The Slow Work: On Eagle's Wings

All four of my grandparents have passed on.  My father's father died when Dad was in college, long before my mother (and, thus, I) came on the scene.  Dad's mother died when I was two, so I don't really remember her.  But Mom's parents I remember very clearly.  Grandpa died in October of 1991, and Grandma passed away in August of 2001.

There are a handful of things that I remember from those funerals.  For Grandpa's, I remember the torrential rains in the 24 hours beforehand, flooding the streets and requiring the police in the small town where they lived to take us to the church in the "paddywagon."  For Grandma's, I remember that the pastor of the parish in which she had been a member for 50 years couldn't be bothered to come to the wake.  But what I remember maybe the most clearly was one of the hymns, sung at both of those services.

It was "On Eagle's Wings," by Fr. Michael Joncas. 



This song came to mind because President-elect Joe Biden quoted it and referenced it in his speech last night.  He mentioned that it was a favorite hymn of his son Beau, and while I don't know this, I assume that it was played at Beau Biden's funeral in 2015.  Just like at Stanley Jones's funeral, and at Mary Jones's funeral, and at the funerals of probably something like a million Catholics in the United States in the last forty years.

If you go on Twitter and search for "On Eagle's Wings," you will find a host of people--mostly conservatives, but not exclusively so--telling everyone who will listen how much "On Eagle's Wings" sucks, and how it represents the vapidity of the immediate post-Vatican II period in Roman Catholicism.  "On Eagle's Wings," to the haters, is a sign of a religion that has been denuded of its hard-edges, who just wants to make people feel good, that traffics in cheap sentimentality.  They want a Catholicism that is about Big Ideas and Big Programs, one that traffics in Big Aesthetics and requires Big Commitments.  "On Eagle's Wings" is not about any of that.

Again, most of these critiques fit into a rather standard conservative or trad/Catholic paradigm.  And yet, I was told this morning in my very liberal Episcopal Church by a priest that songs like "On Eagle's Wings" are why he would have to become Orthodox and not Roman Catholic if he were somehow forced to leave the Episcopal Church.  His reasons were essentially the same as those offered by the trad Catholics, at heart.  See, there are segments of progressive Christianity, especially in the Episcopal Church, who have the same basic world-view as the trad Catholics.  They, too, want a Christianity that is exclusively about Big Ideas and Big Programs and Big Aesthetics and Big Commitments.  The difference between the two is on the substantive content of the Big Program, and while those differences matter, they don't entirely negate the fundamental structural similarity.  Wanting a church that consists of a disciplined cadre ready reject and overthrow the capitalist system and wanting a church that consists of a disciplined cadre ready to overthrow the Sexual Revolution are not nearly as different as they might appear, and certainly not as different as the respective proponents would like to believe.

I find myself incredibly weary of Big Ideas and Big Programs and Big Aesthetics and Big Commitments, no matter their source or the content.  Honestly, I just want someone to sing "On Eagle's Wings" to me.  They say that "On Eagle's Wings" is vapid.  Well, I am here to tell you that that song is more meaningful to me than ten thousand Latin chants accompanied by unending clouds of incense.  You can keep all of that--truthfully, I find most of that old-school high church stuff to be unspeakably boring and tedious and pretentious and fake.  "On Eagle's Wings" is about simple, easily-relatable emotional comfort, deliverable at a time in which that sort of comfort is most needed.  It has modest goals, but it delivers on those goals, in spades.  I love it, and I am not at all surprised that Joe Biden does as well.

I'm not interested in your crusade to remake society, no matter the program.  I don't care about your promise of everything being made new in some far-off eschaton.  I just want a place to go that encourages me to a be a little bit better to the people around me, and supports me when things feel lost.  That's it.  Do that.  I am coming around to the idea that the Christian Church, in both its conservative and liberal persuasions, is more than anything else infected with the disease of grandiosity.  So much time in Church circles is spent on getting people to believe the right things about Jesus or about theology or about politics or about the environment or what have you that everyone has lost sight of Church as a place to teach you to love each other, and to receive love.  Please, stop with your big projects, and just do that.

Right now, I am craving an experience of Church that tries to do less, and thus allowing it to do more.  "On Eagle's Wings" represents for me the less that is actually more.  And I will defend it to the death.   

Comments

Unknown said…
I cannot recall how I came across Sheer Silence, but I resonate with you though I am protestant- thanks to stumbling upon Richard Rohr and others. When it comes to finding a church, I hear you and long for the same thing. Does it exist anywhere, in any denomination? There is a Quaker church close by that appeals to me but I have not yet ventured there. They sit in silence, there are no bulletins filled with words and agendas as far as I can tell, and there aren't tons of committees and programs. Just people who connect and love the each other and their world - have you found anything close to that?
December 10, 2020 at 6:48 AM
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