Certainty is Absurd

"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd." --Voltaire

I adore this quote. It sums up what I feel about folks who are SURE they know God's will or are SURE they know what the Founding Fathers meant when they wrote over 200 years ago or they are SURE that the Bible is inerrant or they are SURE their rights are being trampled upon and also sure that THEY aren't trampling on anyone else's rights.

I prefer to exist in the real world--the world of many doubts.  It's so much more fun (and much less absurd) than being certain.

Of course, I might be wrong about this, I'm not certain.  However, rational people are able to change their minds when confronted with facts and reality.

Pax,

Paul

My sermon from Sunday, October 13, 2013 presented to the congregation at University Congregational Church, Wichita, KS

“Why Church? Music!”

Paul Edwin Jackson

Sunday, October 13, 2013

University Congregational Church

THE SECULAR WORD

Without music, life would be a mistake.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.
Plato

Music in the soul can be heard by the universe.
Lao Tzu

THE SACRED WORD

A Psalm for giving thanks. Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing!

Psalm 100:1-5 ESV

What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also.
1 Corinthians 14:15 ESV

Good Morning.  I am a lucky man. I say this often, as I consider myself very fortunate.  I am grateful for so many things in my life that it is difficult to enumerate them all.  And every time I write out a gratitude list, one of the things that always finds its way to the top is music.  I am profoundly grateful for music.  I cannot imagine my life without music. It’s a cliché to say “Music is My Life”.  So I’ll say “Music Shares My Life”. And I share my life with music. I’d like to spend a few moments this morning contemplating this strange and wonderful part of our human experience—music.  Music begins when mere words alone cannot convey the message.

Let’s start with some biology—I taught anatomy and physiology at the Wichita Area Technical College for many years, so bear with me as I work us through a few things.  There is a basic biological reason that we love music and that music is able to have such a profound effect on us.  This biological response also explains why music crosses all cultures and has the same effect on all humans.  Dopamine. Dopamine is a powerful chemical that our brains produce in certain circumstances.  There is a definitive link between music, both making it and listening to it, that causes our brains to release this important neurotransmitter.  Dopamine.  Dopamine is the same substance that puts the joy and pleasure into sex, the thrill into certain legal and illegal drugs and the warm feeling and bonding response that a woman and her child experience during breast-feeding.

So we’re listening to music, a favorite selection, some jazz, or Beethoven or Katy Perry, and as we listen there is a slow release of this pleasure chemical, dopamine.  It infuses our brains and it causes an emotional response—good feelings, security, warmth, pleasure.  As the music builds, so does the level of dopamine (this is all science, by the way, not opinion—see me for my notes if you like).  So the dopamine levels build as the anticipation levels in our brains build.  We’re listening to the song, tapping our foot and here comes our favorite part and in that moment, say when the chorus finally gets to the fourth movement in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, The Ode to Joy section, and your brain releases a rush of dopamine in response to the musical climax.  There can be a moment of sheer bliss—sheer joy—sheer gladness at being alive and hearing that song and feeling your body and your mind bright and clear with pulse-pounding glory.

So that’s a little of the science behind our response to music—but science only illuminates the what and the how. There is so much more.  What about the memories triggered by a particular piece of music.  Your brain is once again engaged and certain cues are picking up memories from your past—that song was the first song we danced to as a married couple, that song was in a mix-tape so-and-so gave me years ago—I wonder what he’s up to these days?—or, the comment I hear more and more in this new position here at UCC—I want that song at my funeral.  The “place-holder” that many songs serve as in our lives.

Music serves numerous roles in our lives.  It is background music that can keep us going throughout our day with rhythm and melody and lyric. But what about the cynical use of music as a device to influence your purchasing decisions or how some organizations use the dopamine/brain link to manipulate a specific response to reinforce their message?  The Germans in power during World War II knew this effective and sinister function of music well—they would have long periods of marches and anthems and music designed for public consumption.  About 45 minutes of this can put an average human into a trance-like state with Theta brains waves oscillating at the perfect balance for the input of new information.  It would relax the conscious part of the brain and allow the unconscious part to receive their messages of hate and control without any conscious reasoning.  This is a form of brain-washing and smart entrepreneurs use it to this day to relax your “aware” self into a state more pliable and easier to ‘sell” to:  whether the product is the solution to your lack of “abdominal muscles” (or as I like to call, ab-solutions) or perhaps the product is a belief system that runs counter to everything else your rational mind perceives as true. You may know for a fact that science unequivocally holds evolution as a basic, fundamental piece for the study of biology—it is NOT a theory in standard parlance, but a Scientific Theory, and yet you still believe that God smote the ground and out came us perfectly formed humans.  A good brainwashing can help you live with these irreconcilable differences. Now, it is always dangerous to use the term brainwashing, because there are plenty of people who think I am brainwashed—but I am confident that my brain has never been washed.  It is as unwashed as the masses.  It’s important to remember in this instance that knowledge IS power and the more we are aware of potentially sinister motives, the more we can resist being manipulated in such sly, subtle ways.

