it be the food of [belief]

Keziah, another MCC volunteer from Sarajevo (whom i did not meet while there, though we liberally used her house, because she was in NA until just a few weeks ago), rang me as i was walking along the river last night. it turned out that she and her choir, Pontanima, had come to Beograd for a series of concerts and would be here through the weekend. Pontanima sings works from the major monotheistic (Abrahamic/Ibrahimic) religions and, as it is one of MCC's affiliates in South East Europe, is one of the main reasons i love my organisation.

since Keziah had been a bit sketchy with the directions, i was not entirely sure of the location of the Catholic church in which Pontanima was supposedly singing a mass. she'd said something about "Milentija Popovića," a street in Novi Beograd. somehow i doubted this, as my part of town is rather on the Orthodox graffiti end of the spectrum. indeed, when i called upon Google (yet again), i found the address for a Svati Maria and was glad that i'd allowed enough time, because it was, well, down by the AppleCentarYugoslavia. first, a note about its address: Ulica Hadži Melentijeva. it's as you thought: "dž" sounds almost exactly like a hard "j." a double "j," if you like.... i liked—and i was going to the Catholic church.

on the bus there, i was behind two deaf people, chatting with their fingers and mouths across the aisle from each other. i wonder in which language it is most difficult to read lips. having thought about this before, because of Mark and Mary Esther Penner's work in Japan, i always considered にほんご to be among the most challenging. maybe it's just an unimagineably daunting task, no matter what or how.

found the church all right, and then found it packed with people. a good sign, thought i. the members of Pontanima filed up on stage with no formality whatsoever in dress (most had on sweatshirts, although one man was clad in some sort of friar outfit) or stage presence, so besides my being occupied with the [extremely easy, really; there *is* some unspecifiable feature about us, although i'll spare you discussion here] improvised game of "find an MCC volunteer in the crowd," i was wrenched back from distraction, wholly unprepared for the quality and power of the sound which emerged from the group, so instantly had they become such as each opened his mouth.

there's this vital aspect about sacred music that a lot of people seem to forget, namely: for long periods of time, that's all the music there was. and, moreover, it was, on the whole, more than up to the monopolic challenge. current trends in mainstream Protestantism (or, at least, Protestant forms of worship, which i would have to argue amount to almost the same) have, speaking generally, been up to no good. on one hand, they've contributed little to the necessary enrichment-over-time that a faith (as practise) must set in motion. additionally, though, by substituting less and less substantial models for what had original structural soundness, what has, instead, been enacted amounts to a vast amnesia of history and culture. certainly, the Reformation itself might have given rise to some of these ideas (but i am talking about the past few, not hundreds of, years, here). that is not a valid excuse, though, for what is happening: there has always been a foundation of good, strong Protestant hymnology, even if the earlier Songs Without Words-type stuff was, well, sort of, ahem, Catholic (but wasn't i saying something about "all there was" just an odd minute ago??). what is even more unfortunate than the increasing reliance on overhead projectors and (worse!) powerpointpresentation is the correspondingly watered-down material that remains in the songs, thus, projected upon the wall. everything informs the others: the substance, the means, and, most of all, the thought (or lack thereof) that goes into *both* of these. in short, it's nearly impossible to sing with attention to diaphragm breathing if the theological substance has been shallowed out for the sake of the rhyme—and once the majority of voices have gone flat, even the most steadfast statements of belief can no longer uphold their musicality.

i mourn for actions that could be (and, often, once were) meaningful but are no longer—usually because of sloppy thought and the hateful "emotionality" (this is *not* true Emotion!) that creeps into the gaping holes left behind. this is partially a reasoned-through (largely in late high-school, and then while working on my undergraduate thesis) conviction that everything worth doing *must* be done with both fervency and compassion (these are the same, as long as we delimit the terms, free them both from their facile and widely-accepted connotations). on the other hand, i also have much of Mustard Seed School—where we were singing opera before we had mastered long division because, well, no one there thought that elementary-aged kids couldn't or, *moreover,* that it was acceptable to make a halfhearted attempt—yet in me. it's impossible (or, very difficult, at least) to *instill* a sense of excellency in another person, but i *do* still believe that, when everything is stripped away, before doubts (these that can be sown) are planted and examples of times when stretching did not happen to its utmost, when the only comparison is with something that resembles truth—in these cases, that the voice will soar at one with the brain and none can perceive any discrepancy of dynamism between the two.

that the abominable carelessness of liturgy and, in particular, music therein smites me on several levels has moved even further to the fore in my restless mind, perhaps because i have been seeing it quite a bit here—the unmistakable lack of attention to rigour in *all* its forms, many of which stagger with beauty. despite my intentions, i was unprepared for the music in the high-ceilinged church this morning. beginning with a Jewish setting of something (a psalm, most likely and one which, moreover, i remember singing in *another* setting, although i cannot now recall where) and ending with "Who'll Be a Witness" ([chromatically] "i'll-a be a wit-ness"), every voice aimed high and, in doing so, could not be distinguished. only when the soloist sang her haunting Islamic verses *in [that language]* (yes, that one—the one that doesn't know in which alphabet it's to be written, or which component, of the Bosno-, Serbo-, and Croato-, is to muscle itself into primacy. or, it seems, the music of which religious group it is fit to carry...!), did, appropriately, an individual emerge. in the midst of it all, piercing me before i knew what had happened: "Bogoroditsye Dievo," that Rachmaninoff vesper.

