This is a conference on the worship, music, and art of the church—especially as they come to life in parishes and congregations, in concrete communities like the ones where you, or I, or brothers and sisters all over the world, gather regularly to worship God, to share a meal with the Crucified and Risen One, and to be sent out, sustained by the Holy Spirit, to love and serve. Here we will lift up beloved practices of song, prayer, and proclamation embodied in these ordinary, holy places.

And at the same time: we will name and ponder a dimension of human experience that complicates every effort to voice praise and bow in reverence, a dimension of experience that challenges every effort to hear, repeat, and trust the promises of God. 

Exposer of human vulnerability and mortality.

Evidence of human tyranny and apathy. 

Imposer of order, avenger of wrong, shield for the weak.

Evoker of humiliation, rage, and grief. 

Violence.  Definitions are difficult, but I’ll attempt one: Violence is force, or the threat of force, that causes physical, psychological, or moral damage or coercion. 

Any definition is too simple; damaging force and harmful coercion appear in countless forms and settings, from the ancient stories of humankind to the constant streams of images and reporting that fill 21st century screens. Cain murdered Abel, David slaughtered Philistines and arranged the death of Uriah. In our own time policemen kill Michael Brown and Eric Garner, a state executes Kelly Gissendaner, authorities send soldiers to kill and be killed. Meanwhile, violence festers in secret—corrupting families and economic systems, destroying the lives of children, imposing hunger on those who are poor and shame on those who are powerless. And it doesn’t just happen and go away. Violence leaves many individuals and communities traumatized—frozen in the unspeakable, numbing, disabling residue of overwhelming events, scarred by memories that threaten identity, marked by enduring wounds.

Those who have so far been fortunate (me?) may think these many-layered stories and situations point to other people’s problems. And there’s a piece of truth here:  all are vulnerable, but race, gender, poverty, displacement, and other factors heighten the exposure of some.  But facing a different layer of the truth, I realize that sometimes, in my heart, I am Cain; I am Abel; I am Eve, the mother of them both. Perpetrator, victimized, bereaved, all mixed together.

A horrific act of violence stands at the crux of Christian faith. When we gather to worship God, we gather in the name of one who was tortured by the authorities, abandoned by his friends, hung on a cross, and laid in a tomb.  We have called him Lord, but there we are: lacking courage in the face of violence, like Peter; feeling left out and skeptical, like Thomas; clueless, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus; our eyes blinded by tears, like Mary Magdalene. We huddle in fear, but he appears, risen from death. “Peace be with you,” he says.

When people suffer traumatic injury and loss, congregations are usually on the front line of response. They respond through outreach, work for justice, pastoral care, and other ministries. And they also respond directly to God, on behalf of all who are injured or in fear—in prayer and song, in confession and lament, in music and silence, in embodied trust and vocal praise. Here, assemblies make public witness to the human pain violence brings and to God’s presence with those who suffer in its wake. 

Most of you are called to lead communities of faith in these acts of witness and affirmation. This is a blessed and terrible calling. This vocation means speaking of things many in society prefer to hide under a mantle of denial and secrecy. It means remembering the faithfulness of God when many around you doubt. It means giving voice to the truth of human experience, and to the truth of God’s enduring presence.

Where shall we find the words? What language shall we borrow? Often, we find words in the Psalms. In just a few minutes Don Saliers will lead us in considering how the Psalms cry out, in witness, in lament. 

Our time together has begun, this morning, with GATHERING. Our time together will end on Thursday afternoon with SENDING, as we head back to our places of ministry, there to help our own communities to worship God, even in the face of violence. Between the gathering and the sending, we will ask how the church sings in the face of violence, how the church prays in the face of violence, and how the church proclaims the gospel in the face of violence.

Taken together, two sessions this afternoon will lean into one of the tensions in our theme: the tension between faithful response in times of sudden crisis and the long-term formation in faith, endurance, and hope that prepares us for such times. In the first session after lunch, teams from two congregations will reflect on worship in the context of crisis—a terrorist attack, a mass shooting. In the second session, we’ll hear from gifted musicians immersed in communities of faith whose ways of singing have fostered resistance and hope across the years. And this evening we will sing and pray together in this place, in a grand festival of hymns.

Tomorrow, we’ll consider language—and its inadequacy to the deep needs we bring to prayer and to life.  Composer Tony Alonso will ponder the weightiness that rightly accompanies worship leaders’ choice of music and texts.  Biblical scholar John Collins will lead us into the words and stories of scripture—challenging our ideas about the place of violence in this challenging set of ancient texts. And the artists of Grace Farms will welcome us into their creative process as they seek to express the power and meaning of silence in the midst of the world’s suffering. 

On Thursday we will give special attention to systemic forces that stir up violence in our society—and to faithful practices that resist these forces. Trauma takes root not only in individual psyches but also in whole communities, persisting across time to shape persons and institutions.  Donyelle McCray, a professor of preaching at YDS, will explore memory and trauma—focusing on the Middle Passage. Sarah Farmer, a practical theologian, will look at the many layers of violence in the lives of some African-American youth, and also at practices of resistance and repair. Cheryl Cornish, a pastor in Memphis, will reflect on how her congregation shapes a culture of peace by enacting small, strong patterns of life in community. And then we’ll all ponder the problems, hopes, and patterns of our own congregations, as we prepare to return to them. 

I look forward to hearing the presentations—each of which will allow time for questions and discussion. But I also want you to know that some of the best resources on offer here have arrived with you, the participants.  Opportunities to tap these resources will come in breakout groups, over meals, during breaks, and while walking or riding from one venue to another.

Because you have been immersed in worship and service in your own communities, you bring profound experience. You bring what I call practical wisdom. Look for it among those gathered here. Let me get you started.

