00:00:09.470 - 00:00:43.310

And having grown up in San Antonio, I had never before attended one of these mid-winter lectures. It's surprising to me because my dear mother has been coming to these literally my entire life. But you see, I've spent most of my adult life outside of Texas, so I'd never before had the blessed experience of coming to Midwinters. But I did consider going to Austin Seminary when I was an undergraduate in religion, when I was looking at Masters of Divinity programs to prepare myself for ordained ministry.

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In my second year of college, I looked at publications by Austin Seminary faculty. I looked at the information about Midwinter lectures. I perused the catalog, but here's what happened.

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I looked at all the course offerings Austin Seminary had to offer, and I felt thoroughly intimidated. What I beheld from all of this information was that this was a place of such high caliber, a place of such excellence, that I felt really intimidated. wish I had gone to one of our discovery weekends or one of these mid-winter lectures, for there I may have realized that by coming here in person I would have learned that excellence does not demand intimidation. Excellence

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Excellence does not mean that we need to feel intimidated. I've not yet learned that lesson, but you can see it by coming to Midwinners because you experience it in these speakers. You experience it in their excellence in their craftsmanship, excellence in their achievements, while at the same time, neither do they intimidate. Craig Hella Johnson is one such excellent individual who exemplifies this.

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He is excellent in all of the ways that we deem extraordinary. He has great talent as a musician, recognized by the Texas Legislature as the Texas State Musician of 2013, being one of only two classical musicians awarded this honor in its 11-year history. He's an excellent conductor and composer, as seen in his multiple Grammy awards and nominations for the musical productions of his group, Conspirare. He is bright and academically accomplished, having earned his doctorate from Yale and taught at various universities across the country.

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And once his composition Considering Matthew Shepard gets out, he may very well become a household name. And I do want to announce that you should mark your calendar for a couple of weeks because Considering Matthew Shepard will debut here in Austin at the Austin Independent School District's Performing Arts Center February 20th and 21st. You'll want to mark your calendar for that big debut. There are just too many awards and accolades of Craig's to mention, but in all of them we see again and again that here is a person of excellence.

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But if you have the privilege of hearing him present yesterday, you also know that he is not intimidating. In fact, he is accessible And he invites our engagement. He makes of himself fully available to his hearers, bringing all of his very self to his performance and his musical composition and in his description of his work.

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So much so that rather than his excellence instilling any kind of intimidation, it emboldens us. His courage makes us brave. We are so very grateful for all that you bring to us, Craig, and we look forward to hearing from you again this morning. Thank you so much.

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That was beautiful. So great to be with you all again today. Absolutely thrilled. It's been a joy for me.

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And I got to come early to hear Cheryl, which I needed to come and get grounded, and that was a total gift. And to be on the panel with such beautiful colleagues and friends yesterday, and the whole circle of participation was so rich. So yeah, I wanted to say at the outset today, too, I know I invited many of you who are either in the area or who might come back. to come and hear this performance, but I shared nothing of the details with you yesterday.

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So I was so glad Cheryl mentioned that. And yeah, February 2021, and I probably, I often will do this. I'll kind of dive right into the details as I shared my story with you of this piece, but it didn't kind of even say at the outset what it was actually. And as a choral musician, I'm

00:05:36.190 - 00:06:05.110

have been long in love with the oratorio tradition. So the great works of Bach and Mendelssohn, Elijah and St. Paul and all the big masses, the B Minor Mass and the Verdi Requiem, all these big stories, Elgar, Dream of Gerontes, these big stories that were such a part of the choral tradition, but in a way, they're a dying part of the choral tradition, really. We don't tell those big stories as often, and you know, we've kind of become the

00:06:05.750 - 00:06:24.430

iPod shuffle attention span sort of people now. And so our listening is shorter. And I somehow just feel stubborn, like we're going to sit and listen to a longer story. I shared with a few of you, just yesterday, I mentioned my dad at the panel yesterday.

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His memory is with me a lot. He died in June, and I'm missing him terribly. He was a preacher. So I was just saying yesterday how fun it is to be around all you preachers.