that Puntanimo was not singing a mass was evident not only in their selection of works. this meant, however, that when the choir vacated the premises, an entire mass was about to follow. this was no ordinary mass, however: apparently today's events were part of some sort of symposium of international bishops and "nadbiskupi" ("nad" means "above"—yeh, i like that one, too). i don't think i've ever seen so many white-clad, tall-hatted church officials gathered in one place, but in they filed. given the formality of the situation, it was clear that this would be no quick endeavor. already, during the "concert," we had heard 4 speeches; my comprehension was hovering around 20% and that was mostly resting on the long lists of country names rattled off. now, however, i was counting on other illicit means of understanding to save the day. in the end, knowing the Bible is a great wealth—linguistically, culturally, and, basically, operationally. was sitting there marveling about the subtlety case endings lend to aspects of the recited creeds in srpski. it's hard to explain, because examples don't make sense to you who, wisely, are not committed to my present struggle-to-the-death. what translatable power, however, rests in the moment when understanding accompanies (rather than follows, even with pushes for agility) hearing, when meaning imprints itself directly upon the listener—but from another angle, that clarifies everything (including previous understanding, in one's mother tongue)! "Bog Boga, svetlost svetlosti" is, simply, not "God from God, light from light;" knowing both, however, is *knowing* each. in this example, the crystal of language truth shines most purely; for this, we learn and speak and, perhaps, even exist.

just barely keeping my head above the watery 20%, despite all subliminal knowledge alluded to in the previous paragraph, i was, moreover, stuck in my seat in the middle of the long wooden row, and the one formed from by my inhibitions about walking out of things—even though this thing had morphed from a normal, albeit lengthy, mass into some confluence of church and state that eluded me and, thus, made me somewhat nervous. various individuals followed (and interspersed) the liturgy with various addresses that, nonetheless, were not various enough for me who, at this point, was beginning to wonder if, perhaps, Erica's greatest fear (expressed when our noble father joined some Gregorian chant choir up the hill from our Kanayama-cho house), that becoming Catholic could happen by mere proximity, was indeed a reckoning force. if so, after 3 hours, it seemed i was a likely candidate. accepting the inevitability of the situation, i shifted my legs around (again), blocked out the consistently flat choral renditions (they did, to their credit, to parts of the Judas Macabees. dude (said i), my existence is just being justified at every turn, these days)), and contemplated the, well, furniture (obviously, in order to truly be considered for the position, i'm going to have to take an intensive course in Catholic stuff. like stage props and phraseology) in front of the recessed painting on the wall where, along with the usual death and resurrection aspects/alllusions, Ciril and Metodije, armed with scroll and staff, made it all worthwhile.

meanwhile, i (or, should i say, a whole company of bishops) had completely squandered any chance to meet up with Keziah, which was my original plan for the afternoon. when i finally bounded out the doors of the church, though, it was into glorious weather. stayed outside therein for most of the next several hours, although at some point i did return to the flat to work on some concrete language study, having had quite the dousing of ethereal supposings on/in the subject.

after dinner, went back into the city for the actual Pontanima concert, for which i had wrangled a free ticket via my impressive [ie. missionary] network. arrived in time to chat with Keziah and to notice that the man taking tickets looked exactly like the wizened and confused, helped none by the flowers he was carrying along with what looked like the small bag of his earthly belongings, man i'd seen on the streets late last night.

when i try to describe the concert, i come up short all over the place. that i heard, again, my Rachmaninoff is but the beginning. that the encore consisted of the fastest version of "Ev'ry Time I Feel the Spirit," i've heard, with or without a pan-Balkan accent, gets close, from a different angle. the latin and the cyrillic, the old church and the new—it is all Slavic, all *here.* for this reason, i know and will not soon forget, too: i am in this place.

i leave you what i can, a traditional song from Bosna:
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Ej Allahu, svjetlo duše i plavog neba vlasniče, kudgod lice ja okrenem, tvoj pogled me se dotiče. U suzama kad se gušim, kada srce tuži, ječi, dozivam te, oči sušim, čujem tvoje svete riječi.
Ej Allahu, pogledaj me, dno duše moje ti vidiš, koliko te ona voli i kol'ko se tebe stidi.
Ej Allahu, ej radosti, nado svima radostima. Ja iskusih sve ljubavi ali ko tvoje neima. Ti nemoj me ostaviti tako ti vel'kog subhana, ja ću tebi tobu cinit', gr' ješan al' džana odana.

[Ej, Allah, light of the soul and ruler of the blue sky; wherever I turn my face, your glance touches me. When I choke with tears, when my heart groans, I call on you; eyes dry, I hear your holy words.
Ej, Allah, look at me; you see the depths of my soul, how greatly she [it] loves you, how shy she is before you.
Ej, Allah, ej, joy: hope of all joys. I experienced all loves, but none compare with yours. Do not abandon me, according to your splendor. I will do you honour, with a sinful but longing soul.]

however you spell it, whether it's cried from the depths or the heights, "Alleluia" is ever the same, ever an entirety.