The Heart of Worship

(I write the following with great reluctance because I am writing about worship in churches and I myself am often involved in helping out with worship. Everything I say here I say first to myself.)

The Sunday after returning from India I went to two different church services - after all, having come off three weeks of listening to two sermons in the morning and two in the evening, it seemed odd to hear just one!

The first service I went to had a worship team of six people, plus three people running sound and the equipment that projected the words onto the screen at the front of the room. Keyboards, guitars, bass, drums, vocalists were pounding away relentlessly on the stage. 

Hardly anyone in the congregation was singing.

The songs were unfamiliar for the most part; and the music was pitched to the range of the music team leader, impractically low for 98% of any given congregation. Even the one traditional hymn that was sung had enough variation on the well known tune and timing to make it painful to try to follow.

The second service had piano, keyboard, guitar, bass, drums, vocalists. More of the songs were familiar and the pitch was selected so that people could sing along; but as song followed song, chorus followed chorus in a stream of sound that got muddied and stretched on for far too long, people who had started the morning singing joyfully started to taper off.

And to add insult to injury the words of many of the newer songs spoke little if at all to my soul.  They seemed trite, shallow, focusing a great deal on Me and what I want, need, believe, think.

I was left feeling exhausted, drained, frustrated, irritable.

I was left feeling muted.

The ensuing sense of discouragement I had for the remainder of the day perplexed and troubled me enough that during this past week I have thought every day about what is worship. I have mulled it over with other people - discovering that I am far from being alone in my thoughts on this topic - and have realized that last Sunday is not untypical for services in North America these days.

My observation is that in today's churches' ongoing search to remain relevant, to be au courant and not to lose the gnat-like attention span the younger generations are purported to possess; in their overwhelming desire to "engage" the congregation, what has been lost sight of is the worship of God, one of the chief reasons we are at church in the first place.

The teams have clearly spent hours practising; so much so that they seem to have rehearsed any spontaneity right out of the music. It has often become a performance and they are playing their parts. The music vies with the preaching to see which gets the most airtime rather than the music being the lead up to, the complement to the message. The preacher dares not ask for a closing song that might illustrate the point he has made because it's "not on the list."

What has been pushed to the side is the faith - and the words that describe that faith - of our fathers and mothers, those members of the diminishing older generation who are the cornerstones of the churches we are attending. These people who are spiritual giants, prayer warriors, generous contributors to their churches, now sit there in polite confusion, trying earnestly to sing the new songs that sound so thin, that are so unmelodious to ears who have been accustomed to hearing anthems of praise ring out strongly.

We continue to sit in our seats, following along to words that flash in front of us but rarely opening our mouths. We sit there getting colder, waiting for the "worship" to be over so that we can at least hear the pastor's sermon and find something that touches our souls and restores the joy.

New is not always better. More is often less.

Finally what was troubling me became clear to me when I watched a clip of a song I taped on my little camera. The song leader, Mung No, has no formal training in music. The pianist has taught himself to play the piano. There is no thought of a worship team trying to lead the congregation to worship ...

... because the congregation doesn't need to be coaxed to worship! Their hearts are overflowing with praise and thanksgiving for what God has done for them. Everyone knows the song and almost everyone knows what the song means. No one is self-conscious, but rather is conscious of who God is and how good He is.

This doesn't mean that there are not difficulties and extreme hardships in the lives of many of the worshipers. Mung No has himself undergone terrible suffering and uncertainty in recent years. There are people in that congregation who don't have freedom to worship when they return to their own places. There are people who are sick and can't afford to go to a doctor. There are people who can't afford a candy bar much less a trip home for the summer. There are people who have nothing.

Nothing, that is, except for God. And they rely on Him and lean on His word and promises. They have not forgotten the joy of their salvation.

So with hearts overflowing, they sing willingly and with gratitude while the slightly out-of-tune piano rings out with praise and the song leader holds the reins lightly and with reverence.

Worship teams and leaders have a sobering responsibility in a service. They set the tone of what is to come and can draw individuals together to worship God in unity. They can lead people to the very feet of Christ.

The congregation has a responsibility too. Genuine worship reflects a walk with God that is central to a person's life, not just an added benefit.

Click on the link below. Forgive the poor quality of the video. Turn up the volume.