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or preacher types, you know, preacher words or preacher wannabes. And I was thinking of him, especially yesterday, just because he used to always talk about, his sermons were beautiful, and he was just always, he had three points, and usually they were alliterative. So there would be bones, bananas, and blessings, and all of us knew kind of how those were formatted.

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And they were often, I think by some standards, some people might say long sermons. And sometimes they'd go a healthy 30, 35 minutes. And he would talk sometimes at dinner, you know, without any sort of sense of real awareness that it is too long for some people. But he said, Oh, you know, these young seminarians and their little 15-minute talks.

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I was thinking he would enjoy this luxury of a whole hour. So anyway, Dad, thanks for all the gifts and thank you for... So anyway, I think this oratorio... And I'm just calling it that.

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It's a new, it's an American kind of piece, this American oratorio, because it's stylistically quite diverse and hopefully there's a thread running through this that, many threads that can keep it really feeling as a cohesive whole, but it represents the many strands of our listening and our lives right now too. And And I had one musicologist friend dub it a fusion oratorio, which I said, I can accept that. That sounds great.

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So it's kind of a fusion oratorio. Different styles, as I say. There's chant. So the tenors and basses are chanting in this.

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There's folk song. There's choral movements. There's things I consider really operatic arias, and sort of a wide stylistic variety. Yeah, so yesterday, at least in my framing of thinking for this, yesterday was about questions and listening for the essential questions.

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And perhaps you had a moment to consider for yourself if you bring to this day or to your life right now, is there an essential question? For me, after a long period of what I would call sort of a decade of disillusionment with sort of my old ways of thinking, my old ways of believing, even my ideas of belief, or a need for belief at all, and an interest in growing towards experience. But I called it a decade of divine disillusionment in retrospect.

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And over time, because of the invitation of a couple of beautiful teachers, my My essential question really became, who am I? And that was my question of inquiry that I spent much time with and still am sitting with that and it's part of my inquiry with this piece. Who am I?

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What am I? What are we? To really come to know myself as being, as that divine radiance, as this body form of Craig even a manifestation of divine fabric, and of course absolutely true for each one of you too, but we bring our significant essential questions that burn in us.

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Today, I might frame this conversation around wounds, and I called it the wound of love and the flame, the flame of love, and tell you some more about Matthew. Before I do that, I also, I thought maybe we could just spend a couple of minutes, I won't play the entire piece, but I thought maybe we could just play a little bit of music of Arvopert. Cheryl was talking this morning, too, about that willingness to one, for example, there was a question raised about music and worship, and I'm taking it out of context and using it loosely here, but the sense that we do our preparation as we come to prepare for our part in worship.

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But then also be willing to move with the Spirit, as there is a leading, and... And I felt really this morning, I just kept hearing Arvo Perret as a space maker for us, the composer Arvo Perret, the Estonian, and a beautiful piece, Spiegel and Spiegel, sort of mirror to mirror. And we had it on a CD that we had prepared, but didn't know we'd need. So I thought we'd maybe just listen just to a couple of minutes, just as you reflect on either the question of your questions internally,

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And then about kind of a source and a wound from which we come that might have informed some of our paths. So we'll just listen and use this space in whatever way support for you. . We could even just continue with that for another several minutes, yeah?

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I thank God for the gift of that awareness in Arvo Perret. Arvo Perret, a great Estonian composer who was writing in a 12-tone style, a very gifted as a structuralist, as a 12-tone composer, serial composer, excuse me. And at one point, as he was having a bit of a crisis of what is my voice, kind of asking that who am I question, what am I doing, he heard church bells.

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He heard church bells, just simple sound of bells. He was present to those bells. Something in the ringing of those bells called him to a simplicity. said, his entire way of writing, he completely abandoned 12-tone composition and began writing in what is a very present moment awareness.

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What Cheryl was talking about this morning, that God dwells in this present moment, this is where God works, not in chronos time, before, after, where my thoughts take me, future and past, in this moment. And all of a sudden, you know, what is that music, that space that still transmits? I mean, I wrote that many years ago. And I thank God for the gift of that cellist who could be so present in that line, to be willing to be so simple, to step out of mind, to not need to be all that.

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You know, that's not a virtuosic cello line. It's one that simply requires presence. For the pianist, not a terribly virtuosic piano part. This part's scary, because you've got to take it so gentle.