This same manipulation can also be used in a beneficial manner: think about how the skillful composers of film music use melody and orchestration to evoke specific responses from their audiences.  You don’t hear a blaring march during the tender death scene.  You hear violins and harps or a solo piano.  

Think about the music we make up here on a weekly basis—40 or so individuals gather and push air from their lungs over their vocal cords to produce sound waves that then travel through this soupy air to land in your ear and trigger a variety of responses from you. You didn’t know there was so much going on here did you?  Making music does not come easy.  For those of us in the choir, who have made a habit of this, it comes easier than it might for one who hasn’t done it routinely, but it’s still difficult.  The challenge of making sure that you are on pitch with your neighboring singers, helping each other get the rhythms right, or the pronunciation of the Latin text correct, or any other of the myriad problems encountered by a large choir engaging with the repertoire of great composers. I should note that Helen’s skill at the piano greatly helps in keeping us together and on track and focused. We take little tiny dots on a page and make them make sense in a larger, choral whole. We do it—and we laugh—we laugh a lot—in fact, it’s a particular testament to Bob Scott’s leadership that we have such a good time in the choir and still manage to produce meaningful music for our worship each week. Bob’s good humor and skill and Helen’s craft are such a refreshing combination and that makes singing in this choir such a joy.
But it’s more than that.  Music is not produced in a vacuum.  Music is community.  Last week Robin taught us to look at that word in a different way. The “wholeness” of community.  The unity of the group.  Belonging to one and another and to the greater world.  It gets us out of ourselves. It helps us be less selfish and much less “me first!” It makes us think about the rest of the world and our place in it. When this assembled community pulls into our lungs this shared air and expels notes and harmony and rhythm, is that not a metaphor for God?  The very words we use for respiration and inspiration have, at their core, the word spirit—spiritus.  Are we not engaging the “spirit” at its source when we breathe the same air and sing the same song and in that one moment become unified in purpose and unified in community?

The choir is just one example of many of a specific community within our larger church community.  I challenge each of you to find your place here at UCC.  Is it in the choir? See Bob and we’ll find a place for you? Do you want an opportunity for more study and meditation? Let Robin or me know and we’ll help you make it happen.  Do you have an idea for an outreach? Come see me and we’ll work with the Outreach board and help you put your mission into motion. Church happens because of community.  And we need each of you in our community.

For me, singing in this choir is one of the highlights of my life.  It is one of the times I feel closest to God. I feel like God is happiest with me when I am singing.

 It also, in me, reinforces that there IS a God. And that God loves music.  And that God really loves us when we make music.

AMEN

My first sermon....ever

Stories Matter

Paul Jackson, Sunday, August 18, 2013

“...What happens is of little significance compared with the stories we tell ourselves about what happens. Events matter little, only stories of events affect us.” 
― Rabih Alameddine, The Hakawati

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself, and what I assume you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”

--Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Story telling is as old as humanity and older than written words. It predates history itself and intuitively we know it be an incredibly useful tool. I don’t remember all the details of a lecture, but if the professor used a story to convey her idea, you can bet I’d repeat the story and find the nugget of her teaching therein.  There’s a reason Jesus of Nazareth used the story form known as parable to teach his followers—they are pithy, easy to remember and impart information with an emotional component that engages us in deeper understanding—most of us can tell the story of The Good Samaritan or The Prodigal Son.  Our stories are familiar and comforting.  Who here doesn't have a favorite family story that they love to share.  Or a story that takes a special place of importance at family events.  I recall with great fondness Christmas Eves in my childhood.  After we had eaten and before we could open any packages, my Grandfather would be called upon to read the Lukan Christmas Story--you know the one; it begins “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.” (Interesting that taxes form the beginning of this great story, but that’s a topic for another day.)  Granddad, an ordained minister in the American Baptist tradition, would take his worn bible in hand and in that powerful voice of his, tell us this world-changing story.  Well, we were kids, and it was Christmas Eve, so at the time all we could think about was, “Hurry up!  Skip to the end! Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know, we know-- blah blah blah”.  Thinking about it now, what I wouldn’t give to be able to hear him tell me that story once again.  But, through the hazy fog of memory, I can recall this event and retell it to you.  It’s part of my story.  It’s part of who I am and who I've grown to be and how I now find myself as your new Director of Christian Life. 

So just how did I get here?  I’ll spare you all of the details, but I thought it might be useful for you to know some of my story and how you, this congregation and church and choir, have played a part in my story.  And how my story is part of our story and how our story continues.