• One of you has worked with women who are incarcerated to nurture creativity and healing through the arts.
• One of you comes from a large congregation in NYC that has been instrumental in gathering faith leaders against gun violence and in insisting that Black Lives Matter.
• Some of you, from a predominantly white congregation, are actively engaged in building a relationship with a nearby congregation that is predominantly African-American, under the rubric “Two Houses, One Home.” One of the pressing issues is how to address the ongoing shootings by police.
• Some of you are disheartened that your parishes barely mention the griefs and conflicts of your city, nation, and world. Help us to acknowledge the existence of violence; help us to speak the truth, you say. A pastor from another congregation says, “Our work is not a specific thing. It is just ‘not ignoring it,’ and addressing acts of violence during prayers of the people, in sermons, and so on”
• One parish represented here sponsors honesty, accountability, and healing around issues of abuse, especially reaching out to those abused by priests. 
• Some of you share the life of faith with persons who embrace violence as “necessary” or “right”—and you struggle to square this view with the bias toward peacemaking and neighbor love that seems evident in the Gospels, in your denomination’s stance, and, frankly, in the call to this conference. This concern—what about when violence is defended, even embraced—has come from quite disparate places—from a congregation in a Connecticut town, and from a chaplain in a psychiatric forensic hospital, to which many patients have come from a world where violence has always been accepted. 
• A woman who is not with us reached out over the internet to urge us to include attention to domestic violence. “As a pastor and long-time advocate for victims of DV, I know how disruptive it can be, not just to families, but also to congregations, as questions about who’s really to blame surface–or don’t surface.”

And surely there are other gifts, other concerns, other initiatives represented here as well.

We cannot answer all the questions, explore all the issues, or cultivate all the pastoral responses for which each situation cries out. Within the limits of the formal program, we cannot even attempt these things. But we can and will acknowledge that woundedness exists in our congregations, our neighborhoods, our nation, our world. And we can and will ponder the gift and the task entailed in doing the hard, indispensable work of holding these things, honestly and tenderly, before God, in song, proclamation, and prayer. And we can and will trust that God will be present with us here, and when we return to our places of ministry.

In this conference, we will not only talk about worship. We will worship, as we have already begun to do—not as an object lesson, but because we need to bring the matters that concern us, and we need to bring our very selves, into the challenging, merciful, empowering presence of God. We will share readings, songs, and prayers that have come to us from forebears who have struggled and endured, as well as sounds and texts that are just emerging. We will remember God’s faithfulness. We will lift the needs of those who suffer and those who serve to God in prayer. And we will offer to God our praise and thanksgiving—for the God-given life of all creation; for the reconciling life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; and for the new life the Spirit continues to blow into the communities represented at this conference and also into other communities all over this blessed, beautiful earth. May God bless our conversations here, and may God bless the congregations from which we have come and to which we shall return.

Arel, Stephanie N. and Shelly Rambo (eds.), Post-Traumatic Public Theology (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)

Brown Douglas, Kelly, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God (Orbis, 2015)

Cavanaugh, William T., The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (Oxford, 2009)

Collins, John J., Does the Bible Justify Violence? (Augsburg Fortress, 2004)

Cone, James D., The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Orbis, 2011)

Creach, Jerome F. D., Violence in Scripture (Westminster John Knox, 2013)

Deusen Hunsinger, Deborah van, Bearing the Unbearable: Trauma, Gospel, and Pastoral Care (Eerdmans, 2015)

Girard, Rene, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning (Orbis, 2001)

Greider, Kathleen J, Reckoning with Aggression: Theology, Violence, and Vitality (Westminster John Knox, 1997)

Institute for Congregational Trauma and Growth

Jones, Serene, Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World (Westminster John Knox, 2009)

Kirk-Duggan, Cheryl, Refiner’s Fire: A Religious Engagement with Violence (Fortress, 2001)

Kraus, Laurie, David Holyan, and Bruce Wismer, Recovering from Un-Natural Disasters: A Guide for Pastors and Congregations after Violence and Trauma (Westminster John Knox, 2017)

Lange, Dirk G., Trauma Recalled: Liturgy, Disruption, and Theology (Fortress, 2010)

Long, Michael G. (ed.), Christian Peace and Nonviolence: A Documentary History (Orbis, 2011)

Nakashima Brock, Rita and Gabrielle Lettini, Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury after War (Beacon, 2013)

Rambo, Shelly, Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining (Westminster John Knox, 2010)

Sacks, Jonathan, Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence (Schocken Books, 2015)

Sing the Journey: Hymnal Supplement

Trelstad, Marit (ed.), Cross Examinations: Readings on the Meaning of the Cross Today (Augsburg Fortress, 2006)

Trible, Phyllis, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Fortress, 1984)

Kenyon Adams is a multi-media performance artist also known as “little ray,” whose works have been featured throughout the U.S. Kenyon studied Religion and the Arts at Yale Divinity School and the Institute of Sacred Music, earning his M.A.R. degree in 2015. He is also an alumnus of Southern Methodist University, Meadows School of the Arts. Mr. Adams has been the recipient of a National Young Arts Foundation Award, and was named a White House Presidential Scholar in the Arts. He serves as Director of Arts Initiatives at Grace Farms Foundation in New Canaan, CT. 

Tony Alonso is a composer and theologian whose work responds to the diverse needs of the contemporary church. A Cuban-American Roman Catholic, his compositions embrace multicultural musical expressions and reflect a commitment to strong ritual song. Tony’s music appears in compilations and hymnals across Christian denominations throughout the world. In 2015, this work was recognized with an invitation to compose the responsorial psalm for the first Mass Pope Francis celebrated in the United States. Tony’s scholarly work lies at the intersection of liturgical theology, sacramental theology, ecclesiology and cultural studies. He has presented at scholarly and pastoral conferences and events across North America and Europe. He has also authored several books and articles on liturgy and liturgical music. Tony holds a Bachelor of Music in choral conducting from Northwestern University and a Master of Arts in theology from Loyola Marymount University. He is currently a doctoral candidate in the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University.