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I've played that piece a number of times, and you just go down like, oh, please don't be too heavy. But thank God for that pianist who's willing to be simple. Thank God for that minister who's willing to breathe in between. phrases when standing in the pulpit, or to listen before speaking.

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And there's a great power when we gather, when we have these pointers, like our Ropard can point so beautifully, to remind us of one of our questions. I know for that music simply says, Oh, I'm reminded of my question. It also had a moment, and a few of you were feeling things too, I could see and experience, connecting to I'll say for today's context, the wound, connecting to the wound.

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That may have a name or it may not have a name. I'm going to connect. I'm going to change just a simple word in this poem by Hafiz in these very alive translations from the Persian, from Daniel Ladinsky. Some of you might know this, but I'm just changing one word for our purposes today.

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Don't surrender your wound so quickly. Let it cut more deep. Let it ferment and season you as few human ingredients can. Something missing in my heart tonight has made my eyes so soft, my voice so tender, my need of God absolutely clear.

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So this wound that you have, that I have, it has specific names for each of us, but it is the wound of love that cuts in, that somehow helps us fall to our knees at times in our lives and cry out and really understand much more fully our need for God. Don't surrender your wound so quickly. Let it cut more deep.

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Let it ferment and season you as few human ingredients can. Something missing in my heart tonight has made my eyes so soft, my voice so tender, my need of God absolutely clear. So, I want to return to Matthew, Matthew Shepard, and a little bit where we left off yesterday. Said we weren't going to leave him at the fence, but before we leave the fence, I want to begin again.

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wanted to mention one thing because I've kind of told you a little bit about some aspects of the story of my compositional journey and my journey with texts. I had the privilege, I've had the privilege a handful of times to be with Dennis and Judy Shepherd, Matt's parents, and as I mentioned yesterday, I believe It always becomes really clear, too, that Judy holds Matt. Matthew belongs to the world.

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Matt was her son. And it felt so important to me in this piece for a number of reasons, as yesterday we talked about the passion and the suffering here, the suffering passages, which are such a part of the story of how we know Matthew, those days from October 6, 1998, to October 12, when he died. But I wanted to precede this with music that I've now just called a prologue, which speaks about Matt. as a young boy, as a very ordinary boy.

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So one of the movements that I've composed is called Ordinary Boy. I'm going to grab something else here. I'm a binder guy. I just have binders everywhere.

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I was like, where's my binder that has this? You don't have this, so don't worry about paging through anything. I just wanted to share a little bit about this ordinary boy. I'm kind of glad, I was so grateful in a sense for a segue, that beautiful introduction that Harold brought before me spoke of some of the degrees that I have because I thought, oh, it's so interesting.

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Because I know at the time I thought, you know, part of my seeking those degrees was of actual curiosity for knowledge, but so much of it was about can I hide how inadequate I feel. You know, can I stack up a bunch of degrees so that people don't have to know absolutely how not enough I feel. And, you know, I think many of you have your versions of that perhaps.

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But it was strong in me. I am not enough in any way, shape, or form. I better go out and prove it somehow. So I got spiffy degrees from spiffy schools and spent a lot of my money, spent a lot of my parents' money.

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I've asked for their forgiveness since, and I'm glad to have them now because it's still good camouflage. If I could just say, yeah, I got those 50 degrees, so just leave me alone. I really want to be regular, ordinary. It's what I've wanted to be my whole life, just one among many, how to fit in in the community and just be a part of, I want to know myself as part of the fabric of life and not distinct from.

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And so it's fun. I love talking about Matt Shepherd. And I feel like he gave me permission in this process to shift from Matthew. It was very respectful.

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I was sort of when I was living in Germany, and you wait for that moment when someone says, You don't have to call me Z anymore, it's due for you, or whatever language might be, but when you get to the informal. And I felt like there was a time about six months ago when Matt internally said, Hey Craig, I'm Matt and I was so grateful to feel that and I was so privileged to receive many pages from some of his notebooks and journals. It was sacred to receive these and to hold these and so the second movement in the piece I get an opportunity to use some of those words and

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He writes about himself in a notebook. I am funny, sometimes forgetful and messy and lazy. I am not a lazy person, though. I am giving and understanding and formal and polite.

