I promised to review the Super Bowl Ads today. Some of them were funny and clever. The cheetah chasing the guy who let him out of the cage to race the car (here is the problem for me...was it an Audi? a Fiat? Was that a half-second shot of Ryan Gosling driving the car?) was kind of funny. The theme this year seemed to be celebrities in the ads. Elton John, Clint Eastwood, Matthew Broderick, and so on. I probably napped through some other ones. My favorite ad, though, was the one in which the family dog does away with the family cat and then bribes the father to pretend he "didn't see nuthin" with packages of Nacho Cheese Doritos. I am not proud of the fact that this was my favorite. Just tellin' it like it is.
Now I'm gonna tell something else like it is. I have a problem singing in church these days.
I'm an alto, I can carry a tune, I can sort of harmonize when the melody gets out of my range. But I'm having a hard time with the words. (Why don't we call them lyrics in hymns?)
Our hymnal is about as hip as a hymnal can get, but still...there is that image of a Being outside of the Earth watching over us that I don't believe in anymore, and I know the majority of folks at my church don't believe in anymore, and yet we sing things like "His eye is on the sparrow and I know He watches me."
I don't think He does. I don't think He is a He. I don't think He is a She either. Or even an It. More like an Energy. Do Energies watch over us? The metaphors in many of our hymns don't energize me these days.
What does energize me are carefully thought out words, shared in conversation, reflection, writings.
Music is powerful. I love singing old hymns in which I don't subscribe to the lyrics, as long as it's clearly a "sing your favorite old hymn from childhood" experience. I love listening to gospel on the radio. I find dancing energizing in a spiritual sense.
I think I will start sitting some of the hymns out.
About Me
- Kim
- United States
- Getting older is not for sissies. I'm not a sissy, thank goodness. I'm a physical therapist, mom, daughter, sister, friend, and I am looking forward to "what's next?"
6 comments:
That happens to me in hymns and prayers. The old language not only does not fit the new way of seeing but seems like hypocrisy.
Then, for a while, I get over it. Let the melody take me. And consider it all metaphorical language. I go back and forth on this, but I do stop singing or reciting if it freaks me out.
My verification word is "unkinga." Hmm, what would Jesus do? Oh, he did it.
[Jesus evidently did not approve. He gave me a new verification word: "congtoro." Probably some kind of car in a Super Bowl commercial.]
We can recite Unkinga Congtoro when we're at church and don't feel comfortable with the liturgy, or we can sing them as lyrics to the tune of...what? "I sing because I'm happy" .... "un kin ga cong to ro" now I'm just gettin' silly.
I seem to hear melody more than words in general. I always forgot lyrics to everything. Unless, unless, Inna gadda da vida, baby.
Yabba dabba doo.
Are you sure we aren't twinpops separated at birth like fudgesicles? I have been wavering about naming a photo of a tiny tree bud leaves seeming to hold an invisible globe, "He's got the whole world in His hands." I just couldn't do the masculine capitalization thing even if it was only a jpg file.
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