James Abbington is Associate Professor of Music and Worship at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. His research interests include music and worship in the Christian church, African American sacred folk music, organ, choral music, and ethnomusicology. Prof. Abbington serves as executive editor of the African American Church Music Series by GIA Publication (Chicago) and co-director of music for the Hampton University Ministers’ and Musicians’ Conference. He has served as the national director of music for both the Progressive National Baptist Convention and the NAACP.

Dorothy Bass is the director of the Valparaiso Project on the Education and Formation of People in Faith (www.practicingourfaith.org), a Lilly Endowment project that explores the importance of practices in Christian life and considers how greater attention to practices might contribute to theology and theological education. In addition to publishing several scholarly volumes on practices, edited or coedited by Bass, the Valparaiso Project has created several books that are widely used in congregations and other ministry settings, and has worked directly with some of these to strengthen communities of practice.

Teresa Berger is Professor of Liturgical Studies and Thomas E. Golden Professor of Catholic Theology, and serves as coordinator of the program in Liturgical Studies for the Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School. Professor Berger holds doctorates in both liturgical studies and constructive theology; her scholarly interests lie at the intersection of these disciplines with gender theory. Her most recent publication is Liturgy’s Imagined Pasts (2016).

A native of Ireland, John J. Collins was a professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Chicago from 1991 until his arrival at Yale Divinity School in 2000. He previously taught at the University of Notre Dame. He has published widely on the subjects of apocalypticism, wisdom, Hellenistic Judaism, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. His many books include The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Biography; Early Judaism: A Comprehensive Overview; Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age; The Apocalyptic Imagination; Between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora; Does the Bible Justify Violence?; Jewish Cult and Hellenistic Culture; Encounters with Biblical Theology; and The Bible after Babel: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age. Prof. Colins is coeditor of the three-volume Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, The Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism, and The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and has participated in the editing of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He is general editor of the Yale Anchor Bible series. He holds an honorary D.Litt. from University College Dublin, and an honorary Th. D. from the University of Zurich. 

Rev. Cheryl Cornish has been pastor of First Congregational Church in Memphis since 1988.  Named as one of the 36 “Most Vital” congregations in the denomination, First Congregational has engaged in creative witness and partnership with the 30 other organizations housed within its facilities.  Ministries of the church include the Revolutions Bicycle Co-op, the Global Goods Fair Trade Store, the Pilgrim House Hostel and “Voices of the South”, a regional theater.   In 2003, Cheryl received Women of Achievement’s “Courage” award for her activism.  She received the “Award for Distinction in Congregational Ministry” from Yale Divinity School in 2008. 

Maggi Dawn is Associate Dean of Marquand Chapel and Associate Professor (Adjunct) of Theology and Literature at Yale Divinity School and the Institute of Sacred Music. Originally from England, Professor Dawn came to Yale in 2011. After a first career in music, she was a teaching fellow in systematic theology at the University of Cambridge, where she also served as college chaplain. At Yale, she teaches courses on performative theology, poetics and the Bible in the writings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, writing and preparing for worship, and poetry for ministry. Professor Dawn is an ordained priest in the Church of England. She serves on the advisory board for the Royal School of Church Music and is a senior member of King’s College and Robinson College in the University of Cambridge.

Sarah Farmer is Associate Research Scholar with the Center for Faith and Culture and Yale Divinity School. Previously, she worked with with Anne E. Streaty Wimberly at Youth Hope-Builders Academy, and co-directed the Certificate in Theological Studies Program at Arrendale Women’s Prison. Her research interests include the concept of hope as it is operationalized in the lives of marginalized populations, particularly those who experience “confinement,” psychosocial identity and faith formation, community building, congregational studies, social change and transformative pedagogy. Ms. Farmer received her M.Div. from Emory University in 2008, where she is finishing her Ph.D.

John Ferguson is an acclaimed organist, choral conductor, composer and teacher, who retired as Professor Emeritus of Organ and Church Music at St. Olaf College in 2012 after nearly three decades. He also conducted the St. Olaf Cantorei and served as Cantor to the Student Congregation.  Dr. Ferguson has has published more than 100 composition and arrangements, including many based upon existing hymn texts and tunes as well as newly commissioned texts. Along with colleague Anton Armstrong, Dr. Ferguson re-envisioned the St. Olaf Choral Series for Augsburg Fortress and worked to make it relevant to a wide variety of 21st-century choirs. He has designed and presented hymn festivals for national and regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists and American Choral Directors Association (ACDA). 

Martin Jean is Professor in the Practice of Sacred Music, and Director of the Institute of Sacred Music. He has performed widely throughout the United States and Europe and is known for his broad repertorial interests. He was awarded first place at the international Grand Prix de Chartres in 1986, and in 1992 at the National Young Artists’ Competition in Organ Performance.

Beverly Lapp is Music Department Chair and Core Curriculum Director at Goshen College, with research interests including piano pedagogy, music in the liberal arts, and general education. Her passion for music is rooted in the a cappella hymn tradition of the Mennonite church, shaping her belief in the healing and transformative power of communities singing together. She enjoys regularly contributing in worship settings as a hymn leader and pianist, and serving as faculty sponsor of the highly active and student-led Goshen College Hymn Club. Beverly is currently on the Board of Trustees for the Frances Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy. 

