Category: Christianity

Finlandia’s Global Trek from National Anthem to Hymn for the Nations

Found in Western churches today as the tune for “Be Still My Soul” and “This Is My Song,” Finlandia has a rich, globetrotting history.

In 1889, the Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius, wrote a piece of music to be performed at a rally protesting censorship by the Russian Empire, of which Finland was a part. This work became the basis for his symphonic poem Finlandia, completed the next year. Finlandia begins with stirring music, but ends with a more tranquil—and more well-known—section, called the “Finlandia Hymn.” It can be heard, beginning at the 5:33 mark, in this performance:

Later, Sibelius reworked the hymn into a standalone piece, and in 1940, the Finnish poet Veikko Antero Koskenniemi added words, and the “Finlandia Hymn” became a popular, though unofficial, anthem for Finland.

Nearly 150 years before the composition of Finlandia, Katharina Amalia Dorothea von Schlegel had written the words for the German hymn, “Stille meine Wille, dein Jesus hilft siegen,” in 1752. Scottish-born Jane Laurie Borthwick translated the hymn into English in 1855 as “Be Still, My Soul,” and in 1927, Borthwick’s lyrics were put to the tune of  the “Finlandia Hymn,” to form today’s familiar song.

David J. Mitchell writes about meeting the Olympic gold medalist Eric Liddell during World War II when Mitchell entered a Japanese internment camp in China as a child of missionary parents. Liddell, whose story was later told in the movie Chariots of Fire, was in the camp because of his own missionary work in China. Liddell was a great encouragement to his fellow prisoners, including Mitchell, who remembers the Scottsman teaching the children “Be Still My Soul.” The hymn’s first verse is

Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side.
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain.
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In every change, He faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul: thy best, thy heav’nly Friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

“These words were a great comfort to one of our missionaries who was not only separated from her husband throughout the war,” remembers Mitchell, “but whose son was accidentally electrocuted by a bare wire running to one of the searchlight towers.”

Another prisoner, Norman Cliff, played trombone in a band organized by members of the Salvation Army. He recounts that a week before Liddell died while still in the camp, he heard the band and, from his hospital bed, asked them to play the hymn.

Here is a rendition of the song by Kari Job, with the addition of the refrain “In You I Rest.”

Another hymn sung to the Finlandia tune is “We Rest on Thee,” written by Edith G. Cherry, of Plymouth, England, in 1895. The hymn became part of the account of the 1955 martyrdom of five Christian missionaries by the Waroni (Auca) Indians in Ecuador, as the group sang “We Rest on Thee” before leaving to contact the tribe. The first verse is

We rest on Thee, our Shield and our Defender!
We go not forth alone against the foe;
Strong in Thy strength, safe in Thy keeping tender,
We rest on Thee, and in Thy Name we go.
Strong in Thy strength, safe in Thy keeping tender,
We rest on Thee, and in Thy Name we go.

When Elisabeth Elliot, wife of Jim Elliot, one of those who died, wrote the missionaries’ story, she got the title of her book, Through Gates of Splendor, from the song’s fourth verse:

When passing through the gates of pearly splendor,
Victors, we rest with Thee, through endless days.

The “Finlandia Hymn” continued its global trek as the tune for  the Welsh national song, “A Prayer for Wales,” and for “The Land of the Rising Sun,” the national anthem of the African country of Biafra, during its existence from 1967 to 1970.

Among the other church hymns that got their melodies from Finlandia is “This Is My Song,” which, given its global theme, provides a fitting ending for this post. Sung to the “God of all the nations,” it calls for peace and hope for “lands afar and mine.”

The words of the hymn were written in 1934 by the American Lloyd Stone. Additional verses were later added by another American, Georgia Harkness. Here is Stone’s first verse:

This is my song, Oh God of all the nations,
A song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is;
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my sacred shrine.
But other hearts in other lands are beating,
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

(David J. Mitchell, “Recollections of Eric Liddell by Dr. David J. Mitchell,” The Eric Liddell Centre; Norman Cliff, “Eric Liddell in Weihsin Camp—1943-1945,” Weihsin; Elisabeth Elliot, Through Gates of Splendor, Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale, 1981)

Page CXVI—Get All Their Songs for Free

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As a followup to “Music for the Unsettled Soul,” I’m passing on the announcement by Page CXVI that they are making all their albums available for free download during the month of March. Their “Jubilee” giveaway celebrates the three musicians’ seven years together, both as The Autumn Film and Page CXVI.