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I am sensitive. I am honest. I am sincere. And I am not a pest.

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And then I have the singers repeating, I am not a pest. I am not a pest. I am my own person. I am warm.

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I want my life to be happy, and I want to be clearer about things, and I want to feel good. I love Wyoming. I love Wyoming very much. I love theater.

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I love good friends. I love succeeding. I love pasta. I love jogging.

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I love walking and feeling good. I began to gain the excitement in the music. At this point, it was kind of just a beautiful little ballad, and then I thought this is energy. I love feeder and good friends and succeeding in pasta and jogging and walking and feeling good.

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I love Europe and driving and music and helping and smiling and Charlie and Jeopardy. I love movies and eating and positive people and pasta and driving and walking and jogging and kissing and learning and airports and music and smiling and hugging and being myself. And the biggest thing he loved of all, and I make a big deal of this, and I had to kind of die to some need to be like a real fancy composer, and I just went into kind of good old theater music.

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I love theater, and I love to be on stage. That was everybody I talked to who knew Matt said he was filled with opinions, that's one thing they'd say, and he just loved the theater. He said I could feel myself there. That's where I felt confident.

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That's where I felt my courage, was when I was on stage. And then the whole chorus comes in to sing. Such an ordinary boy living ordinary days in an ordinary life for so living. He felt ordinary yearning and ordinary fears with an ordinary hope for belonging.

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He felt ordinary, et cetera, and then it just morphed so naturally. as it does in our own lives if we're willing to accept this. The ordinary, ordinary boy living ordinary days with extraordinary kindness, extraordinary laughter, extraordinary shining, extraordinary light and joy, light and joy. Just an ordinary boy, just an ordinary boy.

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So ordinary, so extraordinary. I got this over and over again. And then this person's life could become a reflection to my own and to yours. Just hold up that mirror.

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All of that ordinariness. And such extraordinary light that came through Matt. And then I have one of our sopranos singing a little song. Because this is such a difficult story and we know where it ends,

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I wanted to just have one of our singers say right to the audience. Why are we doing this? We tell each other stories so that we will remember, try and find the meaning in the living of our days. Always telling stories, wanting to remember,

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where and whom we came from, who we are. Sometimes there's a story that's painful to remember, one that breaks the heart of us all. Still we tell the story, we're Listening and confessing what we have forgotten in the story of us all.

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We tell each other stories so that we will remember. So we keep telling each other our stories. So that maybe one day we can forget our stories and really remember who we are. That's the invitation.

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Yeah. So we know this wonderful ordinary boy, why it was such a grievous wound, why it became a life wound for Matthew's parents, Dennis and Judy. And I share there's a moment in the piece and now we're kind of re-entering the wound again, just an alert. Going back into wound territory.

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The way this wound has informed Dennis and Judy is extraordinary. If you ever have a chance to be in their presence, I encourage it. They're completely themselves, utterly. Dennis is still kind of boot wearing, big belt buckle.

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You know, he looks like combination Steve McQueen and Paul Newman. I mean, he's handsome, rugged, just sort of tells it like it is. while he's transmitting this incredibly expanded spirit. It's so beautiful, you know.

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He still wants to see those perpetrators fry. I've heard him say it 30 times. And he says, We couldn't do that. So this little statement of his to the court, which I often will say I think is one of the greatest pieces of literature of the last 50 years, and he said he just

00:31:14.910 - 00:31:30.230

wrote it at three in the morning because he couldn't sleep, and that's what he had to do. This is on page six. We're surrounding this statement, which will be spoken with the singers in a circle, singing just syllables. They're just like little stars.

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So they'll just sing a little bit of a syllable of one of Lesleya Newman's poems. Her poem says, Stars scattered across the sky So each singer just sings a syllable, blinking in dismay, unable to help being light tears away. And Dennis' words in the center of that.

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By the end of the beating, his body was just trying to survive. You left him out there by himself, but he wasn't alone. There were his lifelong friends with him, friends that he had grown up with. You're probably wondering who these friends were.