Donyelle McCray joined Yale Divinity School as Assistant Professor of Homiletics in the fall of 2016. After graduating from Spelman College, Donyelle McCray went on to earn her J.D. from Harvard Law School and her M.Div. from Virginia Theological Seminary. She received her Doctor of Theology degree from Duke Divinity School in 2014, her dissertation examining “The Censored Pulpit: Julian of Norwich as Preacher.” Before joining the YDS faculty, Dr. McCray was Assistant Professor of Homiletics and Director of Multicultural Ministries at Virginia Theological Seminary, where she pursued teaching and research in homiletics, Christian spirituality, and ecclesiology. Dr. McCray is the author of five scholarly articles (published or in press), and she is working on a book exploring the role of risk-taking as an essential part of spiritual life. A hospice chaplain and an attorney at previous stages in her career, Dr. McCray is the winner of the Bell-Woolfall Fellowship and James H. Costen North American Doctoral Fellowship.

Don Saliers is William R. Cannon Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Theology and Worship at Emory University, where he also directed the master of sacred music program. An accomplished musician, theologian, and scholar of liturgics, Professor Saliers is the author of 15 books on the relationship between theology and worship practices, as well as more than 150 articles, essays, book chapters, and book reviews. He co-authored A Song to Sing, a Life to Live with his daughter Emily Saliers, a member of the Indigo Girls.

Bryan Spinks is the Bishop F. Percy Goddard Professor of Liturgical Studies and Pastoral Theology at Yale Divinity School and the Institute of Sacred Music. Professor Spinks teaches courses on marriage liturgy; English Reformation worship traditions; the eucharistic prayer and theology, Christology, and liturgy of the Eastern churches; and contemporary worship. Research interests include East Syrian rites, Reformed rites, issues in theology and liturgy, and worship in a postmodern age.

St Peter’s Episcopal Church, Cheshire, CT

Concerned with the response of their communities to acts of violence, church musicians and parish leaders gathered in June 2017 at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music for the ecumenical conference  “When Dancing Turns to Mourning: Worshiping God in the Face of Violence.”  Joining in prayer and song, they expressed their compassion and advocacy for the victims of violence. They considered local and global phenomena of human brutality and trauma. And they learned from leaders who knew firsthand the experience of responding to major acts of violence. In stories of recovery, they glimpsed how beauty contributes to healing, and how hymn singing and artistic performances, as well as youth ministry and inter-faith worship, can provide moments of transformation. Yet, the conference went beyond the role of the arts and worship in the face of violence. It guided participants into a place of profound introspection, resonating in personal and deep-seated ways even among those who had not witnessed a major incident of human brutality in their communities.

In his presentation on the psalms, theologian Don Saliers described “the complicity of praying against violence when it lurks within you.” He invited participants to consider the language of violence within the psalms of lament. The psalms, Saliers said, provide a voice for human anger and despair. They speak when anguish runs deeper than words. They articulate what humans don’t comprehend about themselves. Because these sacred hymns name the things people know but refuse to say out loud—such as their desire for vengeance or retribution—they offer a form of truth-telling that is often missing from Christian liturgy, as well as from everyday speech. Saliers referred to “lament denial” to describe the tendency of human beings to suppress their dread and fear. “Who are these enemies in the psalms?” he asked.  “What is this aspect of the other projected out of our fears?”

The emphasis on naming painful things honestly was also evident in the presentations that followed. Leaders of St. Monica’s Catholic Community, Santa Monica, CA, and Trinity Episcopal Church, Boston, shared their experiences of responding to a mass shooting (St. Monica’s College, 2013) or a terrorist bombing (Boston Marathon, 2013) in their communities. Naming human fears, according to Christine Gerety from St Monica’s, is essential if people are to discover the courage they have within themselves to overcome them. 

During the visit of conference participants to Grace Farms in New Canaan, CT, the power of the arts to name human fears in the midst of violence was palpable. In a workshop rehearsal of a new ballet and performance piece, “Practicing Silence,” directed by Kenyon Adams, there was a particular moment in which time seemed to stop. On the stage within the glass-enclosed amphitheater a ballet dancer knelt over her loved one, a victim of gun violence. She then turned to the audience and revealed her face. She was screaming, in silence. There was no music. Just her face.  The dancing had turned to mourning. 

Attending the conference with a group from my parish, including our rector, the Rev. Sandy Stayner, and our summer musical director, Marion Belson, I realized that violence takes many forms. It includes, indeed, things that are often hidden within the silences of parish life. In our experience of the dance performance, the soundless scream transcended the power of language. We were feeling more than we could say or respond to. Marion Belsen said, “It was good to explore the ideas people brought to the conference, but I find myself feeling like the ballerina with the silent scream when some of the violence in the news comes to my ears and eyes. Instances of racial gun violence are ever increasing, not decreasing.  Would that we could use a chanting lament, such as a psalm, that would ring out with the anguish these instances provoke! Like the psalms that proclaim ‘We shall overcome.’ But will we?”  

For those of us who attended the conference together with other leaders from their own parish, as I did, the conference led us to look more deeply within ourselves and our own particular community. We acknowledged the systems and cultures that promote violence, and we recognized our participation within them. And we explored the limits and biases of our faith tradition. The power of the arts in this process of self-examination was clear. Rev. Stayner said, “I came away from the conference with a renewed vision for the inclusion of the arts in worship.”

