By means of youtube, I’ve been listening to Guns N’ Roses annihilate the stunning classic tune ‘Finlandia’ by the Finnish composer Sibelius. I know the tune set with the lyrics, ‘Be Still My Soul’, which is a far cry from the band’s famous ‘Welcome to the Jungle’. In an attempt to please the crowd, the band closes their Helsinki concert with this tune now the Finnish national anthem. On the youtube comment board hundreds of concert goers write their twenty letter indecipherable Finnish words followed by American expletives. The closing song has not been well received.
Finding this song was serendipitous. The discord between band and ballad exemplify my own dissonance. Noisy pastor trying to please the crowd. Be Still My Soul meets Welcome to the Jungle. The antithesis between the two is the spiritual truth I have been living in this last season of ministry. Elijah confesses, “I’ve been very zealous for the Lord.” And so goes Elijah looking for God in the whirlwind, the storm and the fire. Tugged by outward forces, Elijah’s zealous leadership has reached a place of dissonance. So has mine. So have Guns N’ Roses.
Axl Rose has headlined tabloids for decades with news of his damaging addictions. Mine are more subtle: voracious appetite, constant need for affirmation, an appalling need to please, avoid anxiety at all cost. All result in an internal noisiness. In those moments when my center is lost, I feel like a spinning top careening out of its centered orbit and jumping and jolting until its momentum is fully lost.
The search for “Finlandia” online came in advance of a trip to Helsinki this summer. Helsinki is home to Jean Sibelius, haven of my mother’s ancestry and a harbinger for the church with a resurgence in worshipers since the beginning of the St. Thomas Mass at a Lutheran Church here in 1988. I am hoping this will be a place where my spiritual center will be recalibrated.
The website for the Michael Agricola Lutheran Church encourages, “The St. Thomas Mass invites doubters and seekers to celebrate, worship God, serve their neighbor and grow together.” And then continues, “Those who feel sinful and weak in faith are especially welcome.” Does this include the byline, ‘and for those who feel internally noisy, dissonant, out of sorts, lost, vocationally confused, exceptionally exhausted and off center?’
Before leaving for Helsinki I google directions to the church address: Tehtaankatu 23. The map points an arrow to the National Hunting Museum. I’m looking for stillness. I am destined for guns: Guns N’ Roses, that is. That night, we rely on the church website directions. Thankfully we arrive at the church not the hunting museum.
The service is translated into English by Mati who with a calming centeredness and clear, simple words ministers to his listeners. While it is the liturgist who has crafted the intent and phrasing of the prayer, Mati is the one who provides the English expression. His words are quiet, clear and disarmingly straight to the heart. As the opening prayer unfolds, my internal dissonance dissolves with the prayer’s opening petition:
Prayer helps you listen to yourself and to God
who speaks in silence in the noise of everyday.
This quiet moment will give you rest. Only with
the heart can you see well and it helps you to see
what is valuable in life. Just bowing down is not
enough, where words end God knows your heart.
Out of cold and dead hearts, God creates anew.
Let God love you.
Charles Morgan writes that we need “the stilling of the soul within the activities of the mind and body so that it might be still as the axis of a revolving wheel is still.” Who needs Axl Rose when maybe this is the ‘axle’ I have been looking for all this time. I had always thought the internal image of the shaking spinning top was about being tugged in different directions, I didn’t realize it was about the stillness at the center being missing. For a moment in that prayer, I heard that stillness clear and loud.
Upon return home, I continue to research the history of ‘Finlandia’ and discover an incredible setting of the tune to lyrics by Gloria Gaither:
I then shall live as one who’s been forgiven
I’ll walk with joy to know my debts are paid
I know my name is clear before my father
I am his child and I am not afraid
So, greatly pardoned I’ll forgive my brother
The law of love I gladly will obey.
Elijah felt fruitless in ministry. I felt internal dissonance. Instead of a pastor offering a concerted witness to the rock of salvation, I was a rock concert gone bad trying to please the crowd. We both had been zealous, but ended up exhausted.
These lyrics offer a new way of living into ministry, let alone life. The title to this setting of lyrics and tune is called, “Then Shall I Live”. I can’t think of a better starting place than this. While the lyrics do not tell of the events that necessitated the ‘then’ in the life of the lyricist, I know mine and I am so glad to have the ‘then’ behind me and for the chapter ahead, a new axle of stillness.
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