This Week

This week at praxis...Bring in the Noise

O sing a new song to God, 
who has done marvelous things,
whose right hand and holy arm 
have gotten victory. 
God has made known the  victory; 
and has revealed God's vindication in the sight of the nations. 
God has remembered God's steadfast love and faithfulness 
to the house of Israel. 
All the ends of the earth have seen 
the victory of our God. 

Make a joyful noise to God, all the earth; 
break forth into joyous song and sing praises. 
Sing praises to God with the lyre, 
with the lyre and the sound of melody. 
With trumpets and the sound of the horn 
make a joyful noise before God, the most high. 

Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; 
the world and those who live in it. 
Let the floods clap their hands; 
let the hills sing together for joy 
at the presence of God, who is coming 
to judge the earth,
to judge the world with righteousness, 
and the peoples with equity. 
-Psalm 98


The blues help you get out of bed in the morning.  
You get up knowing you ain't alone.  
There's something wise in the world.  
Something's been added by that song.  
This be an empty world without the blues.  
I take that emptiness and try to fill it with something.
-from Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, 
by August Wilson
 


We used to gather at the high window
of the holiness church and, in tip-toe, 
look in and laugh at the dresses, too small
on the ladies, and how wretched they all
looked-an old garage for a church, for pews,
old wooden chairs.  It seemed a lame excuse 
for a church.  Not solemn or grand,
with no real robed choir, but a loose jazz band,
or so it sounded to our mocking ears.
So we responded to their hymns with jeers.

Sometimes those holiness people would dance,
and this we knew sprang from deep ignorance 
of how to rightly worship God, who after
all was pleased not by such foolish laughter
but by the stiffly still hands in our church
where we saw no one jump or shout or lurch
or weep.  We laughed to hear those holiness
rhythms making a church a song fest:
we heard this music as the road to sin,
down which they traveled toward that end.

I, since then, have heard the gospel singing
of one who says I worship with clapping
hands and my whole body, God, whom we must
thank for all this richness raised from dust.
Seeing her high-thrown head reminded
me of those holiness high-spirited,
who like angels, like saints, worshipped as whole
men with rhythm, with dance, with singing soul.
Since then, I've learned of my familiar God-
He finds no worship alien or odd.
-"When Mahalia Sings", Quandra Prettyman
 The forest sings God's praises-
the long exhalation of the earth waking from winter
sings God's praises,
and the mosses hear, and the trees,
the trees with their miraculous white leaves,
like angel wings-they hear,
and add their voices
and the pines whisper it,
and the trailing arbutus carries it over the ground
so that all the forest knows,
singing in silence,
who made them in love and joy,
and they stretch to reach Him,
and I feel their singing
in my hands as I touch them;
in my eyes as I see them;
in my feet as I walk among them.
O God, help me to keep listening.
- Bonita Fogg Smith
  

Questions:


	What sounds are like praising God to you?
	Do you prefer the "stiffly still hands" or the "lurching" in worship?
	What "new song" do you hear?
	How do you participate in the song that is already happening?
	What sounds do you make to praise God?