This song might be considered old-fashioned, maybe. But its words are timeless, its joy is infectious and it contains the heart of worship, which has very little to do with "Me" and everything to do with the One we praise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHEpN4ZDsRw

"This Will Not Be a Good Day for You"

So it's our year end at Carswell. And I still have one outstanding order to be shoved through. The person who signed the order had inadvertently crossed off the name of the service the organization is subscribing to, and he had told me that to make the necessary correction would take quite some time and wouldn't make the March 31 cut-off. Could we please work with what we have?

I try to access an Excel report and my laptop bluescreens.

We finally decide after much to-ing and fro-ing that we can indeed work with what we have.

As I wait for the verdict I call my Dad: he had invited me to lunch because Bronwyn and the boys were visiting. I have to tell him I won't be able to make it as I need to remain close to my phone and computer.

I try to get to a shared drive to pull up a report for my director and my computer bluescreens.

Many phone calls and emails later, the pro forma invoice arrives in my inbox. I check the numbers: they all compute beautifully. I shoot the thing off to the recipient - it's this organization's year end too, and they have to have the invoice in order to process it on last year's books.

A few minutes later, I get an email: the pro forma invoice doesn't have even Carswell's name on it, let alone our address; the invoice is invalid for their purposes. Now it's after 5 p.m. Toronto time.

I hop into my car - my second appointment in Edmonton is put on alert that I am running behind (the first appointment I had already moved until Friday as I saw the writing on the wall earlier this morning!). The roads are not too congested and all is well until I get behind a WIDE LOAD - three semis bearing buildings and rig equipment and blocking two and a half lanes of the QE2 ...

Fortunately my dinner partner is more than gracious and we talk publishing and the Mandarin language lessons she is taking and cats and travel. She notices that I don't have a coat on. Did I mention that in my haste to leave Three Hills I had rushed out to the car, flinging my bag into the back seat and roaring off without so much as a sweater? She graciously lends me a colourful warm shawl to get me through the evening and tomorrow morning. I can return it whenever I see her next.

I check in at the Delta South Hotel, room 1030. By now it's just after 10:00 p.m. And for the next hour and twenty minutes I try to get an internet connection. I call the tech desk. There is nothing they can do. They send a hotel employee to my room with a new cable. She tests it in the room and determines that there IS no internet in the room. We move down to room 1008. No internet connection there either. Huh. She can't figure it out - no one has complained except for me. She calls the front desk. It seems the internet has been down for a couple of hours with no estimated time of restoration. They will try resetting it, though, they assure me, and will call me at room 1030. The employee has to leave because it's now 11:08 and she gets off work at 11:00. She first lets me back into room 1030, where I wait for the call.

And wait. And wait. Finally I call the front desk; Oh, sorry, they say, it's not working. I ask to transfer hotels to the Delta Edmonton Centre. This is month end and year end for us, and I have reports galore to get done. I am already convinced that everyone in sales management and administration at my company already thinks I am either (a) a fool or (b) a fraud when it comes to my endless computer issues. No one will believe that I couldn't get the reports done because the hotel's internet connectivity is zilch. I'd rather move across the river and down town than risk that.

They have reserved me a room at the Delta Edmonton Centre Suites. I get here at 12:28. Before unpacking, I plug my computer in and open up my browser: INSTANT ACCESS!

The whole reason I am recounting all of this is because earlier in the morning someone sent me a link to see what my birth date says about me. Not much, as it turns out. But along with some fairly interesting general facts about this day in years past was this one statement, standing forlornly in its own paragraph: "This will not be a good day for you."

Really? And to think that tomorrow (today, really) is April Fool's Day - I can hardly wait ...

Now, off to work on my monthly report, my roll-up and my forecast for the new month and the new year!

Scenes from the Marketplace, Part 1

After we explored the flower market, we observed the transformation back into the regular scene of market business on the same area that a mere few moments earlier had been a florist's paradise; then we went down some steep, uneven steps to the market proper, which resides underground. There was a flower section spilling irrepressibly from the street into the hall; but as we prowled down narrow passageways and navigated odd little corners, scenes of fecund lushness greeted us at every turn.

The pictures below in no way represent the whole of the vast City Market; but they'll give you a hint of a pleasurable hour whiled away amidst some of the colourful ingredients of gustatory Bangalore.


Observing the morning's activity

Traces of beauty in the ubiquitous rubbish



Mustering what comforts can be found
at the start of a long day

The banana leaf stall: these are used
as disposable plates for the throngs of guests
at wedding receptions and other functions



A makeshift street of herbs



The garlic cart:
Less than $2 per KG!

