All Creatures

Happy Easter!  He is risen! Alleluia!

In celebration of Easter this year, we are uploading a piano solo by Michael Mullink, All Creatures.  Based on the traditional hymn, All Creatures Of Our God And King, Michael composed these variations as part of the score for the video, "You Are Not Alone: Journeys Through Grief," posted below.  When we met to record the music for that video, he mentioned that he had come up with an arrangement for the hymn and asked if I would add guitar to the piece.  At that point, I had yet to hear his rendition of All Creatures but we've been winging things for years now so I was certainly game.  When it came time to record this piece that evening, I left the studio to join our very generous friend and producer, Bob Gillespie, in the engineering booth, thinking I would take a copy of the piano track home and come up with something on the guitar to add at a subsequent recording session.

Then, Michael began playing, and as you can hear for yourself via the music player on the right side of this web page, the music he made that night was inspired and beautiful.  Never losing its delicate tone (appropriate for a video on grief), he does a wonderful job of slowly building the piece, layering in his variations, adding subtle twists while never losing the feel and tone of the original hymn.  I remember not only being impressed by the musicianship on display (which, frankly, I always am whenever he plays) but also appreciative for the opportunity to sit back for a quiet moment and simply enjoy listening to a wonderful artist work.  Most of the time, I don't get such an opportunity around Michael because if he's playing, more than likely it usually means that I am supposed to be playing, too.

When Michael had finished, Bob and I looked at each other, and I think we both just shook our heads and grinned.  Michael joined us in the booth, and I told him there was no way I was going to add guitar to this piece.  It was perfect just as it was after that first take.  And I still agree with that assessment.  I hope you enjoy Michael's rendition of All Creatures, and I hope you have a happy and blessed Easter season.

"All creatures of our God and King,

Lift up your voice and with us sing!

Oh, praise Him!  Alleluia"

What a wonderful hymn for this Easter season!  God bless!

Story behind the video "You Are Not Alone"

For the past year and a half, I have been involved in a project of group learning with other hospice chaplains and bereavement ministers here in Atlanta.  We formed a cohort through a program offered by Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, who encouraged us to engage in acts of Study, Sabbath, and Service.  This video is our service project which we hope to make available to bereaved people in our respective communities and on the websites of the various hospice companies in which we are employed.

Michael and I chose to post it here in case some of you may know of someone who might benefit from the message of hope and comfort it contains.  The video also holds some of our original music.  It begins with a verse of a song, "Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep" that we hope to post in its entirety soon.  Also you will hear portions of some piano strains I recorded last fall to the tune of what is likely a familiar hymn to many, "All Creatures of Our God and King".  Finally, we included a recording of "Let Nothing Trouble You" that we posted a couple of months back.

This was a remarkable opportunity for all of us, inasmuch as a palpable sense of God's grace seemed to infuse each of us along the various stages of this shared endeavor. When I learned on a Friday that our filmmaker was unexpectedly available that weekend, we managed to assemble everyone we needed to begin filming the interviews on the same day as our fall Memorial service for my hospice company, Compassionate Care.  It was CCH who coincidentally had provided in-home hospice care for the husbands of the three women who shared the joys and sorrows of their hospice experience with us.  The audio recording sessions took place on two evenings in November and, again, God opened the hearts of so many talented people to give their time and inestimable talents.  In the first few months of this year, with the help of our filmmaker, Evan McIntosh we managed to get everything edited and fashioned into the work you are now able to view here as well as on YouTube.  We remain grateful for God's gift of inspiration, faithfulness and healing love which continues to hold us fast.

Please help us spread our words and songs of faith to all who have hearts that grieve.

You Are Not Alone: Journeys Through Grief

Today, we're posting a video recently produced by Michael Mullink and some of his fellow hospice chaplains for those dealing with grief over the loss of a loved one.  We're sharing it through this blog and other web outlets like Facebook and YouTube in the hopes that it may find those for whom it could be of some use.  God bless!

Let Nothing Trouble You

This song literally "dawned" on me on the morning of March 24, 2012.  I had been very concerned for my sister Donna's family back home in Illinois because my brother-in-law was receiving his first chemo treatments for metastatic lung cancer.  Due to the extreme stress on everyone, my niece Jenny was also hospitalized.  It had been a fitful night's sleep for me as I prayed for my loved ones from whom I felt so far away.  I arose before dawn and was doing some last minute research in the Catechism of the Catholic Church for a talk that Michael Vrazel and I were to give later that morning to the people who would embrace the Catholic faith at the Easter Vigil in two weeks.  The refrain seemed to jump off the page at me.  You may be familiar with these words that are taken from a quote by St. Teresa of Avila, a Doctor of the Church and mystic from the 16th century.  The descant bears similar words of comfort, but are even more ancient inasmuch as they paraphrase the Lord's final discourse on the night of the Last Supper as recorded in John 14.  

The verses came a little later, during Father's Day weekend, while on retreat in Dublin, Georgia at Green Bough with my fellow chaplain, Elaine Hoffman.  They are adapted from words I was meditating on from Parker Palmer's book, Let Your Life Speak, that my support group of hospice chaplains had been reading for discussions we would hold later in the summer.  I heard them as something I really needed to remember, but also as something I wanted to say to my niece, Jenny.  

We have so many to thank for this recording, starting with our sound engineer, fellow IHM musician, Bob Gillespie and his wife Jane, who sings on the recording.  Also recorded are my fellow hospice colleagues, Lesley Brogan and Elaine Hoffman.  Fellow IHM choir members Nimalie Stone, Julie Hiland, and Sarah Bolling can likewise be heard adding their beautiful voices.  We were directed by Jeff Bush, who is singing here along with Michael Vrazel and me.  The clarinet is beautifully played by another parish musician, IHM School's music teacher, Melissa Mecadon who is a music minister at our 11:30 Mass along with Jeff and Michael and me.  We are also grateful for Paul Tate's musicianship as he offered tremendous encouragement in the writing of this piece.  He supplied the instrumental part Melissa is playing and at his urging, we went on to write additional verses to make this piece adaptable to the seasons of Lent, for the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Anointing of the Sick and at Masses of Christian Burial, though you will not hear the additional verses in this recording.

Click below for lyrics.