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First, he had the beautiful night sky with the same stars and moon that we used to look at through a telescope. Then he had the daylight and the sun to shine on him one more time, one more cool, wonderful autumn day in Wyoming. His last day alive in Wyoming. His last day alive in the state that he always proudly called home.

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And through it all, he was breathing in for the last time the smell of Wyoming's sagebrush and the scent of pine trees from the snowy range. He heard the wind, the ever-present Wyoming wind, for the last time. He had one more friend with him. One he grew to know him through his time in Sunday school and as an accolade at St.

00:33:13.630 - 00:33:32.670

Mark's and Casper, as well as through his visits to St. Matthew's and Laramie. I feel better knowing he wasn't alone. So this is the thing we're all terrified about right here, all of us.

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He's facing it, we're facing it just by reading it. And this, of course, in the most horrendous version of it, one of them, facing a death. The thing that I'm told again and again, all other fears are about that final death, the death of the annihilation of this self, this self that I've given a name and a concept with attributes of good, bad, succeeding, failing, all of these things I'm terrified about. which are a part of my woundedness.

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And we followed this a little bit later with an aria. And I want to tell you just a little bit of a story about my experience with the first time I was with Judy Shepherd. And it was a lunch. And of all places, we were going to meet at the hula hut.

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I thought, oh, this is not at all what I envisioned. And had little umbrellas coming out of our pink drinks. And so I was meeting, it was a filmmaker, a dear friend of Matt's who had lined this up with Dennis Judy, this woman Michelle, and myself. And when we met in the little lounge, lobby area, she was very quiet.

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Dennis shook his hand. She barely said a word. And we sat down. We were 15 minutes into sitting at this table, and she's looking down very quietly.

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And I thought, oh, this is terrible. She doesn't want to be here. I'm just feeling terrible about this. Or what, have I said something already that offended her?

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Certainly I did. Scanning my brain, and wonderful, gregarious Dennis at one point said, oh, Craig, by the way, Judy's like a 20 on the introvert scale. She says, She'll warm up to you eventually.

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So I was like, Thank you, Dennis. Thank you, thank you. I was just sweating bullets here. But still, of course, kind of bashful as we got to talking.

00:35:45.230 - 00:35:58.030

We connected a little bit around some trashy TV shows we both loved. And I mean really trashy, I will not name them here. So we became sort of a little bit friendly there. And then I shared

00:35:59.550 - 00:36:19.470

the poem. I said I didn't want to put a lot of stuff in front of you but I did want you to know, of course I'm doing this and told the context. I said there's one place in this piece that is really kind of Matthew's aria and I just wanted you to have this poem. It was this Hafiz poem.

00:36:19.470 - 00:36:40.990

It was one of those, again, it feels like a Kairos time kind of thing, one of those Spirit-led things. I was working on the piece and at this big hole, I feel like Matthew's voice is needed, where he needs to be singing. I felt there was a song from the fence for him and I thought, what in the world could that be and still be respectful to this moment, this sacred time of his dying on the fence.

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So I didn't know and I thought, well, it's a lovely idea. My impulse felt strong and I trust my instincts, but just nothing was there. So I was about to do the surrender thing. And then one late night came across this poem and it kind of found me actually.

00:36:57.150 - 00:37:10.110

It's a poem of Hafiz, again, translated by Ladinsky. You don't have it with you, but I'll read a little bit of it to you. My heart is an unset jewel. This is what became Matthew's song.

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My heart is an unset jewel upon the tender night. My heart is an unset jewel yearning for its dear old friend, the moon. When the nameless one debuts again, Ten thousand facets of my being unfurl wings and reveal such a radiance inside.

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And I was reading this, I thought, Oh, my heavens, wow. When the Nameless One appears to Matt here in this moment, this death we all fear, so ten thousand facets of my being unfurl and reveal such a radiance inside, such a radiance. I enter a realm divine. I was so grateful for these noble words.

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I thought, yes, yes, this death that we are so afraid of. But such nobility, when we meet it, I enter a realm divine. I, too, begin to sweetly cast light. Like a lamp, I cast light through the streets of the world.

