It was rainy in Nashville on Friday, but my friend Donna and I enjoyed attending a dialogue between Janis Ian and Miriam Therese Winter at Scarritt-Bennett Center. The event was heralded as "When Worlds Collide: Two Jersey Broads on Life, Love, and the Holy Spirit."
Janis Ian, whose first release was Society's Child, has won two Grammy Awards — the first in 1975 for her song At Seventeen, and the second in 2013 for Best Spoken Word Album for Society's Child: My Autobiography. This year, she beat out Michelle Obama, Bill Clinton, Ellen DeGeneres, and Rachael Maddow, saying in her acceptance speech, "I keep thinking there's a punch line in here somewhere. An ex-president, a first lady, and three lesbians walk into a bar."
Miriam Therese Winter (called "MT" by colleagues, students, and friends) is Professor of Liturgy, Worship, Spirituality and Feminist Studies at Hartford Seminary. She has a penchant for exploring new and more authentic ways of living faith fully in a constantly evolving universe. That sounds like all scholarship and research, but she is at heart a singer of songs whose recording Joy is Like the Rain went Gold in the 1960s. Here's a professional version of the song, and here's a one-minute piano version.
It was the best of songs, it was the worst of songs.
But it was my song.
I was twelve years old, sitting in the back seat of our station wagon with my brother beside me and my father's guitar in my lap. I'd picked my time carefully; we were headed from our home in New Jersey to my grandparents' apartment in the Bronx, so I had at least forty-five uninterrupted minutes to get my parents' full attention and play them the first song I'd ever written, "Hair of Spun Gold."
Paradoxology. About twenty years ago, this strange, wise, wonderful word appeared in a flash of insight and took up residence in me. I did not know what to do with it, so I let it settle there in the soft underbelly of my spirit. Like a sacred talisman infused with shamanic energy, this shard of the Holy Spirit, cautiously yet consistently, contributed to what I now would call a radical change in perception. It helped me see what I needed to see and encouraged me to embrace it.
It all came together for me one day in a classroom filled with students. While speaking about something I do not recall, I heard myself pose these questions:
- Why are the liturgies I celebrate called paraliturgy?
- Why are the biblical stories I tell called paraphrase?
ANYWAY
A version of this list of sayings is attributed to Mother Teresa, though it appears to have originated with a college student named Kent M. Keith in a 1968 pamphlet titled “The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council.” Emily, who did her research, brought copies last week to everybody in our Bible study class.
People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest, people may deceive you.
Be honest anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.
Give your best anyway.
In the final analysis, it is between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.
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