Posted by Bryan Moyer Suderman on Sep 26, 2014
Just over a year ago I had a conversation that changed my life. I was going into the 11th year of my music ministry and struggling with some dynamics in my work that I was having a hard time naming. A new friend who had asked and listened carefully – very carefully – made two insightful comments that were so simple. Even obvious. But I’d never had the nerve to quite see it – or say it – that way before. The first comment was this: “Well, Bryan, it seems to me that SmallTall Music is too small. Too small to describe what you’ve actually been doing, and too small for who you are and what you are called to do in the future.” The second was this: “It seems to me that you’ve been doing biblical scholarship “under cover” for years. That’s where the songwriting comes from. Maybe it’s time to blow your cover.” Wow. Those two comments hit the nail on the head for me. The past year, with the help of a wise coach, has been an invigorating and exciting (and at times scary) time of exploring the implications of those comments – re-envisioning and re-imagining and beginning to re-articulate how I understand myself and my vocation. Here is a new “why” statement that has emerged from this process. In many ways, of course, there’s nothing “new” about it – this has been driving my sense of ministry all along. But it’s a new articulation that I’m finding helpful as I move into the future. “Why” statement – short version: This is the journey I’m on, and the journey to which I passionately seek to invite others: to catch a glimpse of God’s great project in the world especially as revealed in Scripture and be inspired to join in And here’s a longer version, with more detail and nuance (and notice the chiastic structure, if you’re into that kind of thing…) Continuously learning That I am a beloved child of God Called and equipped to play a role As a member of the body of Christ In the ongoing scriptural drama Of God’s great project in the world I seek to engage others in the ongoing scriptural drama As members of the body of Christ Called and equipped to play their own roles As beloved children of God Continuously learning A few concrete...
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Posted by Bryan Moyer Suderman on Jul 16, 2014
I am now back home after attending two very good, very different events. One was the Wild Goose Festival in North Carolina, and the other was the Mennonite Church Canada Assembly in Winnipeg, Manitoba. At the Assembly I was especially moved by Betty Pries’ presentation on Saturday morning, and by the various worship times in which we were immersed, again and again, in the story of Jesus and his disciples in a boat in the middle of a storm (Mark 4:35-41). In each worship time – with word, song, visuals, soundscapes, symbolic action – we experienced the whole story and focused on a particular phrase/element (“Leave… Go…”; “Teacher, don’t you care?!”; “Why are you afraid?”; “Have you still no faith?”; “Peace! Be Still!”). I was (and am) deeply moved and very grateful – those worship times, so ably planned and led, “placed” us right where we needed to be for the discernment that was before us each day. There was one phrase that kept sticking out, for me, from that Scripture reading – a phrase that we didn’t explore in those worship times, but that I have been pondering ever since. “Other boats were with him.” After teaching a large crowd “beside the sea” (Mk 4:1-34), Jesus says to his disciples: “‘Let us go across to the other side.’ And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him.” (Mk 4:35-36). We are told nothing of these “other boats.” How many were there? Who was in them? How did THEY experience and navigate the storm? How did THEY relate to Jesus? We do not know. The narrative is focused entirely on the drama of Jesus and his disciples in one particular boat. And yet there is that tantalizing hint: “Other boats were with him.” In the midst of the details of our own dramas and discernment, and the struggles and dynamics in our particular “boat” (church, denomination), we are subtly but unmistakably reminded: We’re not the only ones. “Other boats were with him.” I think of Luke 24, after Jesus’ death and resurrection, where two disciples are on the road to Emmaus, and they encounter a stranger who turns out to be Jesus himself. When they hurry back to Jerusalem to tell what had happened to them, they discover that Jesus had not only appeared to them, but to others as well. “Other boats were with him…” I am also reminded of the prophet Amos, who says: “Are you not like the Ethiopians to me, O people of Israel? says the LORD. Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?” (Amos 9:7) “Other boats were with him…” It turns out these hints (and more than hints) are seeded all over the place throughout the Scriptures....
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Posted by Bryan Moyer Suderman on Jun 24, 2014
Maybe it’s the way I’m “wired,” but for me one of the joys of going on tour is being welcomed into people’s homes and having many, many conversations across dinner tables (and living rooms, and gardens, and swing sets, and hiking trails, and cars). In the past decade of regular touring, I have stayed in a hotel for a grand total of one night – and that’s because it was the choice of the hosting congregation. My preference is to be hosted in people’s homes, and it’s one of the great joys and blessings of my life. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about conversations. Partly because I’m participating in a bunch of conversations right now that are challenging in a variety of ways – conversations between people with passionate views and convictions who are not in agreement. How can we have good, healthy, meaningful, honest, fruitful, respectful conversations with each other, even when (especially when) we disagree? On this recent tour I spent a number of days with a wonderful family on a farm – members of an intentional Christian community, passionate about the environment and sustainable agriculture, passionate about peace and justice, passionate about following Jesus. They modelled for me an approach to conversation that I think we desperately need. Here’s what they said: “Bryan – it’s obvious that you travel a lot and interact with lots of different communities. I get the sense from our conversation last night that you’re open to different points of view, and open to some “liberal” points of view on homosexuality. Can you help us understand… those who think the church should bless same-sex marriage – how do they justify their position biblically?” And we had a wonderful conversation, lasting about three hours, that was one of the highlights of my trip. A trip that included communities across the the theological spectrum in Mennonite Church USA – from rural Illinois to the Mountain States Mennonite Conference… from lay Franciscans in Iowa to a progressive emergent church near Boston and a conservative Congregational church down the coast. Everywhere I went, there were meaningful and honest conversations about things – understandings of sexuality, economics, ecology – that are “hot topics” all over. I was struck by what an enormous difference it makes to be having these conversations in person, across dinner tables (and living rooms, and gardens, and swing sets, and hiking trails, and cars), rather than in the so-often shrill and “gotcha” online world of blogs and status updates. To be talking directly with one another, instead of just talking at or about each other through the various technologies that make it so easy to demonize each other, to assume and believe the worst about each other’s motives and agenda, and so on. Tomorrow morning it’s off to the Wild Goose Festival in North Carolina, and the following week to Winnipeg for the Mennonite Church...