00:38:18.030 - 00:38:39.390

Who could know what his life would be afterwards and the light his life and death have shed? This wound that has become this nourishment, this heartbreaking opening for so many people. And look what's changed in our world. My heart is an unset jewel upon existence, waiting for the friend's touch.

00:38:40.910 - 00:39:08.110

Tonight, tonight, tonight, I have him crying out tonight in agony as well, so it's very real. Tonight, my heart is an unset ruby offered, bowed, and weeping to the sky. I am dying in these cold hours for the resplendent glance of God. I am dying in these cold hours for the resplendent glance of God.

00:39:09.710 - 00:39:31.230

My heart is an unset jewel offered, bowed, and weeping to the sky. Your heart is an unset jewel. Awaiting this fulfillment, my heart is an unset jewel. I shared this poem, it was just in a folded piece of paper, very kind of cautiously and humbly to Judy.

00:39:31.790 - 00:40:18.910

And she read it and at this moment I just was thinking, we just shared a little trashy TV and just a few words, but then all of a sudden the floodgates opened for her, she shared many tears. and interestingly in a moment wrote her phone number down and she said call anytime and we developed a beautiful opening at that point so there was again this place of when the wound is seen and understood and entered in some way in a shared way also there's a moment of possibility that is beyond what we could know or expect. I shared with you yesterday a little bit about the fence series in these poems that I was using the fence throughout.

00:40:19.110 - 00:40:39.870

It's kind of structural points through the passion. And on page six of your text packets, The Fence After is a poem I set for the choir. I'll maybe just read part of it here because of time. I was going to play it for you, but I don't think I will.

00:40:42.230 - 00:41:13.710

I love this poem, too, and the way it can be symbol for all of us. It's the fence, and Lesleya knew this so beautifully. It's each of us, it's Matt, preyed upon, frowned upon, revered, feared, adored, abhorred, despised, idolized, splintered, scarred, weathered, worn, broken down, broken up, ripped apart, ripped away. Gone but not forgotten.

00:41:14.950 - 00:41:36.270

And I used a passage of one of her other poems in the midst of this about the wind. The north wind carried his father's laugh. The south wind carried his mother's song. The east wind carried his brother's cheer.

00:41:38.430 - 00:42:04.510

The west wind carried his lover's moan. The winds of the world wove together a prayer to carry that hurt boy home. Prayed upon. And then the choir returns for those last sentences again.

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Winds of the world carry him home, cradle him home. The picture of all this, of course, with Matt on the fence is so difficult and painful. And in the story, there's a beautiful piece that comes back to us from the assistant sheriff. Her name was Reggie Flutie.

00:42:35.150 - 00:43:05.070

She was the first on the scene to discover Matt's body. after a phone call had been made and she came on the scene and was telling phones. But Reggie came on the scene and found a doe who had been sleeping and standing vigil right next to the fence, right next to where Matthew had been.

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And she said the doe looked in her eyes with this intensity that was of a quality and type she couldn't articulate and understand. She said it was very deep. She had the sense that doe had been there for many hours, keeping vigil. She felt the ground, and the ground was very, very warm as if it had been there for a while.

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I was touched by that. And over the course of this journey for me, it continues to sort of be this reflection of how creation takes care of itself, how it cares for us in ways we can't always see and understand and know. But it was a beautiful, comforting thing to know. And I wrote, I won't share it this morning, we're limited with time, but there's a little bit of a lullaby at that point that's really directly about the deer.

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and it's about being carried and kept a vigil for the evening and then goes into a little dialogue between Matthew and the deer and the deer calls Matthew forth to that place of of that can truly be called home and it's a meaningful moment to me. On the bottom of page seven, a poem called Pilgrimage. There's a little reference at first that says the land was sold and a new fence now stands about 50 yards away.

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People still come to pay their respects. And then beneath that is the poem. I thought maybe we could just do that very gently. It ends on the bottom of page seven, so we don't continue on to page eight, but Leslea has beautifully included some statements or scripture from different religious traditions in this, and so we can do this responsibly.

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I'll read the things that's in regular text, and maybe you could respond with the italicized text. There's some Hebrew, there's a little bit... Well, you can just say it phonetically if it's unfamiliar to you. I walk to the fence with beauty before me.

