Music Reflection: How Can I Keep from Singing

For this week, please enjoy the NYC Virtual Choir and Orchestra performing “How Can I Keep from Singing,” a beautiful arrangement and reminder of togetherness though socially apart. 

Lyrics: My life flows on in endless song above earth's lamentation. I hear the real, though far-off hymn that hails a new creation. No storm can shake my inmost calm, while to that rock, I’m clinging Since love prevails in heaven and earth, How can I keep from singing? While though the tempest round me roars, I know the truth, it liveth. And though the darkness round me close, songs in the night it giveth. No storm can shake my inmost calm, while to that rock, I’m clinging Since love prevails in heaven and earth, How can I keep from singing? I Lift my eyes. The cloud grows thin; I see the blue above it. And day by day, this pathway smooths, since first I learned to love it. No storm can shake my inmost calm, I hear the music ringing. It sounds an echo in my soul. How can I keep from singing? How Can I Keep from singing? Keep Singing.

O God, who would fold both heaven and earth in a single peace:

let the design of thy great love

lighten upon the waste of our wraths and sorrows:

and give peace to thy Church,

peace among nations,

peace in our dwellings,

and peace in our hearts:

through thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

With Metta and Peace,
Ryan Keebaugh
www.ryankeebaugh.com

Music Reflection: Down to the River to Pray

This week I would like to offer you a performance by the Schola Diffusa (dispersed choir) in a virtual performance of Down in the River to Pray. A beautiful piece reminding us of guidance, assurance, and stillness as we walk together with God and Christ through our daily living.

A Camino prayer

May I walk this day in the realm of grace, walking with You my feet firmly on your earth-path, my heart loving all as kindred, my words and deeds alive with justice.

May I walk as blessing, meeting blessing at every turn in every challenge, blessing, in all opposition, blessing, in harm’s way, blessing.

May I walk each step in this moment of grace, alert to hear You and awake enough to say a simple Yes.

-Robert Corin Morris

***

Ryan Keebaugh

Music Reflection: Listen

 This morning, I would like to offer you another prayer by Thomas Merton.

Oh God, we are one with You. You have made us one with You. You have taught us that if we are open to one another, You will dwell in us. Help us to preserve this openness and to fight for it with all our hearts. Help us to realize that there can be no understanding where there is mutual rejection. Oh God, in accepting one another wholeheartedly, fully, completely, we accept You, and we thank You, and we adore You, and we love You with our whole being, because our being is Your being, our spirit is rooted in Your spirit. Fill us then with love, and let is be bound together with love as we go out diverse ways, united in this one spirit which makes You present in the world, and which makes You witness to the ultimate reality that is love. Love has overcome. Love is victorious, Amen.

Thomas Merton
The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton

The music, that I share will be slightly different. The piece “Listen” was composed as a soundscape for a new album I recently completed in collaboration with the contemplative poet, Andō. The piece/soundscape is used as a beginning point to accompany your prayer and meditation practice. I hope that it bring you peace and stillness. Click Here to play the recording in the background as you read scripture, sit quietly, or reflect. 

Ryan Keebaugh
www.ryankeebaugh.com

Music Reflection: This is My Song

I am in fear of watching or reading the news. I quake at the thought of listening to NPR, CNN, or opening the news app on my phone. What horrible things will I experience and learn – updates on the infected and death toll due to a world pandemic, political unrest, violence, senseless death, racism and hatred for fellow humans? I do not understand. How we can treat others this way and claim to be guided by God? How can we claim to be followers of Jesus and yet hold hatred in our hearts for others who have different colored skin, worship contrarily, or have a different sexual orientation? Would we still follow Jesus if he were with us, in person, today — a brown skinned man of Jewish background from the Middle East? I believe, given these difficult times, this is something many of us lose sight of.

As I’ve ruminated over these questions during the past months, today I thought I would share a recording of This is My Song by the vocal ensemble, Cantus. You will discover that the tune to this piece is very familiar and is one of the most stirring tunes in the United Methodist Hymnal, the melody known as known as FINLANDIA. The melody comes from a symphonic tone poem by Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) by the name of Finlandia, Op. 26. The lyrics, or poem for the original setting was composed by Lloyd Stone (1912-1993), an American public-school teacher. Lloyd wrote the first two stanzas of “This Is My Song” for its inclusion in the collection, Sing a Tune (1934). During the brief time of peace between two world wars, it was a song of hope for all nations — “for lands afar and mine.” The poet acknowledges love for his own country, but balances that with the love that others feel around the world for their nations, their fellow countrymen, and a deeper connection to one another without concern for political background, creed, or purpose. We are all God’s BELOVED sons and daughters. 