My path to faith has been rocky, circuitous and fraught with pitfalls, hubris, certainty, doubt, passion, boredom, and I am sure similar to many of your paths to faith.  We don’t come to this place easily.  We have many more questions than we will ever have answers; and uncertainty and doubt threaten to undermine us every step of the way.  And I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Would you?  That’s part of our story—how we got here.

I grew up in the Southern Baptist tradition at Pleasantview Baptist Church in Derby, Kansas….America.  I remember going to Sunday school and memorizing scripture and singing a song about all of the books of the bible.  I recall Vacation Bible School and grape Kool-aid.  Forever, the taste or smell of that particular chemical in grape Kool-aid transports me to the hot courtyard of that Baptist Church down there on Buckner Street.

I also remember the particular dread I always felt during the alter call.  I tried to make myself as invisible as possible, so that no one would notice that, once again, this week, Paul Jackson DIDN’T go forward.  He didn't dedicate his life to Christ.  He didn’t agree to accept Jesus as his personal-lord-and-savior and be born again.  Some of you are squirming right now because you remember those moments all-too-well. If you’ve never experienced this particular brand of “worship” let me assure you that you are missing nothing.  Well, nothing but lots and lots of guilt and plenty of faith traditions serve that up on a weekly, if not daily, basis—so, you get the idea.

Eventually I did go forward and complete the expected rite of passage of being “born again”.  I was baptized by Brother Berry in the full immersion style peculiar to Southern Baptists—there was a huge painting of the River Jordan behind the baptismal pool and I wore white and it was cold and wet and, finally, done.  My family was extremely proud of me—but nothing really changed.  I still went to Sunday School and I still had grape Kool-aid in the courtyard.  But I don’t recall looking at the world any differently other than being grateful that I didn't have to endure the guilt during the alter call any more.  It was someone else’s turn to squirm.

My parents divorced when I was 11 or 12—I know I've been told the date, but it was more of a season in my life—the separation and dissolution of the family I had always known.  I remember that mom went to Brother Berry and specifically asked him if there was a place for her and her children at his church.  I remember mom telling us that Bother Berry assured her that, indeed, the church would care for us as if nothing had happened.  And I remember the next Sunday, when Brother Berry preached on how a divorced person could not be seen as worthy in the sight of God.  And I remember my mother gathering up her children, in the middle of the sermon, and marching all of us out of that church—never to return.  I’m still incredibly proud of mom for this powerful act of defiance.

Thus began my years of wandering.  Someday I might write down the entire journey, but because I don’t want to wear out my new welcome just yet, I’ll skip to the important part.  Let’s just say that I eventually found my way to Woodlawn United Methodist Church in Derby and was embraced by the youth, the congregation and the ministers.  In fact, it was this relationship with the good Methodists that allowed me to attend Southwestern College in Winfield where I founded a series of important friendships that last to this day.  I will always remember and honor the good people of Woodlawn United Methodist—their love for me was evident not only in words, but in their selfless acts of kindness shown to me and my family.  I can still feel their residual embrace and it is only now, with the focus that time gives us, that I recognize the blessing and benefit that being involved with that congregation gave me. I am forever indebted to them--one of the best chapters in my story.

But I still wandered—I went to Lawrence and attended KU for a period of time and while there, as many young people do, I fell away from church.  I would only attend during friends’ weddings or at other expected times, but I never really gave it much thought.  It wasn't important to me.

When the circumstances of my life brought me back to Wichita in the early 1990’s, I found myself attending, once again, a Methodist church.  College Hill United Methodist Church, to be exact—and once again I found myself blessed by what seemed an insignificant choice.  Because of chance, Providence, Fate or God, I landed at College Hill at the height of George Gardner’s ministry.  If you don’t know the man of whom I speak, suffice it say that his was a voice of Progressive Christianity in the wilderness that spoke to me, and many others, with its passionate embrace of all people and all faiths and all social classes.  Now, George had his faults, we all do, but his theology sparked a fire in me that has smoldered for years.  I sang in the choir at College Hill and enjoyed being a member of this progressive congregation.  I worked with the youth and was a sponsor on one of their trips to Chicago.  I loved the work I did with this church.

In the summer of 1995 I sang at a friend’s wedding here at UCC.  I met Pat Jones, he was the accompanist, and after the first time I sang for him, he asked me if I had a church job.  I said I never had, that I had only volunteered at College Hill.  He explained to me how the music staff system worked here at UCC and how that level of professionalism allowed Bob Scott and others to offer a music program of consistency and strength that an all-volunteer choir finds difficult to achieve.  I was intrigued and said yes when Pat asked me to audition for Bob Scott that next Sunday for your tenor soloist position.

I showed up for the service and sat right back there (second row from the back, left side, near the aisle) and went up after the service to be introduced to Bob Scott and to sing for him.  I was scared to death.  Pat was encouraging and we launched into a verse of “Be Thou My Vision”, one of my favorite hymns.  Bob smiled that big smile of his and hired me on the spot. 