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Posted by Bryan Moyer Suderman on Jun 11, 2014
My recent spring tour began with a “performance” where I wasn’t even there! I was asked to contribute a short talk to the Mennonite Church Eastern Canada’s “Annual Church Gathering”… but that was the first weekend of my tour, and I was going to be rolling through the US midwest on my way to southern Illinois… So we made this short video (filmed by Paul Plett), which was shown at the Gathering. Some reflections, structured around a new (as of yet unrecorded, unreleased) song. You can see it...
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Posted by Bryan Moyer Suderman on Feb 13, 2014
We were down to the wire. If we didn’t have permission from Pete Seeger’s publisher by the end of the day on Monday, we were going to have to drop “My Voice Alone” (an adaptation of “One Man’s Hands” by Pete Seeger and Alex Comfort) from the CD. Well, Monday came around, and still no word. I was resigning myself to the fact that this song – which I dearly wanted to have on the record – would have to be cut. I think it was around noon when I heard a knock on the door. I got up from the floor where I was playing with our then-5-year-old son, opened the door and… You see, we’d been in touch with Sanga Music for months, trying to get permission to include the song on the forthcoming “God’s Love is for Everybody” CD (this was in the fall of 2002). I had learned the song years before from Chuck Neufeld, who had adapted the words from the original “One Man’s Hands… can’t tear a prison down” to the more gender-inclusive “My voice alone… my hands alone…” This was the version we wanted to include on this project, which was an initiative of Mennonite Church Canada – a collection of new songs I’d been writing, with a couple of covers and “traditional” songs as well. Our contact at Sanga Music was reluctant to give permission, saying that the lyrical change was too big. I kept insisting – in letters and phone calls – that if he would just speak to Mr. Seeger about it (yes, I called him “Mr. Seeger”), I was confident that Pete would approve. I was a huge Seeger fan, read his writing, listened to (and sang) his songs… and I knew he was all about “the folk process” and was constantly telling people to take his songs and change them, adapt them, add to them… that’s what “the folk process” was all about. Mr. Publisher – if you would just talk to Mr. Seeger about this, I’d really, really appreciate it… Well, Mr. Publisher was having none of it, and the fateful Monday had arrived… So when I opened the door, and the mail carrier handed me a parcel – a big parcel – I had no idea what it was. And when I looked at the return address and saw “Beacon, New York,” I nearly fell over. I sat right back down on the floor and tore open the package as fast as I could. Here’s what I found: – a handwritten note on a copy of our permission request, commenting on the lyrics (and “the folk process”!) and graciously granting permission. – another page with another hand-written note, on the back of a copy of an article from the Utne Review, about a community in Colombia learning (and teaching the world) how to live sustainably....
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Posted by Bryan Moyer Suderman on Jan 24, 2014
On the night I learned of Nelson Mandela’s death, I was in Stouffville’s Barnside Studios, recording the final vocals for the soundtrack CD of “Selah’s Song” – an original folk musical with themes that resonate deeply with Mandela’s story. It was an emotional experience for me to sing these lyrics to the show’s “title track” that night: ‘cause the drumbeat of war that we hear all around is a sound so afraid and alone There’s another drummer drumming somewhere With a rhythm that’s calling us home… Won’t you sing, sing, sing with me? Won’t you sing a song of peace? Two days later, we were on a plane, headed to South Africa for a long anticipated trip to visit family. And three days after that we were at FNB Stadium in Soweto along with tens of thousands of others for the official Mandela memorial. It was a rainy Johannesburg morning, and as we made our way toward the stadium over three hours before the scheduled “start” of the event, we could already hear the people singing from half a kilometer away. We watched group after group arrive – many of them singing and dancing. “Struggle songs” from the apartheid era, and the oft-repeated refrain “Mandela, you’re my President!” “Siyabonga, Mandela” – “We are grateful, Mandela.” These too were words that were sung, and spoken, and sung again. What a moving experience, to be in the midst of this grateful, grieving, boisterous crowd, knowing that anyone over 20 years old had experienced firsthand both the brutal reality of apartheid and the difficult and costly transition to democracy. Now all were challenged and inspired yet again by this freedom fighter who emerged after 27 years in prison, determined not to seek revenge but to lead his nation in seeking real healing and reconciliation. Immediately upon our return to Stouffville, I was plunged headlong into dress rehearsals and then an intense weekend of 4 performances of “Selah’s Song” at 19-On-The-Park. As we shared the laughter and tears of Selah’s story, with its reflections on the power of song and ringing call to peacemaking, I couldn’t help but hear the South African songs of struggle and hope ringing in my ears as well. “There’s another drummer drumming somewhere with a rhythm that’s calling us home…” “Siyabonga, Mandela.” Thank you, Mandela, indeed. (this piece was written for publication as a column in our local community newspaper). (In the background of the above picture, you can see a couple of journalists from an Afrikaaner newspaper interviewing Karen and Andrew, my brother and sister-in-law. That article and photos were published here. Karen and Andrew have written articles on this experience here and here.) (The man standing at the top of the picture is Mzwandile… there is an inspiring article about him...
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