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The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. I walk to the fence with beauty behind me. I walk to the fence with beauty above me. I walk to the fence with beauty below me.

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I reach the fence surrounded by beauty. I leave the fence surrounded by beauty. So there's a way that Leslie in these poems just claims, claims a completeness here. It's not that there's an answer, we don't have an answer, here's exactly how the wound is.

00:46:05.110 - 00:46:51.710

transformed, but it's simply a claiming to walk to that place, to be in the wound, and to at the same time have space for something larger. In this case, she speaks of the beauty that begins to feel that there is an invitation that the beauty calls somehow. I was very drawn by that little, the italicized wail of wind, cry of hawk, because as I was completing that passion section, I kept feeling those distant sounds, the wind, the hawk crying, that somehow, for me, it was picturesque in representing both the beauty and the continuing wail, the agony, the ache, and how those were intertwined.

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So I have two sopranos kind of antiphonally singing that as if they were sort of black crows. Wail of wind, cry of hawk, wail of wind. And at the same time, the chorus sings, Still, still, still, I wonder, which came from the very first poem, before we knew all this difficult news and story. So we said we were going to leave the fence.

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I promised something like that yesterday. I wrote a little something. Right at this point, we go into the epilogue for my piece. I wrote a little bridge song called Meet Me Here, and I'll just sing a little bit of it, kind of folksy out here for you.

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Meet me here, won't you meet me here? Where the old fence ends and the horizon begins. There's a bomb in the silence like an understanding air where the old fence ends and the horizon begins. We've been walking through the darkness on this long, hard climb.

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Carried ancestral sorrow for too long a time Will you lay down your burden? Lay down, come with me It will never be forgotten Held in love so tenderly This bit about carrying ancestral sorrow felt so important to just say. We've been carrying generations of sorrow and story that keeps getting passed forward.

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Will there be a day, may we be the day of the people who can claim the fullness, the breadth and the depth, the spectrum of love, to know ourselves as love. At the very end of this, I have the choir singing us, bringing us coming, then we'll come to the mountain, we'll go bounding to see that great circle of dancing, and we'll dance endlessly. And we'll dance with all the children who have been lost along the way. We will welcome each other, coming home this glorious day.

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We are home in the mountain, and we'll gently understand that we've been friends forever, and we've never been alone. We'll sing on through any darkness, and our song will be our sight. We can learn to offer praise again, coming home to the light.

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At this point in the piece, I made a decision. My heart was knocking so hard to do something that felt a little radical, maybe, but provocative maybe, but really my heart called. The only place in the music I use music that's not my own. And I turned to great Papa Bach, Johann Sebastian Bach.

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and include the prelude, C Major Prelude, which many of you know from book one of The Well-Tempered Clavier. This piece is kind of just a symbol for completeness. It goes through a whole sequence, the Circle of Fifths, so it goes through everything, and yet its simplicity speaks of a large realm. So I'm just going to be playing this.

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Members of the choir will be singing thank you in different ways, just muttering quiet thank yous. Could we begin to say thank you in the midst? It's what I was taught as a child, gratitude in all circumstances, not for all circumstances, but in all circumstances. I was taught it over and over again.

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And I thought, you know, we get to be grown-ups and we really stop doing that. I mean, we might, you know, and for me, gratitude has become a weapon against that which causes me to forget. You know, I don't do it naturally because of feeling, because I don't wake up in the morning feeling gratitude all the time, even though I'm sure many of you do. It's a harder fought battle for me, but I know to use it.

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I was hooked on the book by Corey Tenboom, The Hiding Place. Many of you know that, of course. My mother thought I was a real problem child. I read it like 22 times.

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Just, Kid, give me the book. But I remember when they would insist on that when they were in the concentration camps in Austria and Poland, I think they were, in Bergenbelsen, yeah. and this insistence on gratitude, even in these circumstances, you know, what is that? And they would say to each other, she and her sister Betsy, No pit is so deep that God is not yet deeper still.

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I mean, I needed to hear that somehow as a child and so I thought, well, in the midst of this, after this really beyond heartbreaking, shattering story, could we say thank you? And of course, the wonderful poet, W.S. Merwin helped show me how to do that.

