Praising God for What We Cannot See
Reflections on my first songwriters retreat (new songs about God & nature)
What’s good everyone,
Last week I had the pleasure and privilege of participating in my first songwriters retreat, which took place on the beautiful Sister Grove Farm in Greater Dallas. Hosted by Creation Justice Ministries, a spin-off of the environmental work from the National Council of Churches, several musicians and lyricists gathered to compose new church music for CJM’s Earth Day 2025 resources that will be sent to their network of churches nationwide. (Here’re the resources for 2024 if you’re interested.) Our collective comprised the lyricists and composers Tommy Graham, Mark A. Miller, Linda Thompson, Ken Medema, Darrell Adams, and John and Alyssa Creasy. We made some heat across genres, from Folk to Gospel to SATB English Cathedral hymnody. I’m excited for you to hear those tunes next year once they’re properly recorded and released.
In one of our educational sessions, thought leader Brian McLaren, who just released his book Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage For a World Falling Apart, walked us through four possible scenarios that humankind faces in the coming decades, ranging from total human collapse on one end of the spectrum to possible survival due to significant adjustment on the other. McLaren charged us to write songs that churches can sing to reckon with these severe ecological problems. He lamented that churches oftentimes use music and preaching to whisk congregants away to a fairyland we don’t live in - either a fairyland heaven where we finally have no more need for earth the instrument, or a fairyland earth where God sustains our status quo.
McLaren helped me see that musicians are incentivized by commercial market forces to write worship music that ignores the earth in her pain. What circulates most widely throughout the various Christian circles I’ve known is music that gives us no concrete invitation into protesting and lamenting human degradation of the earth. Instead of only choosing to praise God for what is beautiful in the world, God invites the church to courageously praise God for the world we cannot bear to look at, the world that groans from (the wealthy’s) extraction and dumping. We praise God for giving us this land to tend to, and for God being gracious to us despite our excess and neglect. And in our praise, we remember that even though this is the world we cannot bear to look at, it is the world that looks at us.
What songs about God help you look at the earth and hear her groan? (Feel free to answer in the comments. I’m especially curious about Gospel songs.)
One of the songs we wrote included lines about trees we need to plant whose shade we’ll never enjoy. To be sure, this is hardly a novel concept - people have been tending to the earth for millennia with future generations in mind (and here on Turtle Island, Native Americans are chief to thank for that). However, often our church music centers what we are experiencing right now and does not contend with earth-bound horizons that reach way beyond what we’ll ever personally know. To that end, I relished the opportunity to write a song about that future we will never see but that my baby Lydia’s grandchildren will (should she have them).
What would happen in our churches if we corporately sang beyond our lifetimes?
I once came across an IG meme that quipped about people commending environmentalists for finding work that fit their passion, as if our relationship to the rest of nature is a nice-to-have. This Notes of Rest journey invites me - invites us all - to contend deeper still with resting with the earth. That means using music not as barricade from the rest of creation but as magnet to draw us into deeper intimacy. May we offer up songs of praise and lament with the trees and stones. They’ll cry out regardless, but it’s best we join them.
To close, here’s an excerpt from Psalm 96, one of my favorites. I read this during our composing sessions:
10 Say among the nations, “The Lord is king!
The world is firmly established; it shall never be moved.
He will judge the peoples with equity.”
11 Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;
let the sea roar and all that fills it;
12 let the field exult and everything in it.
Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy
13 before the Lord, for he is coming,
for he is coming to judge the earth.
He will judge the world with righteousness
and the peoples with his truth.
abundantly,
Julian
What’s Next
Sept 30 Notes of Rest Fellowship Working Group (Paid Members Only, online at 7.15p central)
Oct 4 Jazz Institute of Chicago’s Next Generation (Chicago)
Oct 7-8 Notes of Rest at UMC Missouri Annual Conference Boundaries Training (Columbia, MO)
Oct 8 Emma Dayhuff at The Jazz Showcase (Chicago)
Oct 12 Notes of Rest at Lawndale Christian Health Center Retreat (Williams Bay, Wisconsin)
Oct 20 Julian Davis Reid & Circle of Trust at Midwest Methodist Foundation
Oct 26 Julian Davis Reid & Circle of Trust at St. Martin Episcopal (Chicago)
Nov 2 Julian Davis Reid & Circle of Trust at Cafe Coda (Madison, WI)
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Save the Dates
The Last Days of Cabrini Green Audible Originals Podcast (I scored the soundtrack) (Nov 14)
Feb 22-23 Black Contemplative Prayer Summit - Notes of Rest on Feb 23 (Virtual)
First-ever Notes of Rest Overnight Retreat - May 30-31, 2025 (Oregon, IL)
So fun!!!
Looks and sounds like fun! I absolutely love Ken!