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​The Hallelujah Chorus

and an Easter Prayer
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for people of all faiths and spiritual independents
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Easter Prayer
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No need for dominating kings. No need for terror and violence. Let love reign supreme, like a prince of peace who finds his heart in the poor and the powerless, the forsaken and the forgotten.  Like the kiss of a soft breeze on a spring day, refreshing the spirit with kindness and beauty. Like the sight of cars stopping for an orange cat crossing the road, and staying for a while, lest she turn around.  Like a son helping his mother out of the car into the wheelchair, laying a blanket on her legs, lest she be cold.  Like a slant of sunlight shining through the pine trees.  Let hallelujah mean, not the victory of dominating power over love, but just the opposite: the victory of gentleness over arrogance, of tenderness over greed, of humility over pride.  Let us hear the Hallelujah Chorus in the singing of  the birds, the chant of John Coltrane's Love Supreme, the rhythms of the waves, the crazy joy of a flash mob in a shopping mall singing the Hallelujah Chorus, and of people in memory care units of nursing homes singing the same.  Let this be the resurrection, oh wonder of tender surprise.  Let it begin, not only in the worlds around me, or in a remembered event from long ago, but in a life inside me, such that the risen Christ becomes, in a quiet way, how I live in the world, day by day and moment by moment.  May I become, in a small way, Easter, too. 

-- Jay McDaniel

* These images come from a poem by Deborah Cooper called Collecting Light.

The Hallelujah Chorus and its Emotional Impact: BBC
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Stirring, emotional and unmistakable: The Hallelujah chorus from Handel's Messiah is the subject of this week's Soul Music.

The Alzheimer's Society runs a group called 'Singing for the Brain'. It's for people with dementia or Alzheimers and their carers who come together to sing in a group. As music is tied so closely to emotional memories, often lyrics and music remain firmly fixed in the brain, even though other memories have died away.

Julia Burton of the Alzheimer's Society recalls the power of the Hallelujah Chorus, as performed at a special event by Singing for the Brain groups in Wiltshire and Dorset.

Mrs Vera Fiton, whose late husband - Ted - had dementia talks about how important the weekly singing group was for both of them. Taking Ted from his care home to 'do the Hallelujah' was a weekly highlight, he enjoyed it so much, Vera recalls, that he'd still be singing in the taxi on the way home.

Carol Pemberton, of the Birmingham-based a capella quintet 'Black Voices', took part in the reopening concert of Birmingham Town Hall in 2007. The programme director suggested they sing The Messiah, but not as Handel intended, rather a daring interpretation arranged by Quincy Jones, called the 'Soulful Messiah'. It's a soul/gospel version which has to be heard to be believed! Carol describes performing it as one of the biggest highs of her career to date.

Jennifer Blakeley runs Alphabet Photography, a photo company based in Niagara Falls in Canada. She came up with the idea of staging a Flash Mob to promote her company. The Hallelujah Chorus had long been a favourite piece, and she - along with her local choir - set up a flash-mob in a local shopping mall. The result was emotional, extraordinary... and achieved so much more than the intended aim to boost her business. Passers by , not linked with the choir, joined in... others cried, emotions ran high. And the resulting You Tube video has now attracted over 37 million hits.

Paul Spicer, composer, conductor and organist, describes the historical backdrop to Handel's exhilarating composition.

Producer: Karen Gregor.

-- from the BBC, click here.

Jesus had faith in a God of new life, and so can we.  We do not need to be Christian to place our trust in the God of new life, and we do not need to believe Jesus was the Son of God.

The God in whom we place our trust comes from the future, not the past, in the form of fresh and unexpected possibilities for new life, even when we might think all is lost.  The spirit of God is like a breath that blows throughout creation and that dwells within each human heart as an animating guide.  We can speak of this breath as the spirit of Easter.

The spirit of Easter is works in and with the situation at hand.  For example, as we learn in the BBC podcast, the spirit Easter does not eliminate Alzheimer's or reverse brain decay. Still, as we also learn in the podcast, it can bring hope to the situation at hand, and one way is through music.  Music is a sacrament through which the spirit of Easter often works in a spiritual and deeply physical way: "Lyrics and music remain firmly fixed in the brain, even though other memories have died away."  

Ask Vera Fiton.  The pleasure of singing with her late husband was a source of joy for both of them.  Such joy is a form of new life.  It is Easter incarnate.  It does not need to last forever or to be total to be new.  New life can come in small doses and short bursts.  We can have tastes of Easter in this life, and they are like bread from heaven, even if they last only as long as a song.

The spirit of Easter can be at work in us unconsciously, too, in forms of growth of which we are unaware until after they have occurred.  Sometimes we wake up in the morning and realize that we have grown gentler or more patient over the years, without our even knowing it was happening.  We have been affected by the spirit of Easter; we have been, as it were, Eastered.
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This should not be surprising.  Positive psychology tells us that there is a lure toward wholeness within each person, working both consciously and unconsciously, even in sleep.  This lure is Easter incarnate, ever adaptive to each new situation.

Still, we understandably hope for more Easter than we know in this life, for songs of new that last forever, however long forever might be.  Fortunately, if there is a continuing journey after death new life is available there, too. The God of creative transformation, the God of perpetual and flexible grace, does not stop with this life.  God is faithful to every situation.

We can hope that Vera's Ted now continues in his journey into new life and that in time, in ways mysterious but true, Vera joins him.  No need to know the details.  Are the personalities retained?  Are the memories regained?  It is not ours to know.  We see through a glass darkly, but in the hope there is a seeing. The hope is enough.

-- Jay McDaniel

Newness 
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Somewhere in the depths of life and even in the depths of death there is a source of newness, a well-spring of fresh possibilities, a giver of new things, who arrives perpetually, often in new and unexpected ways, helping bring new life from bruised psyches and broken bones.  Jesus lived with faith in the God of new life, of creative transformation, and he sought to be a vessel for its beauty.  For many people he was.  Not a kingly messiah who rides in victory, but a humble messiah for whom love is part of the spirit of God.  Here is how one Christian priest, the Reverend Teri Daily, puts it in her essay The Downward Mobility of God.

"They expected a Messiah, a real Messiah, who would unite them, deliver them, beat the Romans at their own game.  But what they get is a man who rides in on a donkey, overturns the tables in the temple causing a scene, and barely stands up for himself when arrested by the authorities."  

Christians are a people who want to share in the journey and faith of Jesus.  In the words of the New Testament, we want to put on the mind of Christ (First Corinthians 2:16)  We know that the new life given from heaven belongs to everyone, not to Christians alone.  We know that the blossoming forth of Easter, moment by moment, cannot be contained by a religion, certainly not our own.

In the house of new life there are many rooms and the doors are open. We simply need to leave our egos and defensiveness, our pretenses to perfection and superiority, at the door.  Easter belongs to everyone, and so does the Hallelujah Chorus.  Sing and enjoy.

-- Jay McDaniel