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So the singers are singing Thank You. They also sing it in Arapaho and in Yontonwe and Huron. The Arapaho was one tribe that was in the region in Wyoming. And so I wanted to include somehow, because I know there was a lot of lives lost in that region, that part of my ancestors were a part of that story.

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So we're playing this prelude from Bach, we're singing thank yous, and then W.S. Merwin is telling us, Listen, with the night falling, we are saying thank you. We're stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings. We are running out of the glass rooms with our mouths full of food to look at the sky and say thank you.

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We're standing by the water, thanking it, standing by the windows, looking out in our directions, back from a series of hospitals. back from a mugging after funerals we are saying thank you after news of the dead whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you over telephones we are saying thank you in doorways and in backs of cars and elevators remembering wars and the police at the door and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you In the banks, we are saying thank you. In the faces of the officials and the rich and of all who will never change, we go on saying thank you, thank you.

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With the animals dying around us, taking our feelings, we are saying thank you. With the forests falling faster than the minutes of our lives, we are saying thank you. With the words going out like cells of a brain, with the cities growing over us, we are saying thank you, thank you, faster and faster. With nobody listening, we are saying thank you.

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Thank you. We are saying and waving, dark though it is. Thank you. And then we finally end with the final movement of the piece,

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which is called All of Us. We've got kind of a sexy gospel trio, but also with a lot of gravitas, singing. What could be the song? Where begin again?

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Who could meet us there? Where might we begin? From the shadows climb, rise to sing again. Where could be the joy?

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How do we begin? Never our despair, never the least of us. Never turn away, never hide our face. Ordinary boy, only all of us.

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Free us from our fear, only all of us. And then the choir comes in. And kind of ask, we're still asking questions. Can we praise?

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Can we praise with a fuller sense of ourselves? Can we move through, move in, move as? I asked one of my wonderful librettist, he's the greatest guy in the world, my colleague in Minneapolis, Michael Dennis Brown, and we did a lot of this together. And I would send him a long list of, we need a chorale, we must end with the chorale.

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I'm, at least was, Lutheran once, don't you know? And And this is the way we say that the tall trees, the lodgepole pines, the oak trees are claiming our fullness, are still alive and rooted deeply. How can we do this?

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And so I gave him about 80 words. I said, Can you include all this? And he took my messy, messy stuff and made these beautiful corrals. It's on page 9 in the italics, first column near the bottom.

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light creation's face How should we live but joined in you Remain within your saving grace through all we say and do I'm waiting for the music to catch up And know we are the love that moves the sun and all the stars O love that dwells, O love that burns in every human heart. Okay, and then it goes on. This evergreen, this evergreen, this heart, this soul, now moves us to remake our world, reminds us how we are to be, your people born to dream, how old this joy

00:58:08.670 - 00:58:40.990

How strong this call to sing your radiant care with every voice in cloudless hope of our belonging here. O love that dwells, O love that burns in every human heart. Know we are the love that moves, the sun and all the stars. We are the love that moves.

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It's only the depth of the wound that made me yearn as deeply as I needed to, to help me even be able to have a glimpse of what it was I was needing to be fulfilled and to be met, to know my name is love, my family, my roots, my origin, reflecting that to you, that fullness of your own being. May we be freed up of our concepts that bury us in misunderstandings. May we be forgiven for the ways that we've betrayed this truth in us.

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May we be comforted for the ways that we feel not seen or understood and where we don't fully understand this yet, where we haven't claimed it, may we be strengthened and invited to feel that we can claim this fullness. So, yeah, it's been a divine privilege, a total joy for me to be able to share a bit of my journey with Matthew Shepard with questions and wounds. And my favorite things, raindrops on roses.

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I thought that's where that was going. Soft woolen mittens and warm woolen mittens. If you're around Austin or Los Angeles and can come join us, having your presence with us as we sing and explore this, we would absolutely love that. It would mean so much.

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It would actually help us because we're kind of a bunch of criers. We'll just be crying through the whole thing. and won't sound very pretty perhaps, but if you're there we will be strengthened. I don't think we probably, I guess we don't, it's 11, so no time for questions or anything, but anyway, thank you.

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Namaste.