Prof. Donyelle McCray’s presentation on memory and witness on the final day of the conference evoked another powerful experience. Before she began speaking, Prof. McCray played only the sounds and images of the Atlantic Ocean. It was a testimony to The Middle Passage in the Atlantic slave trade. The natural world served as a witness to the victims of human brutality. Prof. McCray then reminded us that human silence in the face of violence casts shadows over the past as well as the present. Humans are shaped by memories of past trauma, but they tend to suppress them. Thus they do not hear the testimony agitating the energy and movement of the natural world. Some of the most prophetic sermons involve acts of remembrance, argued McCray, who teaches homiletics at Yale Divinity School, describing a form of preaching that assumes as listeners not only those present in the pews but also the dead and unborn. Later Rev. Sandy Stayner and I discussed the notion that the land and sea remember the acts of violence when humans forget them. I found it comforting and deeply unsettling to think that there is a kind of earthly archive speaking to us when we fail to remember—and holding us accountable when we do. I wondered if the Earth would speak back to us if we would just listen. And what would it mean if in our liturgy if we responded to the cries of humanity in all dimensions of time, all at once? Perhaps we would discover our hearts beating in rhythm with a timeless chorus of voices. And we might hear the voices of the past and future crying out to us along with those in the present.

For at least one brief moment during the conference I found myself listening to the voices of the past, present and future in this way. It was after the dance performance at Grace Farms. We were walking under the projected roof of the River Building alongside the Sanctuary, on Grace Farm’s strikingly beautiful campus. All at once Rev. Sandy Stayner stopped and said, “Wait! Listen.” I stopped walking and stood next to her. After a pause she said, “Can you hear it?” I listened. A soft and distant chiming reached my ears. It was ethereal, almost imperceptible. It came from outside and seemed to arrive on the wind. Sandy’s musical ear had picked it up. The architecture of the meandering, river-shaped building was designed not only to embrace the land, but also, it seemed, to reveal its music. It was for me a reminder of the power of the arts to reveal what we do not hear: the voices of the Earth and the voices of humanity. Voices calling us into action and contemplation, into lament and confession, into introspection and silent screams, and into remembrance and witness.

Salt, myrrh, seeds.  Presence, healing, proclamation.  Captured in small, capped bottles that we may still have on countertop or in office are the elements of earth that weaved through our worship.  Salt and myrrh made manifest our first prayers—

scattered on a map of the world, poured from papers of pink and yellow.  “Where can you be present when there is mourning?  Where do you pray for healing?” We filed toward the center of the chapel as “Dona Nobis Pacem”— “Grant us peace”— alighted around us, and placed our prayers, these elements, earth on earth.  The map became textured—mountains of pink salt and the rusty flecks of myrrh. 

Worshiping together was a way to practice and experience where our conversations and lectures took us.  I experienced our four worship services as learning moments and as necessary salve to the memories and feelings that surfaced during the three days of the conference.  They were curriculum and balm, both.  They reflected the way, as Reverend Patrick Ward shared in his experience at Trinity Episcopal Church in Boston, our traditions run ahead of us.  When violence and chaos strike, songs and rituals can hold us. 

Tony Alonso offered similar words in his lecture on “Singing Our Prayer.” “Songs are planted deeply within people’s hearts,” he shared. “They can anchor fragments of faith.”   Too, however, they can participate in and perpetuate violence.  He offered a reminder, an admonition, to “contemplate the gaps.” Singing of some experiences, and not of others, can render violence through silence and neglect.   “Silence is a violation of one’s meaningful existence in the world,” Dr. Sarah Farmer noted in her lecture on ministry with adolescents. Worship can wound, too.

Worship gathered us, shaping and challenging our time together.  Woven within it were salt, myrrh, and seeds—particles of a tradition of deep time, elements of earth, silent witnesses and participants in life, renewal, and violence.  These elements surround us and shape us, consciously or not.  They run ahead of us.  They appear in psalms and sacred scripture.  Myrrh is an element of healing, Maggie Dawn informed us.  It is the resin that certain trees native to the Middle East and Eastern Africa emit after they have been wounded.  This resin binds the trees’ wounds.  Authors of psalms and scriptures, inhabitants of this place, long used this resin for fragrance and human medicine as well.  It enters their stories and praises, their prayers.  It becomes a gift brought to Jesus.  The trees themselves are sharp and spikey, guarded, and even this mirrors the fact that we are wounded and wounders, both. The violence lies within us and outside us, as Don Saliers was careful to note in his lecture on the psalms. 

This tradition—to which salt and seed and myrrh belong— manifested in other ways during the conference. It moved in the flock of starlings that rose and scattered behind the glass and bodies of dancers at Grace Farms, in the fragrant but invasive mugwart that was popping up alongside the steamy path down the hill to Bethesda Lutheran Church where we ate lunch, from our voices that joined to sing the Doxology in the old horse stables at Grace Farms—a renovated space that resembled, as our song leader Beverly Lapp noted, old Mennonite meetinghouses.  We were joined by the memory of horses, husbandry, and the shape of worship spaces–tradition upon tradition—as melody echoed through the room, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise God all creatures…” The next day, Reverend Cheryl Cornish would remind us that beauty—whatever its scale or excellence—is a crucial counter to violence.  Here were some moments, among many others, of beauty that can heal. 

Near the conclusion of the conference, during the last break-out session, James Abbington told my discussion group that “Balm in Gilead” was one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s favorite hymns.  Interestingly, this balm is made from a special type of myrrh, specifically from trees grown on the banks of the Dead Sea. It was a powerful healer known and used by the Hebrew people.  Traditions converge in this fact—the support and solace the hymn offered Dr. King and the millennia-long history of myrrh’s healing relationship to a particular people and a place.  Traditions converge, wounds are tended, and healing comes.

There is a Balm in Gilead
to make the wounded whole.
There is a Balm in Gilead
To heal the sin-sick soul.

Sometimes I feel discouraged,
and think my work’s in vain,
but then the Holy Spirit
revives my soul again.

On Thursday, April 18, 2013, Associate Director of Music and Organist of Trinity Church in Boston Colin Lynch was escorted by two machine-gun-wielding FBI agents into the choir room of his church in Copley Square. The crime scene, encompassing the square and several other blocks of downtown Boston, was described by Lynch as a “landscape of desolation” after the bombings at the Boston Marathon that previous Monday, in which three people were killed and hundreds more injured. Lynch’s task: gathering sheet music for a prayer service to be held that evening at the barricades near the church. Limited by time, he made his choices from the scores that are already sitting out on the piano.