Here is Lloyd Stone’s text:

This is my song, O God of all the nations,
a song of peace for lands afar and mine;
this is my home, the country where my heart is;
here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine:
but other hearts in other lands are beating
with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.
 
My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;
but other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
and skies are everywhere as blue as mine:
O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,
a song of peace for their land and for mine.

Click Here for this amazing recording. I hope you enjoy and find solace in the powerful words and music. May peace and love be with each of you.

Ryan Keebaugh
www.ryankeebaugh.com

Music Relection: The Human One

This morning I offer you a poem of John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892), a Massachusetts journalist and anti-slavery campaigner. His work continues to find a place in modern hymn-books, far beyond the boundaries of the Religious Society of Friends.

Dear Lord and Father of mankind

Forgive our foolish ways!

Reclothe us in our rightful mind,

In purer lives thy service find,

In deeper reverence, praise.

In simple trust like theirs who heard

Beside the Syrian sea

The gracious calling of the Lord,

Let us, like them, without a word,

Rise up and follow thee.

O Sabbath rest by Galilee!

O calm of hills above,

Where Jesus knelt to share with thee

The silence of eternity

Interpreted by love!

With that deep hush subduing all

Our words and works that drown

The tender whisper of thy call,

As noiseless let thy blessing fall

As fell thy manna down.

Drop thy still dews of quietness,

Till all our strivings cease;

Take from our souls the strain and stress,

And let our ordered lives confess

The beauty of thy peace.

Breathe through the heats of our desire

Thy coolness and thy balm;

Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;

Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,

O still, small voice of calm!

The musical selection, this morning, is entitled, The Human One. This piece was commissioned and written for the String Trio, Musica Harmonia, in 2015 and was premiered during the Shenandoah Valley Bach Music Festival in Harrisonburg, VA.  The Human One read as Son of Man in many translations of the Bible, is from a common Greek word, anthropos, meaning human being. This humble work is a meditation on the deity of Jesus with human appearance, characteristics, and challenges. The Human One is God come to earth, made flesh, to live among us within the human experience. 

May you find peace,

Ryan Keebaugh
www.ryankeebaugh.com

Music Reflection: A spark

I would like to offer you this short, yet profound, prayer by the Trappist monk Thomas Merton (1915-1968). The prayer demonstrates unique honesty and truth; a spark I believe we need in this moment of history.

My Lord God,

I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

nor do I really know myself,

and the fact that I think I am following your will

does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you

does in fact please you.

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,

though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though

I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me,

and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. 

 I also leave you with a composition for choir, The Suffering Servant, based upon the text from Isaiah 53. I composed this piece in 2012 in honor of Dr. Jesse Hopkins, Professor of Music at Bridgewater College. Since then, the piece has been performed national as well as internationally by the Western Michigan University Chorale under the direction of Dr. Kimberly Dunn-Adams.  I hope you enjoy it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv7D4J-f_3o

May each of you find love, peace, and rest in the upcoming week.

With Metta,

Ryan Keebaugh 

www.ryankeebaugh.com

Music Reflection: Mother of God

I would like to offer you this prayer by Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1842) that was set for choir by the late Sir John Tavener. The performance recording below was recorded by the Emulate Chamber Ensemble, at Eastern Mennonite University, from 2017. Many of you had the opportunity to hear this performance live when the ensemble visited Grace. Click Here to listen.

As we work through moments that seem dark, having turned our hearts to prayer and repentance, the light of a new dawn begins to break. We are comforted by the image of our sorrowful Mother Mary at the foot of the cross. As we quiet our hearts and pray in thanksgiving for Mary’s intercession on behalf of our suffering. Sir John Tavener’s Mother of God, here I stand is a relatively short excerpt from his incredibly large work The Veil of the Temple. Considered by himself to be his greatest and most important work, The Veil lasts more than seven hours, modeled after the Orthodox all-night vigil service—another image of our journey through darkness to morning light.
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Much like Job, who waited for an encounter with God, we hear God’s voice in our darkest moments—those moments when we are most empty, when divine silence can penetrate our hearts.
 

Mother of God, here I stand now praying.

Before this ikon of your radiant brightness,

Not praying to be saved from a battlefield;

Not giving thanks, nor seeking forgiveness for the sins of my soul, nor for all the souls

Numb, joyless and desolate on earth;

but for her alone, whom I wholly give you... 