The downloads, available here at Noisetrade, include 74 songs from 11 albums. The giveaway lasts till the end of this month.

Free stuff. Hard to beat.

[photo: “Old Piano Keys,” by Adam Henning, used under a Creative Commons license]

“Letters Never Sent” but, Thankfully, Published Instead

It’s been 25 years since Ruth E. Van Reken125933835_e355fbcad2_m first published Letters Never Sent, but I hope it doesn’t ever become a book rarely read.

Following her experiences as a Third Culture Kid, born to missionary parents in Nigeria, and later as a missionary to Africa herself, Van Reken wrote a series of “letters,” to her mother and father, and to God, expressing feelings that earlier she wasn’t able to fully share.

While it would be easy to assume that the details of Van Reken’s story are dated—the book begins with her trip to boarding school in 1951—her expressions of honest emotions cut through the years and show the wonderings and pleadings of a heart that beats in many missionaries and their children today. But it is a heart that is all too often hidden and quieted.

One of the feelings voiced by the young Ruth Ellen is guilt . . . guilt that her inner thoughts are a betrayal of her parents’ calling. During her high-school years, she and her sister stayed in the States, while their parents returned to their work in Nigeria. As her mother and father’s departure nears, Ruth Ellen fights with her emotions, writing in a “never sent” letter:

If I throw myself into your arms and sob my heart out, it might keep you from going. And even though that’s what I want, how could I ever bear the guilt of being the one who kept you from doing God’s work? I’ve always vowed I wouldn’t be one of “those kids,” the kind that other missionaries talk about in whispers, with a sad shake of their heads. “So-and-so couldn’t come back to the field because of their children.” They must be pretty bad kids, I’ve always figured. I don’t want anyone to say that about me or our family.

And I can’t very well come to God with this because, in a way I feel like it’s all His fault.

Years later, as Ruth Ellen ponders her approaching wedding to David Van Reken, she expresses a distrust of God, developed from many years of having, as a TCK, to let go of what is dear to her:

I can’t believe God will let me keep David. It’s like He’s dangling Dave on a rope, letting him come closer and closer. I’m afraid that at the last moment, when I put out my hand to take him, the string will be jerked back and God will laugh.

“Ha ha. Thought you finally had someone you could keep. Don’t count on it. Whatever you depend on, I will surely take that, so that you’ll depend solely on Me.”

Ruth does get to keep David, and the two are soon joined by a baby daughter. But depression comes to Ruth, seeming to be at odds with the spirituality that she longs to possess. “How many hundreds of testimonies have I heard about the joy that Jesus gives?” she writes. “He surely isn’t giving it to me right now—or maybe I just don’t know how to receive it.”

Her depression becomes deep enough that she thinks about suicide:

I’ve actually wondered what it would be like to take pills and never wake up. But in my heart I know that wouldn’t solve anything. I have a child I’m responsible for, and I want to see her grow up. And I want to live, if I can be the person that I’ve always thought I had the potential to be. But right now that seems like a hopeless dream.

Then, using words that are reminiscent of those penned by the Psalmist in Psalm 13, she writes,

The thread I’m hanging on to is an intellectual belief that God still has a purpose for my life. I can’t imagine how He can ever put all the pieces back together and make me whole, but it’s my only hope. I told Him today that He could forget helping me to do better—there’s nothing left of me to help. If He doesn’t do something new, I’m finished.

But there is hope. There is help for her to do better. And it comes in the form of a new friend, Linda, who opens a path for Ruth by sharing her own personal struggles in a Sunday school class. This is something that Ruth hasn’t experienced before, and it gives her courage. This leads to many conversations with Linda, in which Ruth shares her pain, and Linda listens without judgment.

Within a few years, the Van Rekens are preparing for their own missionary work in Africa, and Ruth continues to learn how to function without hiding behind masks. Sometimes the masks come off gently, as with Linda, but at other times, they are pulled off forcefully, as when a pastor shares from the pulpit about some of her struggles. But to her amazement, she writes, when “[t]he awful, naked ugliness of my soul was exposed, . . . I was still accepted!”

