bolling-Mancini is joined on alto harmony by Nimalie Stone. On the final refrains and on the Coda, you'll also hear the choir of IHM energetically providing the descant, "Corpus Christi (body of Christ) Sanguine Christi (blood of Christ). We will live in Christ's own Spirit. One body and blood and one soul, one divinity; receive who you are."

While playing the piano on this piece at our concert, I remember feeling overwhelmed by the vibrant faith of our singers and players coming to life and resounding within the semi-darkness of the church. As I listen to this recording, it continues to stir my soul to hear us joining the chorus of our 2000 year tradition of belief in the real presence of Christ in the holy Eucharist.

The instrumental parts for strings and woodwinds were arranged by Mark Scozzafave, who along with his wife Aimee, are alums of IHM's music ministry. Though we missed their participation in our concert this year since they have returned to their careers and their incredible music ministry at their home parish of Old St. Pat's in Chicago, we were so pleased that Mark could share his considerable musical gifts with us in this way.

How grateful Michael and I are to hear our musical ideas come to such beautiful fruition through the collaborative spirit of so many inestimably talented people who have also become dear friends. We'd like to thank you, too, for listening and for taking part in our music ministry in this way! As always, we certainly welcome your feedback.  Lyrics can be found after the jump.

We Are The Work Of His Hands

As promised (and at last!), we're going to be uploading some of our new music.  The song I'm uploading today, We Are The Work Of His Hands, is actually a couple of years old, but we only just introduced it to our parish at the recent Lenten concert.

This song was inspired by a simple insight that God, our Father, shared with me not long after the birth of my son, Peter.  He was just a few months old at the time, and he and I were up late together one night while Mom was getting some well-deserved rest.  I was holding him in my lap, and he was smiling up at me.  And in that moment I felt immensely proud - a sense of pride that I’m sure every parent knows well.  Proud for no other reason than that here in my hands was my beautiful, wonderful son, and what a blessing it was that God had entrusted me with such a great gift.

And then I was overcome with the sense that God, the Father, was there, looking down on us, holding us in hand, and feeling that same sense of fatherly pride for the two of us.  I don’t know that I have ever in my life had cause to doubt God’s love for me, but by the same token, I had never felt that he was particularly proud of me either.  But as soon as He graced me with that insight, I felt like I should have known it all along.  He’s looking down on all of us as a proud Father, and knowing that makes me want to make Him even more proud.  The memory of that evening is something I will always treasure and we've tried to capture some of that in this song.  Drawing inspiration from the creation story, the lyrics urge us to continue God's great work of creation and make Him proud.  Lyrics are after the jump.

(One final note, we had some technical difficulties with the recorder at our concert and unfortunately part of the third verse was lost.  Special thanks to Bob Gillespie for some fantastic editing work to make this presentable - I'm willing to bet most folks wouldn't realize that half of verse 3 is missing.  All the lyrics are included below in case you're curious!)

A Final Triduum Reflection

And here is the final spoken reflection from our 2012 Lenten Concert.  Written and delivered by Cory Labrecque, this reflection is on the eleventh chapter of John's Gospel, the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead.

Reflection on John 11

Good Friday Reflections

We have some exciting news.  We just received a copy of the recorded 2012 Lenten Concert, Til Love Embraces All, which means we have new songs to post here.  Special thanks to Jeff Brugger and Bob Gillespie for doing all the recording and editing.

We'll start posting some of this new material after Easter, but in the interim, we thought the occasion of the Triduum was a great time to post the spoken reflections that were given at the concert.  The theme of our concert this year was a meditation on the Scrutinies. The concert was organized into three sections, each built as a reflection in word and song around one of the Scrutiny stories from the Gospel of John.  We began each section with a spoken word reflection on the respective Gospel story.  Today, we are posting two of those reflections.

First is a reflection on the fourth chapter of John's Gospel, written by Fr. Stephen Vrazel and delivered by B.J. Abraham.
Reflection on John 4


And second, a reflection on ninth chapter of John written and delivered by Drew Denton.
Reflection on John 9



We'll post the final spoken reflection from the concert tomorrow.

Thank you, thank you!

Our Lenten concert was a wonderful success, a very Spirit-filled evening of prayer and song.  Thank you so much to all of you who were able to attend.  Your presence means more to us than you can know.

One of the decisions that we and Jeff Bush, IHM's director of liturgy (and choir director), made early on in the planning of the concert was that more than just a concert, we wanted the event to be a prayer service for our community of faith, and we're confidently hopeful that we were able to achieve that.  The only downside to this decision was that, unlike a traditional concert setting, there was never an opportunity to publicly acknowledge and thank the many people who volunteered to make last Saturday night possible.  So we'd like to take a moment here to do just that and thank all the wonderful, generous people without whom the concert would not have happened.

First, a special thank you to Jeff Bush, IHM's director of liturgy and our choir director.  From his behind the scenes work like printing tickets and programs to running the rehearsals and then to ultimately directing the choir and ensemble at the concert, Jeff did it all.  We are so blessed to be able to work under his direction, and we very well might not have started collaborating on songwriting without his support and encouragement.

Thank you to the writers and speakers who contributed their time and talents on the spoken Gospel reflections: Fr. Stephen Vrazel, B.J. Abraham, Drew Denton, and Cory Labrecque.  Each reflection was beautiful and moving, and they really helped tie each section to our overall theme of the Scrutiny stories from the Gospel of John.

Thank you to Paul Tate and Mark Scozzafave for writing the arrangements on several of the new songs we debuted.  The music was beautiful, and frankly, concert or not, it's always fun to have an excuse to talk music with those guys.

Thank you to our sound technician, Brian Hutcheson, and to Jeff Brugger for recording the night's proceedings.  And thank you to both of them for helping to pack up afterwards, an unsung task if ever there was one.

And finally, thank you to all the musicians and singers in the IHM music ministry who contributed their time and talents to bringing this music to life.  Several folks who couldn't participate in the performance still attended to help in other ways, like selling tickets and greeting visitors.  What a glorious gift these individuals are to our parish!  Now after weeks of preparation for this concert, these same folks will jump right into preparing for the Triduum.  We are honored and privileged to work with such a talented and selfless group. Thank you all!

Lenten Concert This Weekend!

Apologies to our small but dedicated band of followers and fans for not updating this website in a while.  In case you haven't heard though, the IHM music ministry is putting on another Lenten concert this Saturday night (3/10/12) at 7:30pm at Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Atlanta.  We'll be featuring several new songs that we've written over the past year.  Admission is $12 per person ($8 for seniors and students).  All proceeds will benefit the music ministry of IHM parish.  Please join us for a prayer-filled evening of reflection and song.

And here's our commercial!