Setting up for the day
on her little patch of pavement



One of several herb carts.
An enormous bunch of mint costs
less than 25 cents ...




Mint and coriander tossed away as
unsellable is of better quality than
what I get at grocery stores here!



Like Ruth of Biblical times,
gleaning from what has been
dropped or discarded



 

The Market comes to life with a roar of engines ...



View from the top of the stairs looking down
into the entrance hall of the indoor bazaar



A peek down one of the many
produce stall lanes in this market



General produce stall



Chili mountain



Fruit stall - look at those papayas ...



The flavour of the vegetables makes a person
WANT to eat his or her vegetables!



Picking through the potatoes

  

Tomatoes are red all the way
through, and exploding
with flavour









Sorting and grading chilis





The basis for every good curry:
tender onions and fresh "ginger-garlic"

Word of the Month: "Cleave"

From the Oxford English Dictionary:

1 to chop or break apart; to split       
2 to stick fast; to adhere

And on this bleak Friday evening in Three Hills, this is how I feel. I feel numb, not myself. I feel like I've been split wide apart again; yet I feel completely contained, tightly restrained.

I walk into Nilgiris on Thursday night with the oddest sensation that I am slightly outside of my body, that I am seeing the TH for the first time.

I carefully examine the pictures on the piano, reacquainting myself with my grandparents; my Dad holding the baby that was I; two little sisters in a grainy black and white; my nephews; my siblings; my friend Bernadette and I, golden from the sun and the happiness of her wedding day; Brent and Curt; Virgil; George; Maynard. The scribble on the back of the envelope that represents the last song Mum taught me is also there, floating in a broken glass frame. I look curiously at the familiar black and white keys, wondering if I can remember any songs. I don't sit down to try them out. I'm not in need of comfort on this odd evening; I'm more in need of recognition, of familiarity, of a touchstone.

I see a sign from Don and Norma:

For Your Homecoming.

FINALLY

Left in Winter          Back in Spring

But how I feel is exactly the reverse: I have just left an incredibly hot spring and now I'm plunged back into an unexpected winter: snow is actually falling as I look outside. I feel like I'm inside a snow globe, like everything is surreal and I might be flipped over and shaken until the tiny particles float, sparkling in a make-believe world, all around me again.

How can I be pulled so insistently in two different directions and still be whole? Does one have to cleave from something in order to cleave to something else?

Is there any happy medium?

I think of my ethereal friend Meaghan, whom I met this visit to India after a time passage of about 35 years. Her exquisite appearance and delicate demeanour belie a strength of character and a willingness to adapt, to do whatever it takes in order to protect and serve her children's best interests.

I think of my adopted niece, Chloe, starting to feel the pull, starting to know that there are going to be hard choices in the not-too-distant future.

I think of Dad, who is more at home in India than in Canada in many ways, but who is at complete peace with where God would have him to be at any given moment. Dad, who says when arriving both in Bangalore on March 3 and Three Hills on March 23, "It's good to be home, isn't it?"

I wonder afresh what these dual yearnings in my heart will lead to. I wonder if I will always feel incomplete in some sense wherever I go, always intuit subconsciously that something significant is missing from the fabric of my being, always seek to reconcile the elusive elements of what it is to be a Third Culture Kid.

And at the same time I am so thankful that I have the privilege of belonging in some small way to both of these great countries.

How can one word have such diametrically opposed meanings and yet make so much sense?

  

Flag images courtesy of http://www.crossed-flag-pins.com/

The Flower Market

Every morning at 6:00 a.m. a corner of the city is transformed from a somewhat squalid area into a bowery where people come to buy and sell flowers - flowers for hotels, for flower shops, for temples, for export.

And the perfume of the flowers rests gently on every person in the vicinity.

By 8:00 a.m. it's all over and the regular thrust and parry of the street and the market resumes. But oh, those two magical hours where the world is a paradise and even the negotiations being waged seem to be in a kinder tone ...

Thank you, Mr Subbaiah, for this spectacular sensory experience!

Morning chai among the greenery



Lilies at dawn









 

Birds of Paradise

Shades of blue







Daisies!



Buying and selling



Shades of white

 

Roses at 60 cents a dozen ...





Pondering the marigolds



Packing the marigolds



Flowers by the yard ...





Garland merchants



Temple garlands



Orchids

Two of Mum's favourites:
Tuberoses and gladioli

Bags of roses ready to go



Please give a good price:
I need just a few for the house!