Singing in this choir and being a part of this congregation has changed me in profound ways.  The exposure to thoughtful theological inquiry has made my faith more meaningful to me.  Singing with these talented musicians on a regular basis has allowed my gifts to reach a skill level I doubt I would have achieved otherwise.

As a member of this church and of this choir I have shared in your lives.  I have sung at your weddings and mourned at your funerals and weekly I sit right up there in the tenor section and look at your lovely faces as we worship together.  And that’s not going to change; I will still lift up my voice in celebration with Bob and the choir and continue to wear a musical hat, as it were, for this church. Serving you in this capacity has given me a clearer vision of what Jesus meant by serving one another—it has given me a glimpse of what is meant by living in “right relationship”.

Now I am stepping into a new role: Director of Christian Life. Wow—that’s quite a title.  But I think it captures all we want this position to be striving towards: comprehensive educational programs that cover the life-span of our entire congregation, a focal point for all of our growth efforts and someone to assist Robin with the care of this dynamic congregation.  To that end, with the Deacons’ approval and support and Robin’s mentorship, I have applied for the Lay Ministry Program offered through our affiliation with the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches.  Check the newsletter for more information about this exciting chapter in our lives together.  We've recently announced the upcoming fall season educational programs and there are numerous ways for you to engage with your theology, our congregation and this community.

Walt Whitman writes in A Song of Myself: “I sing myself, and celebrate myself, and what I assume you shall assume for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you”.  I've been singing myself and telling a bit of my story and I hope it helps you understand a little better what has brought me to this point in my life.  In our lives together.  I think it’s a pretty good story and I look forward to the next chapters and plot twists and wonderful complications that make our lives richer and more meaningful.

So, what’s your story?  How did you get here—to this place—in your life?  I want to know and I will be asking in the coming months.  It’s important that we reflect upon where we all have been—it may give us a clearer direction of where we want to go.  We might have a gut-feeling or intuit our direction, but careful reflection upon our past faith journeys can provide us with important insight--because your story matters.  It matters to all of us.

I look forward to serving you in this new capacity.  Thank you for the opportunity and may our creator God bless us all as we continue our story.

Director of Christian Life

My new job title reads "Director of Christian Life".  What does that mean, you may ask?  What exactly do you believe in, Paul?

Easy to answer--I believe in us.  In humanity.  And I believe we can make this thing work.  We need help and we must stop vilifying the "other". And we must never be content with the easy way out.  I believe we can all pursue our lives as we best see fit without harming others or our world.

I also believe that a great man named Jesus of Nazareth came to our attention in the midst of a Roman occupation of his homeland.  I believe this radical man had much to teach us.  And we still have much to learn.

I believe that ultimately it comes down to this: to those in power and those sure that they belong, Jesus would ask, "Are you sure?"  And to those with no power and voice and sure that they didn't belong, Jesus would ask of them as well..."Are you sure?".  His stance was that everyone was welcome to the table of God (and therefore the table of life and community) and that no one was to be excluded.  His church was to be founded on inclusivity, not dogma or hierarchy or creed.  I doubt he would recognize most modern churches.  For that matter, I doubt most modern churches would notice, let alone welcome, him.

So, back to my job title.  A Christian Life is one of community, exploration of theology, care for one another, and worship of a God that fits your expectations.  Life is rich with experience and joy and beauty.  It is meant to be lived fully and with each other.  It is not a contest.  It is not a battle.  It most certainly is not to be missed.

Pax,

Paul

First week--New Job

I've just finished my first week as University Congregational Church's new Director of Christian Life.  What a great week it has been!  I was able to get up and running first thing on Monday and I really haven't stopped since.  Duane and I just finished up at one of our congregant's houses getting some grab-bars installed for her as she recovers from recent surgery.  I spent part of the week meeting with various congregational leaders and discussing ways in which this new staff position (myself) can help them out.  I having begun outlining our fall educational offerings and we are making plans for our all-church ice cream social on Sunday, August 4th from 4-7 or so.

I'll post more as I get better acquainted with this new job and all it entails; however, given that I have hardly posted at all in the past 5 years, anything is an improvement!

Pax,

Paul

Christmas Carol 2012

On Sunday, December 23, 2012, we closed the latest edition of our musical version of A Christmas Carol.  I wrote a new song for Jacob Marley, The Weary Journey, and Ray Wills, Broadway, Film and TV veteran, took it and made it an thrilling moment.  Overall, it was a stronger show--mostly because we had 4 more performers this year, but also because we weren't flying by the seat of our pants.  The production team knew better what we wanted to accomplish and we had last year's experience to draw from.

It was a beautiful show and very well received by our Wichita audiences.  It's time for this version to obtain a life outside of Wichita!

Happy New Year!

Paul