"Doxology": noun, a liturgical formula of praise to God

Ry Tompon'ny harena o! 

Fanatitra an'tsitrapo, 

Atolotray anao izao, 

Mba raiso ka tahionao! 

Amen

I've always been in band in school. Choir sounded interesting, but band interfered and it was my first love. Singing was something I enjoyed, but nothing I ever practiced- or felt comfortable sharing with others. 

But as unpracticed as I am in singing, I am much more uncomfortable with teaching. 

So when push comes to shove in my English classes at the FLM, I end up singing. 

At my home church in Tanjombato, I work with a group of level 2 English students (who are amazingly smart and good at English after only 6 months). They usually work through having conversations, so we had a 'get to know you' conversation about likes and dislikes. As an example, I said that I don't like to dance, but I like to sing. And of course, that lead to them wanting to hear me sing. Oof. 

But it turned out to be a good thing-- I didn't know what else to teach them, so I taught them two songs. We learned the first verse and chorus of 'I'll Fly Away' first, and discussed new vocabulary like "glad" and "glory". 

                      ****Aside: it is really difficult to try to explain the concept of glory or gladness in another language. Try it sometime. It really makes you think about what gladness or glory actually means.****

And then I couldn't remember the second or third verses. 

We still had 45 minutes of class left. 

Uh oh. 

In my mad scrambling to try and find a song that was both 1. something I knew well enough that I could teach & 2. easy enough that the students could remember it, the only thing that was in my brain was the Doxology. 

Lutherans are fond of singing it, before offering sometimes... Our MadYAGM group sang it often as a mealtime grace. 

You might know it: 

Praise God from whom all blessings flow, 

Praise Him all creatures here below,

Praise Him above ye heavenly host,

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! 

Amen 

So I taught my group of 15 Malagasy kids the doxology. 

And when we still had time left, we went over vocabulary. 

I asked them to try to translate it into Malagasy, and they came up with this:

Ry Tompon'ny harena o!

Fanatitra an'tsitrapo 

Atolotray anao izao 

Mba raiso ka tahionao! 

Amen

I love it. 

Half of us sang the English, while half of us sang the Malagasy. The words mushed together, our voices melded imperfectly, our pronunciation terrible-- But I believe God wept tears of joy in Heaven to hear us. 

It was beautiful. 

The view of the sunset tonight and the city of Tanjombato,Antananarivo that's just outside my window as I write this blog. I'm loving this place more and more with every passing day. 

Celebrate!

When I get homesick, sound is what soothes my soul. 

This has been a truth for me since college, my solace in times of sadness. Listening is a comfort.

At Valparaiso University, the student body helps put on a contemporary worship service every Wednesday night called Celebrate! My senior year, Celebrate! became my life, my community, and my refuge.

This past Wednesday, I found myself sitting in the WiFi (pronounced wee fee) room of Lovasoa,Antsirabe in Madagascar missing Celebrate! On a whim, I decided to check my Facebook feed-- God must have been in the wires that night, because the first thing I saw was a link to a Celebrate! sermon on SoundCloud my college pastor had posted. 

Listening to his voice, the cadence of his speech, the sounds of that community so far away in Indiana soothed my soul. 

The sermon he gave was on Luke 24. 

Luke 24 is possibly best known for the story of the road to Emmaus, but the best part of Luke 24 just might be the end of it. In it, the disciple realize that Jesus is among them and has been all along- they finally know that he has come back to them. 

My college pastor was addressing the first Celebrate! of the year when he spoke on this scripture. And the message that he drew out of it was this: that Jesus always shows up. He always shows up. Even when we're a mess. The disciples are tired, they're depressed, they're worn out and beaten down, they're doubtful and scared and unsure of where to go next. They're a mess. And Jesus shows up. In spite of their disarray, or maybe because of it, He shows up.

You don't have to have your act together, you don't have to be on solid footing, you don't have to be on your best behavior. You don't have to have anything at all. 

And my pastor related that all back to the struggles of being in college, of being a freshman in college, and how you don't need to have your life together to worship God. It was a perfect message for that Celebrate! community at Valparaiso University. 

But this is what I love about Scripture: it doesn't matter where you're at, God will find a way to speak it into your life and your experience and your context. 

I am a mess in Malagasy church. 

I don't know the words, or what's going on. I can't speak the words even when I do manage to figure out where the congregation is at in the translated service bulletin.