Street hawkers loading up their cycles



How's he going to ride this thing?!

Wedding garlands





Flowers for garlands

 



When you have nothing - no
home, negligible mental faculties,
no one to love you - a couple of
flowers can provide you comfort
and beauty and possibly some peace





Tallying up the sales



Children of the Tsunami

It was December 26, 2004. The sea roiled and the third-largest recorded undersea earthquake exploded in the Indian Ocean. Its magnitude was between 9.1 and 9.3, and at almost 10 minutes was the longest observed duration of faulting. Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand, in that order, were the countries the most devastated by loss of life and destruction of the land and economies.

But when it came to displaced persons, India was the most severely affected:

Indonesia          500,000+
Sri Lanka           516,150
India                647,599
Thailand              7,000
Maldives            15,000+

People, in deep shock, roamed aimlessly on the beaches of South India, looking for loved ones, looking for their homes, looking for meaning.

And in this group of people was a large contingent of children orphaned by the monstrous wave, bereft of all they knew of security, of family, of hope. These children stayed on the beach because they had nowhere else to go. They had no one to take them in, to offer comfort, direction. They had not even the basic necessities of life.

Into this tragic situation came the most despicable of humanity, the vermin who prey on vulnerable children. They started collecting these children with promises of homes, of food, of shelter. And they absorbed them into the monstrous underground network of human trafficking and the sex trade that thrives in India.

On the south-west coast of India is a former student of Dad's who now is the President of his own Bible College in a place called Trivandrum. Dr. G.S. Nair saw the dangers these children were in, and he sent students to go and rescue those they could. In the next few days the students brought over 50 children back with them to a makeshift shelter in a nearby village where Dr. Nair had recruited a local pastor and his wife to care for them.



Over the entryway to the Children's Home




The girls greet us

Over the last few years a small orphanage has been built for these children through Dr. Nair's ministry. They are fed; they are educated - the eldest of them started at a local college this year!; they are safe. The reason they could afford the property is that it is next door to a property with a few old graves on it ("At least the neighbours don't complain about the noise!" Nair jokes).

The big girls' room

Conditions are fairly primitive: the children sleep on thin mattresses on the floor and store their belongings in suitcases and makeshift boxes because there is no extra money for luxuries - and 25 bunk beds or a few shelves are considered luxuries when you have to purchase water every day as the well is dry, even in India, where things like basic furniture are relatively expensive.



The pastor's daughter with Shelly,
the girls' matron, in front
of the food supply shelves





And the children themselves suffer from the horrible trauma to this day. One little guy and his even smaller brother couldn't find their parents that December 26. The older brother held onto his little brother's hand as tightly as he could in the battering wind and rain, until the wave viciously wrested their hands apart and the littler boy was flung out to sea before his brother's tortured eyes. Who we would call the "surviving child" still weeps about it over six years later.

The boys singing at prayer time



Candy, handed out by the
pastor's beautiful daughter











These children are cobbling together a life and a family of sorts, a family patched together with the frayed pieces of despair and of loss and of desperation and even of resignation. Debs had brought some mini chocolate treats for them, and before they took any for themselves they made sure there was enough for the children who were away at tuition. They are safe and they are cared for but in their eyes is written the story of parents who don't come to comfort the little girl who screams out in the night; the story of the 14-year-old boy who prays every day that the local MP will change the rules to make things safer for his people. The story of kids who wonder if anyone cares about who they were and sees who they are now.



"What number hair?" (G.S. Nair is
sitting next to Dad.)



One person sees. That evening at prayer time, which is held in the little chapel on the compound, Dad called up a tiny waif who was sitting on the floor in the front row. He hugged the little boy and started tousling his hair. Then he grabbed onto one hair and yanked it out of the child's head. The kid giggled.

"What number hair did I just pull out of your head?" he asked the boy.

"I don't know, Sir," the boy responded uncertainly.

"How many hairs does your friend have on his head?" Dad asked the boys.

"Don't know, Sir," came back the chorus. "Too many to count!"



Saying goodbye. The boy waving
is the one who prays for his
government official every day.



"God knows," Dad said. "It tells us in the Bible that God knows each of us by our names. He knows all about our whole lives. He has even numbered each hair on our heads.

"And the One who knows how many hairs are on your heads, He cares about your lives. He knows your suffering. He loves you.

"He will never leave you. You are in His hand. He will never let you go."

And as we were getting ready to leave, he hugged each child that came up to him.

Almost all of them came up to him.