Those responding to acts of violence and tragedy aren’t limited to emergency medical services and law enforcement. The three-day ISM Congregations Project revealed that churches around the nation have felt called to act immediately, effectively, and compassionately when faced with shocking acts of public violence. In these cases, physical sanctuaries and church grounds have no longer belong solely to their congregations but have become places of refuge for a larger community. Or when these sacred spaces have been rendered inaccessible—by barricades, fear, or distance—project participants have worked to create sanctuary among people, wherever they might be.

Trinity is a historic church that anchors the neighborhood surrounding Copley Square; it is located just meters from the finish line of the Boston Marathon.  Since the building was inaccessible for days after the bombing, worship services had to happen elsewhere or not at all. First came the short prayer service on Thursday at the barricades, which consisted of a short Litany of Healing and Hope, a few anthems sung by the choir, and one hymn, Amazing Grace. On Sunday morning, Temple Israel, a Reform Synagogue a short distance from Trinity, graciously provided space. Asymmetric, stark, and modern, the sanctuary of the Temple is quite different from Trinity’s ornate Romanesque landmark. A year later on Holy Saturday, Trinity held an interfaith service in Copley Square entitled “Light the Fire of Peace,” partnering with Temple Israel, Back Bay Clergy, the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, and Old South Church. Marking the year anniversary of the attack, the service aimed to create a unified sense of peace and renewal among Boston’s various spiritual communities

The Catholic Church of St. Monica in Santa Monica, California, responded to a different act of violence on June 7, 2013:  a lone shooter incident on and near the Santa Monica College campus in which six people were killed. In this case, the sanctuary remained accessible, and the church provided several worship services in response, including funeral masses for some of the victims. St. Monica’s long-term response included the formation of the Santa Monica Tri-Parish Social Justice Committee with the city’s two other Catholic parishes, St. Anne and St. Clement. The initial motivation of the committee was to provide support to the families of the victims (all of whom were Catholic), but it broadened, over time, to reaching others affected by the incident, including first responders, hospital personnel, and members of the college community. On the anniversary of the shooting, the committee organized a Catholic memorial mass for the victims and also implemented an interfaith service which took place after the mass on the church patio—a more open and neutral space more welcoming to those of other traditions or none. This service both remembered those directly affected by the particular incident and provided a healing ritual for other victims of gun violence:  anyone who had been touched by gun violence was invited to come forward to ring a bell and offer a few words of reflection.   In addition to remembrance, the service made a strong statement against the city’s epidemic of gun violence. Conference presenter Christine Gerety, Associate Director of Outreach & Pastoral Care, emphasized the importance of responding to a community’s wounds with both worship rituals and outreach ministries.  In addition to the liturgical responses embodied in a Catholic funeral, the parish also provides counseling on a personal level through a bereavement ministry.

Acts of violence often attack the security of our spiritual homes, a truth acknowledged throughout the conference. Tourists and other guests sometimes call Trinity Church in Boston before funerals and major holidays to ask if security arrangements are in place. Both Trinity and St. Monica have hired security guards.  Similarly but on a different scale, another conference presenter, Rev. Cheryl Cornish, told of how a group of members arose to protect her physically when an angry stranger interrupted one of her sermons at the much smaller First Congregational UCC in Memphis. 

Prominent church musician James Abbington began his presentation, Music of Endurance, Resistance and Hope, by recalling several horrific acts of racial violence committed against Black churches in America, including the shooting and murder of nine people at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. Beverly Lapp, Professor of Music at Goshen College, recalled several historical instances of displacement and violence against Mennonites, a denomination with a strong tradition of pacifism, in her presentation entitled Mennonite Singing Practices and Formation in Non-Violence. Both of these presenters provided examples of how music itself has provided spiritual refuge and healing in these communities. 

While many of the presentations focused on responses to tragedy, there was also discussion of how the church can work to prevent violence in communities, including those in which systematic violence poses a constant, daily threat. This was particularly evident in the presentation by Dr. Sarah Farmer of Yale’s Project on Faith and Culture, entitled Ministering with Youth in the Midst of Violence. Farmer emphasized that both violence and liturgy can be transformative in the lives of youth—especially those who live under systems of oppression. Responses need to include what she called “Beyond the Walls” ministry, in which ministers seek out the sanctuaries of youth where their liturgies can be held.

Violence is as complicated as the world in which it exists. It can manifest itself even in our most cherished sacred spaces, perpetuated by histories of wrongdoing and systems of oppression. We are called to lament—and also to acknowledge our complicity and to take action. This conference provided hope that congregations have the knowledge, experience, and wisdom necessary to do so, bringing foretastes of God’s peace into our sanctuaries and beyond.

My family’s bible, long cherished by my grandparents, contains many ancient stories: biblical narratives of the patriarchs, the prophets, Jesus, and his disciples. This physical book also bears many family stories:  memories of Christmas carols around an out-of-tune piano, family reunions and marriages, sicknesses and funerals. The Pentateuch and the gospels are well thumbed, the Pauline epistles show some wear, and even the prophets have a touch of browning along the edges. But about halfway through the mostly crumbling book there sits a mostly unthumbed segment, yellowed only by time: the Psalter. Aside from the Psalm 23, the words and rhythms of the psalms were mostly unuttered in my family’s context, in spite of our strong, evangelical love of scripture.