Healing also comes through forgiveness: forgiving her parents for her many separations from them and forgiving “all those who locked me up with pat answers or quick words of encouragement, when what I needed was understanding and a hug.” Following the death of her uncle, Ruth gets a different kind of response from Jesus: “He held me and understood. He acknowledge my pain. He didn’t try to talk me out of my hurt. . . . I’m learning about God as the Comforter and binder of broken hearts.”

But in letters dated less than two years later, as she and David are serving in Liberia, Ruth writes that the depression has returned. She tells God, barring a change in the next month, to let her die. In her conversations with God that follow, she learns that she has not addressed all of the anger that is leading to her depressed feelings. She still needs to “forgive” God.

“Why don’t you leave me alone?” she hears herself say. “Ever since I came to Liberia to serve you, You’ve done nothing but bad things to me. I’m sick and tired of it.” And she hears God say to her that he isn’t at all shocked by her anger. He can handle it. “You can love someone and still be angry at him,” God tells her. Acknowledging this anger is an important step for Ruth, a step that leads to more healing.

One of the final letters penned by Ruth is dated 1984. That’s 24 years after Ruth Ellen had voiced her struggle with guilt because she wasn’t the perfect missionary child. In it, she says, after reading through all of her previous letters, that there still was one more person to forgive:

I can forgive the little girl I was, for not being all she thought she was supposed to be. The greatest joy has been to understand for the first time in my life that God is the “God of all Comfort.” I could not understand that until I recognized how much I needed His comfort.

Ruth’s story is one of faith and anger and hope and fear and sadness and peace, all flowing one into another. It is a story beautifully and sincerely told. It is a story that can speak to generations of TCKs and cross-cultural workers and to those who want to understand them. And it’s a story that continues. Last year, Van Reken published a newly revised edition of Letters Never Sent, containing 30 additional pages, with photos and an epilogue addressing her later life, including a bout with cancer.

It’s been 25 years since Ruth E. Van Reken first published Letters Never Sent, but I hope it doesn’t ever become a book rarely read.

The above quotations are taken from the 1988 edition of Letters Never Sent. The book was first printed in the US in 1987 under the title Letters I Never Wrote.

[photo: “unreachable,” by Daniel Zimmel, used under a Creative Commons license]

Jesus Has Rhythm, How about You?

5952477370_6475320cc9_m“In the gospel accounts, we don’t see Jesus scurrying around driven by what we might call ‘hurry sickness,'” writes Stephen W. Smith. “We don’t sense Jesus navigating white water. We don’t see Him spinning plates or trying to live a balanced life. None of the four biographers of Jesus show Him in a hurry—ever.”

In his book, The Jesus Life: Eight Ways to Recover Authentic Christianity, Smith teaches that we not only need to listen to the words of Jesus but watch the lifestyle of Jesus, as well. And if we look closely, we’ll see that Jesus’ life is marked by a rhythm. This is especially clear, says Smith, in the Gospel of Luke:

Engage then disengage; work in the crowds but always make time to rejuvenate with time alone. Luke revealed that Jesus was not always on, He was not always available. This important lesson is key to sustaining a resilient and satisfying life.

Smith then goes on to tell the story of two “modern pilgrims,” Rich and Carla, who “graduated from a Christian college, got married, and moved to the mission field.”

They both had a dream of sharing Jesus with others who had never heard His teachings. But eighteen months after they arrived in their assigned country, they came back home. They left enthusiastic and invigorated. They returned broken and discouraged. Both shared that they had worked over seventy hours a week in a tireless effort with dozens of volunteer teams to build a children’s center from a crumbling building. They said, “We never had a day off. We never had one moment to ourselves. We hosted college students in our homes who stayed up late playing games, and we found ourselves playing the games with them until the early-morning hours. We went to bed exhausted, got up exhausted, did our work exhausted, and fought all the time—it seemed.”

Sound familiar? Feel familiar?

If so, and if you’d like help in imitating the rhythmic life of Jesus, pick up a copy of The Jesus Life.

(Stephen W. Smith, The Jesus Life: Eight Way to Recover Authentic Christianity, Colorado Springs: David C Cook, 2012)

[photo: “Plate Spinning,” by Vincent Cornelius, used under a Creative Commons license]

Back Home to Papua, 50 Years after Peace Child

Home is an elusive concept for many Third Culture Kids. Paul Richardson, who was born in Papua, Indonesia, is no exception.