I sit up and sit down at all the wrong places, usually a full thirty seconds behind the congregation. I have no sense of rhythm or time in the flow of Malagasy church.

I sing all of the wrong words to hymns, often resorting to singing some mangled version of Malagasy, or even worse, a strange half-English half-humming version of those hymns that I recognize but don't know well enough to be of any use. 

I mess up the long and complicated offering lines that seem to work in an intricate code that I just haven't been able to crack yet. 

I can't concentrate for the full 2 or 3 or 4 hours of worship that is typical of Malagasy services and often find my mind wandering during the sermon or announcements. 

But. 

This is a comfort to me- that we have the promise that where one or more of us are gathered in His name, Jesus will show up. We have the promise that Jesus will show up in the body and in the blood. 

Even when I'm a mess. Even when I mangle Malagasy church. 

He shows up.

Slowly, I begin to recognize Jesus in the midst of Malagasy church. 

I taste Him in communion. In the sacrament where language doesn't matter. In the body, broken for me; in the blood, shed for me. He is present here.

I experience Him in the laughter of little old church ladies (a universal church staple, apparently) who willingly help the lost foreigner find the right page in the Malagasy hymnal. He is present here.

I see Him in the little children who stare and stare at our group of 10 outsiders- only to break out into broad smiles and fits of giggles when you wave at them and whisper "Salama!" (hello) during announcements. He is present here.

I hear Him in the music; in the beautiful, beautiful sound of scores of Malagasy singing with utter abandon in 10 part harmony. He is present here. 

And finally, I relax into this new place and enjoy the experience. It doesn't matter that I can't understand a thing that happens during worship. I've found Jesus in this community of believers, so different and so similar from what I've grown used to at college. I've learned to celebrate the differences, and celebrate the familiarity. Maybe it's a different type of worship than I'm used to, and maybe I'm still a mess in the midst of service, but Jesus has shown up. 

In the words of my collegiate pastor, "When Jesus is present, life is present and salvation is present- and you are made righteous and worthy and perfect in the eyes of God; even if you think you are a mess. When God's word about you differs from your word about you, God's right. Not you."

So I'm a mess in Malagasy church. But Jesus has shown up. And the entire Malagasy congregation, including the foreigners who are lost and a total mess, is perfect in God's eyes. I may still feel like a mess, but He says that we are all perfect. He's shown up.

And that's enough. 

Link to Pr. Jim Wetzstein's sermon for Celebrate! 

26/08/2015, Valparaiso, IN

'Welcome to Jesus' 

https://soundcloud.com/james-wetzstein/welcome-to-jesus 

#YAGM2015 shadow style

We learned how to wash our clothing by hand this past week with some of the Malagasy women who work at Lovasoa-- it was a lot of fun, but definitely hard work. It'll be some time before we can do as much as these women we saw out on a walk one day. 

Went for a hike and got beautiful views of Antsirabe for our troubles. 

Photos don't do it justice, but terraced rice fields are the absolute most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life. There's a rumor going around that my walk to work in Tanjombato,Antananarivo includes a trek through the rice fields and I am soooooo excited! 

twenty one pilots

Music is song.

Music is life. 

Music is escape.

Lately my escape has been twenty one pilots' new album Blurryface. One of the beauties of this band is that they are intentionally vague, in a way that leaves much of their lyrics up to interpretation. The band members are Christian, but they don't label their music as Christian, and they don't write music in an overtly Christian or religious way. 

Different lines of that album speak to me at different times, depending on my context in life at the moment. 

"They say stay in your lane, boy, lane, boy. But we go where we want to."

I've always felt a bit of pressure in the States to "stay in my lane". To fulfill the American Dream- go to college, get a job, marry, have 2.5 kids and a house in the 'burbs. But I think I deviated decidedly from the lane that society would've seen me in when I applied to YAGM. And what a crazy decision and what a life changing experience that's been already.

"I'm a goner, somebody catch my breath. I wanna be known by you."

I don't tend to feel very much emotion, as a general rule. But the Wednesday my fellow YAGMs and I left for O'Hare, I had so many feelings it felt like I couldn't breathe. The weight of my decision finally hit me, and for a few terrifying minutes I felt like a goner- that I was in for more than I could handle and that I wasn't going to make it. But as the van pulled away from that curb outside UChicago, I looked outside and saw the alumni team clustered there, waving and brushing away tears as they held each other. All of a sudden I was struck with the sudden realization that they were there for me, that they were family I never knew I had. And I looked around the van at my country-mates and knew they were also family and that this great network of families would be there to catch me when I fell, to breath for me when I couldn't. 