As I sat among lay leaders, church musicians, clergy, and scholars at the ISM Congregations Project, it became evident that my experience was not uncommon.  However, the conference did much to remedy this gap.  As we worshiped and learned together for three days at the juncture of biblical tradition and personal experience, conference participants interacted again and again with the psalms. We sang them in corporate worship, heard them opened up in lectures, and wrestled with them in discussion, seeking answers to the difficult questions raised by our time together. How does a community continue to function in an environment where the threat of violence looms constantly? What language can help a community to process its grief?  Where is the voice of God amidst the never-ending spate of violent acts that continue to plague our world?

Crucial to the conference was a deceptively simple premise: The psalms are a means for connection and reflection, even in the face of violence.  The language of the psalms forces readers to recognize that the honest and vulnerable—even virulent and yet still valid—emotions expressed by the authors of the psalms till exist within us today. But these emotions are often denied and suppressed.  In this context, liturgical theologian Don Saliers remarked, psalms provide a way tell the truth about and to ourselves.

When this happens, the psalms can connect us back to our inner selves.  Such honesty with the self opens us up to an honest experience of others and the world around us. Indeed, in the collective singing and speaking of the psalms, leaders from several Christian traditions quickly found common ground. As we proceeded through the rhythm of the psalms–sometimes spoken, sometimes sung–and saw them interpreted in the media of dance or visual art, we pondered together the Holy Spirit’s work in the process of healing from violence. Sharing the psalms created moments of cultural memory that contributed to our experience as a group of faith-based leaders whose paths were crossing, even though briefly.

Conference sessions explored how the psalms reconnect us with our faith traditions not only through song and prayer, but also through the lens of biblical exegesis. Dr. John J. Collins, Professor of Old Testament Criticism and Interpretation, challenged us to recognize and wrestle with depictions of violence in the biblical texts rather than dismiss them. The difficult work of appropriating scripture, Collins argued, is lacking substantially without exegesis and catechesis.

Finally, the psalms become a means to reconnect with God. We were reminded by many voices that the texts of some psalms are not easily read, wrestled, or incorporated into corporate worship—but coming to terms with the truths they name is not meant to be easy. Encountering the infamous final verse of Psalm 137 or the plaintive verses of Psalm 13 challenges our communities to confront our own complicity in systems of violence. In considering the psalmist’s relationship with God, we are challenged to question our own notions of who God is and how we are to communicate with Her.

These old words have the power to breathe new life into a stagnant life of prayer.  They certainly do this for me. Now, when I open my prayer book as my grandparents did the family bible, I lift the ribbon which marks the psalter and recognize the power of the words which sit before me with fresh eyes. In speaking aloud the words and hearing their sounds decay into silence, I feel connected to believers of the past and present who have celebrate(d) weddings, funerals, and remembrances of their own. The next time you open your holy book, I hope you find yourself flipping to the unthumbed section and lingering there awhile. 

arly in the Institute of Sacred Music’s Congregations Project Conference, Don Saliers told of a time when a couple approached him after a workshop on the Psalms and asked him why he focused so much on the dark, negative aspects.of these biblical texts. “We don’t want to hear about those things in church!” they complained. Saliers, the William R. Cannon Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Theology and Worship at Emory’s Candler School of Theology, noted that their comment demonstrated an attitude held by many people who are not equipped to handle traumatic events and thus seek to avoid mention of them.  But the comment also showed the importance of addressing such unease by asking  “How might the Psalms be a resource that equips us to handle violence and trauma?”

Throughout the conference, which ran from June 13 through June 15 at Yale University’s Sterling Divinity Quadrangle, nationally prominent musicians, ministers, and theologians addressed issues and questions surrounding the conference title: “When Dancing Turns to Mourning: Worshipping God in the Face of Violence.” How can one worship a supposedly benevolent God when violence has been committed against his or her person? How might wise congregational leaders respond to traumatic events in the hearts of their communities? And what resources for handling and healing the wounds of violence are available in Christian traditions of worship, music, and art?   One possible answer emerged at several points:  worshiping together, in community, needs to be an important part of any healing that might occur.

Truth-telling is an indispensable part of Christian worship, Saliers insisted; yet “many congregations,” he claimed, “are conspicuously devoid of truth-telling.” The Psalter provides a remedy for silence about the difficult and traumatic events of life. Alongside the Psalms of praise, or the doxologies,  there exists an entire corpus of lament Psalms, poems of wailing and gnashing of teeth in the face of tremendous suffering. Sometimes, lament and doxology exist in the same Psalm, such as Psalm 43, which was recited several times throughout the conference.  “How can you have authentic doxology without naming what prevents that doxology?” Saliers asked. The Psalms, like our lives, oscillate between lament and doxology, drawing the worshipping community in to a more authentic encounter of God.

Other conference lectures and discussions amplified this basic claim.  Perhaps most moving and convincing of all, however, was the hymn festival held on the evening of June 13, where songs of lament and doxology were both given full expression.  The Festival presented an opportunity for participants not only to sing together but also to experience the healing power of a community  gathered to worship God in the face of violence.  With many skilled singers in attendance, organist John Ferguson of St. Olaf College was often able to drop out completely and let the large congregation sing in harmony yet without accompaniment.  The voices resounding together in Marquand Chapel provided a powerful metaphor for the strength of a united yet diverse community of worshippers. Furthermore, brief reflections from many conference speakers explored the hymn festival’s theme, “How Can I Keep from Singing?”   I did indeed feel (and I think others did too), that we cannot help but sing God’s praises, even in the face of violence. In a high point that built upon an earlier lecture from Beverly Lapp, Professor of Music at Goshen College, the whole congregation sang, without rehearsal, a fast-moving version of the Old Hundredth Doxology, jumping right into the Mennonite tradition of unaccompanied four-part singing. The whole evening provided a powerful testimony to the healing and restorative power of community: in the midst of an uncertain and often violent time, the world felt right again as all those present sang those familiar words, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow…”