 I hope each of you are safe and I hope that we will have the opportunity to see each other face to face, even if at a distance, very soon.

 
With love and peace,\

Ryan Keebaugh

www.ryankeebaugh.com

Music Reflection: Be Still

Silence is terrifying. I think silence is a journey into the wilderness and into the dark and you can’t be sure what you’re going to encounter there. I think many people are rightly wary of silence because we use noise as a distraction and an evasion, and it’s a way of keeping away from everything that’s inside us and the people around us. Silence is a journey right into the heart of your being. This “being-ness” I believe was demonstrated by Jesus’ example; often disappearing into the desert and gardens for silent prayer and meditation. It's a reminder that when you go into the desert, you find demons as much as angels.

Thomas Merton, perhaps the greatest hymnist of silence in the 20th century, speaks to us I think because so often he’s speaking in a voice of rage, and restlessness, and fear. And what he’s keeping company with in his little monastic cell is doubt as much as fear. Or Emily Dickinson, when she is in her little room in Amherst, Massachusetts for 26 years, entertaining terror and death as well as light and epiphany. But I always think that everybody has dark places. They’re an experience in themselves, and those places don’t go away just by pretending they don't exist, or turning in the other direction. Sooner or later we have to confront them, and I found that there’s no more forgiving and benign place in which to confront your dark spaces amidst the clatter of the I-81 freeway or amidst the quiet of a monastery or a beautiful place in nature, and I think the latter is always going to be a better option.

Today I offer you a longer piece of music. This simple piece, be still, is an hour long meditation on Psalm 46:10 “Be Still and know that I am God”. I know that many of us don’t have an hour to sit and listen to one piece of music. But I offer it to you as a moment of prayer and meditation. If, for some of you, who like to listen to music as you fall asleep, it’s an opportunity to allow the minimalist textures gently rock you to sleep. This performance took place earlier this year at the Toyosu Civic Center, Japan. Enjoy!

Click here to view on YouTube

Peace and Blessings to each of you,

Ryan Keebaugh
www.ryankeebaugh.com

Music Reflection: Kontakia

I sit here in the early morning reflecting back over the past 17 weeks since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak and reflect on the changes that have been made to our lives, society, and environment. Not just externally, but internally. There are numerous events in the world that have placed us in a state of turmoil, violence, fear, and trepidation. But during this time have any of us taken the gift of quarantine to investigate our internal being? Have you noticed how the sounds of the world have changed?--how the birds and natural wildlife seem to be singing more clearly every morning. The beautiful stillness and serenity that surround everyday events and life that we have missed due to our busyness and distracted minds?  These are the gifts that I have discovered during my almost Walden experience. There are beautiful reminders, daily, even by the minute, that God brings our attention to. Ones that we often miss because we do not take the time to slow down and treat every moment, opportunity, chore, and item as sacred. There is a blessing here--a reawakening that can come out of our current events. One that we need to grasp and put into practice--the Here and Now.

I offer you one of my compositions as a moment of silence and meditation. This piece was composed for the cellist, Aleks Tengesdal, and was premiered in 2014 at the University of Minnesota. The piece was inspired by my reflections on the kontakia (Greek form of a hymn) prayers from the Greek Orthodox Church for Holy Week.  Sections of the first two prayers for the week are: 

“Behold, the Bridegroom cometh in the middle of the night, and blessed is that servant whom He shall find watching…” 

“Being mindful of the hour of the end, O my soul,

...O hapless one - be watchful”

The piece is built upon the longing for God in my life. Being awakened to the call of the Divine. Being present and experiencing the Divine in every moment, simplicity, and situation. As you listen, close your eyes, if you wish, and be in the present.  

I wish each of you peace and love for the upcoming days. I pray that each of us experience, accept, and demonstrate God’s compassion and love toward ourselves, others, and Mother Earth.

Click Here to watch on Youtube 

(Title of Video: Kontakia by composer Ryan Keebaugh)

WIth Metta, Ryan

www.ryankeebaugh.com

Music Reflection: Amazing Grace

I hope this post finds each of you well. I’ve missed seeing you throughout the week for rehearsals and services.

I’m sure many of you have heard or have seen this amazing rendition of Amazing Grace. But, given the rise of virtual concerts, choirs, and orchestras I thought I would share.

Peace and Love to each of you!
Ryan Keebaugh
www.ryankeebaugh.com