And then there's my host community at Tanjombato, Antananarivo, a community I still don't know. But I do know that I want to be known by them, and to know them in return.

"But I'm not good with directions and I hide behind my mouth. I'm a pro at imperfections and I'm best friends with my doubt."

Something I struggle with is following God's direction in my life... I'm still figuring out this whole Christianity thing and sometimes I use that as an excuse to hide behind questions. Doubts about a lot of things run rampant in my mind, least of all my own capabilities to be successful in Mada. I'm acutely aware of my own imperfections, of the imperfections in the system and in our world.

"Don't trust a perfect person and don't trust a song that's flawless." 

I'm reminded of an article my pastor once shared with me- in it, the author basically says that the beauty of Christianity is that we are never expected to be perfect. In fact, we are fully accepted as inherently flawed and broken people. There is no way we can ever be perfect, but we are never expected to be. 

On our first Sunday in Lovasoa,Antsirabe our country coordinator (Pr. Kirsten) arranged for us to meet with some professional Malagasy musicians. We were to collaborate some Malagasy-American songs to perform for Bishop Eaton of the ELCA when she visited later that week. We could barely communicate, but we put together three songs: a Malagasy lullaby, an arrangement of 'I'll Fly Away', and The Lion Sleeps Tonight. And our songs were not perfect, and they were not flawless, not by anyone's standards. But it was beautiful. And it was enough. 

"I know my soul's freezing; hell's hot for good reason, so please take me."

Maybe freezing isn't the perfect term, but my heart has been hardened to others- maybe by society, maybe by my own doing, who knows...but I am not very in tune to those outside of myself and my small circle of friends and family. And that's a big part of why I'm here. I don't mean to say that Madagascar is hell (far from it). Instead, this line means to me something along the lines of the refiner's fire, as well as the process of going through that fire in order to come out of it more finished than we were before. And Mada has plenty of "fire" in terms of difficult topics and complicated situations to chew on and think over while we're living in the middle of it all.

Please take me-- In my mind this is a prayer, a plea to God to take me where I need to go, to give me the words when my Malagasy fails me, to direct my eyes to where I need to see, to open my ears when I need to listen, to soften my heart where it has been hardened. 

"Though I'm weak and beaten down, I'll slip away into the sound." 

We're only a week into orientation here in Madagascar, and we've only begun to dissect some of the bigger issues. There's poverty, colonialism, the pervasiveness of western values/language/ideals/etcetera, environmental justice, cultural differences, the list goes on. Though we've only scratched the surface, at times I've been left feeling beaten down and weak with the massiveness of these questions we've started to wrestle with. 

I'll slip away into the sound: my escape is music. That's always held true but it has become even more so here. When I'm lost and feeling horribly out of place in Malagasy church services, I can always sing the hymns and join my voice in with the beautiful harmonies the congregation creates. When the YAGMs were putting together a few songs with the Malagasy musicians for Bishop Eaton, we couldn't communicate at all-- but it wasn't necessary. The music was enough. 

And finally, sometimes I escape into the comforts of listening to my American music. There are times when I can't bring myself to read the Bible or to pray, and in those times music has become my scripture and my prayer. 

"The ghost of you is close to me."

Sometimes I forget this. I need an occasional reminder that we have been given the Holy Spirit to stay close to us. To guide us with a gentle hand on our backs, to breathe life into us when we are weary and beaten down. To open our ears to the music that bears us up, our hearts to the love that surrounds us, our eyes to the beauty that is around us, and our minds to the things that challenge us.

Tools for worship in Madagascar: Bible, Malagasy hymnal, English translation, & individual communion cup 

The Malagasy musicians we were privileged to play with and learn from. 

Everyone involved in the cultural performance that was put on on Friday, plus our honored guests (Bishop Eaton, Pr. Walker, and Rev. Rafael).

One of the many, many beautiful sunsets we enjoy almost daily here at Lovasoa,Antsirabe.

View of the countryside from the hill we hiked just outside of the city of Antsirabe... 

The view of our home from across the rice fields, right before sunset.