• Emilie Casey is the Marquand Liturgical Minister and Chapel Communications Manager at Yale Divinity School. She came to YDS and ISM as a student in 2013, and after graduating with an MDiv (’16) and STM (’17), Emilie started her work in Marquand Chapel. Emilie is passionate about liturgy and worship, homiletics, and collaborative worship planning. Prior to her studies at Yale, Emilie studied music education and clarinet at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Emilie is a member of the ELCA.
• Maggi Dawn is Associate Dean of Marquand Chapel and Associate Professor (Adjunct) of Theology and Literature at Yale Divinity School and the Institute of Sacred Music. After a first career in music, she was a teaching fellow in systematic theology at the University of Cambridge, where she also served as college chaplain. Professor Dawn is an ordained priest in the Church of England and a senior member of King’s College and Robinson College in the University of Cambridge.
• Nathaniel Gumbs was recently appointed as Director of Chapel Music at Yale University, where he works with students, faculty, and guests to coordinate music for the University Church in Battell Chapel and at Yale Divinity School in both Marquand Chapel and at Berkeley Divinity School. He is a frequent guest musician at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, and is organist and clinician for the Hampton University Ministers’ Conference. In 2017 he was named in the “Top 20 Under 30” by Diapason Magazine. Nat expects to complete the Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Eastman School of Music in 2018.
• Ted Lyddon Hatten is an artist and a theologian who describes his work as theopoetic and multidisciplinary. As a visual artist, he works with a variety of media, including myrrh, liquefaction, coffee grounds, beeswax (encaustic), dry pigment, egg tempera, grain, gunpowder, glass, sand, and salt. He uses photography as a tool to explore the world and to express his work–particularly installations, dry painting, and other pieces that are inherently ephemeral. Ted is currently the Director of the Wesley Foundation and adjunct professor at drake University. His studio is located in Indianola, Iowa.

When the communities of Santa Monica, California, and Boston, Massachusetts, were shaken by unexpected violence in 2013, congregations were among the first organizations to offer acts of healing in each city.  Leaders from a prominent parish in each scene of tragedy made presentations on the first afternoon of the Congregations Project conference, challenging all participants to consider how they might respond in their own settings if violence were to erupt there. 

The Catholic parish of Saint Monica has long been an important institution in the heart of Santa Monica.   After a a shooting at Santa Monica College left six people dead, including the gunman,  a close relationship with the city enabled the church both to offer the witness and solace of Catholic liturgy to members and to reach beyond its own tradition to address the suffering of the larger community.   Funeral masses for the victims, all of whom were Catholic, showed the capacity of ritual to “transform a moment of tragedy into a moment of, if not hope, comfort,” as Director of Music and Liturgy Dale Sieverding put it.  In addition, Monsignor Lloyd Torgerson, the pastor of St. Monica for over 30 years, visited and prayed with many of the people directly affected by the act of violence, including the shooter’s mother. His acts of boundary-crossing compassion allowed even those outside the Catholic community to feel a sense of comfort in the days following the tragedy.

As the six-month anniversary of the shooting drew near, St. Monica and the city’s two other Roman Catholic communities joined in a memorial Mass for the victims.  Yet they also agreed that their prayers must reach beyond the walls of the Catholic church, both literally and figuratively. The result was an interfaith service held outdoors after the Mass.   “We are the field hospital for healing,” said Christine Gerety, the associate director of the Outreach and Pastoral Care Department. Rather than turning inwards to heal only the members of their faith community, the religious leaders of St. Monica opened their doors to give all who came an offering of comfort and peace. 

Like Saint Monica, Trinity Church has long been a visible and influential institution in its city.  Further, the church’s central location and proximity to the tragedy put church leaders in a position to act in response to the Boston Marathon bombing. This location also presented challenges when access to the church was cut off by the crime scene investigation in Copley Square. As weekly church events neared, parish members began wondering how to proceed with worship in a time that so desperately required it. Assistant music director Colin Lynch knew the important role music could play in such a mournful time and was able to enter the church to retrieve music for the weekly choir rehearsal. Rushed for time, Lynch simply grabbed the music that was easiest to reach, which happened to include Shaker hymns, Faure’s Requiem, and music from recent funerals. The next evening, all the choirs of the church gathered for an impromptu service of song and prayer in the street, just outside the barriers surrounding Copley Square.

As Sunday morning approached and access to the church was still blocked off, it became clear that it would be impossible to worship in Trinity’s landmark building. Temple Israel—empty on Sunday mornings—invited their Episcopal neighbors to worship in their space. Worship leaders from across Boston generously supplied Trinity with everything they needed to ensure worship could go as smoothly as possible. According to Rev. Rita Powell, “being ministered to by other churches changed us”; typically Trinity is on the giving, not the receiving, end of such exchanges. The turn-out was remarkable. Over 900 people worshiped in Temple Israel on that Sunday morning.  As it happened, this Sunday was what liturgical Christians call “Good Shepherd Sunday.”  Following the already-appointed readings, the congregation chanted the psalm they might have chosen on purpose if it had not already been provided: Psalm 23, the familiar psalm of God’s presence even in the valley of the shadow of death. 

One year later, the next Boston Marathon and the anniversary of the bombing fell on Easter weekend. Beside a new fire, leaders from all the Abrahamic faith traditions shared reflections, memories, and prayers.  The importance of exchanging spiritual traditions became amplified in the face of violence, especially during a time marked by prejudice and unjustified hate of the Islamic community.

That new fire was also part of the liturgy of Easter Vigil, upon which the Episcopalians of Trinity Church would embark after the interfaith service.  This parish’s own traditions—the songs sung at the barricades, an appointed psalm, a new fire, and more—had provided just what was needed.  Rev. Patrick C. Ward remarked that “we often think of tradition as something that is behind us. Tradition is actually running ahead of us”.