“Because I lived so many places in different parts of the world, traveled so much,” he says, “I’d never been able to really say where’s home.”

5712238389_d4bb32ba5f_nBut this summer, he, along with his father and two brothers, returned to the place where he was “born and raised.” That return is the subject of the 15-minute film Never the Same: Celebrating 50 Years since Peace Child.

Paul is part of a famous family, at least among evangelical Christians and the missionary community. Don and Carol, his parents, moved to Papua in 1962 to take the gospel to the Sawi, a tribe of cannibals and headhunters. Their story is the subject of the book Peace Child: An Unforgettable Story of Primitive Jungle Treachery in the 20th Century, later made into a movie, also called Peace Child.

When missionary historian Ruth Tucker wrote From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Christian Missions, it was the work of the Richardsons in Papua (formerly Irian Jaya) that made up the final chapter.

Ministering to a warring tribe was not easy, and at one point, Don told the Sawis that if they didn’t stop fighting, he and his family would have to leave. In order to keep the missionaries there, each Sawi village gave an infant boy to its enemies as a sign of peace. This idea of the “peace child” became a door for the message that the Richardsons were trying to tell them, that God, likewise, had given the world a peace gift, his only son.

This experience among the Sawi formed the basis for Don’s belief that every culture has a “redemptive analogy,” a story, practice, or tradition that can be used to help the people understand the gospel of Christ.  He expounds on this concept in his book Eternity in Their Hearts: Startling Evidence of Belief in the One True God in Hundreds of Cultures throughout the World.

Fifty years after first arriving in Papua, Don revisited the Sawi tribe, which had not only embraced Christianity but had become a base for reaching out to the tribes around them with the message of Christ. Making the trip with him were his sons: Steve, who was seven months old when his family moved to be with the Sawi, and Paul and Shannon, who were born in Papua.

Steve is now the president of the mission agency Pioneers-USA, and he serves as the narrator for Never the Same, which you can view below. It begins with a short overview of the Richardson’s work with the Sawi people and then shows their reunion with their old friends. This is where Paul talks about returning to the place where he lived as a child:

There’s no electricity except for a little generator, and . . . there’s no emails, there’s no text messages . . . just, you know . . . it’s just quiet here. And it’s beautiful, and . . . and there’s a connection with the people here. And, uh, just waking up in the morning, hearing the sounds of the jungle, and, I don’t know, I slept better last night than I have in years, even though I’m just sleeping on the floor in this village.

So there is something to going back. I . . . Because I lived so many places in different parts of the world, traveled so much, I’d never been able to really say where’s home. But I think this would probably be more than anywhere else . . . is where I was born and raised. So this will always be special for me.

I heard about this video from Brian Stankich at Fulfill. In response to my post on eating insects, he pointed to a scene where Steve is eating some grubs on a stick, given to him by his Sawi hosts. Showing his snack to the camera, he says,

Oh this is um . . . these are grubs. And inside they’re just full of grease, and the heads are really . . . very strange, actually, the more I think about it. But [chewing and clearing his throat] they grow on you.

[photo: “Papua-Indonesia, 2008,” by CIFOR, used under a Creative Commons license]

Henri Nouwen’s “Inner Voice of Love”: Finding the Path Home

I’m a fan of the writings of Henri Nouwen. Before his death in 1996, the Holland-born author and theologian served as a Catholic priest; taught at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas, and at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard; worked with Trappist monks in New York’s Abbey of the Genesee; lived with the poor in Peru; and became pastor at a L’Arche community for the mentally disabled in Canada. Along the way, he wrote over 40 books.

One of the hallmarks of Nouwen’s works is his honest sharing of his personal struggles. This is probably nowhere more apparent than in his Inner Voice of Love, originally a series of “secret journal” entries written during a period of deep depression. In the introduction to the book, Nouwen writes that it was only at the urging of friends that he decided to have The Inner Voice of Love published.

In the book’s pages, Nouwen touches on themes that strike chords with many cross-cultural children and adults, global nomads, and others who are physical or spiritual “strangers in a strange land”—with those who are looking for a community and home to call their own. In fact, it was shortly after he joined the community of L’Arche, what he called his “true home,” that Nouwen was faced with his depression. “Just when I had found a home,” he writes, “I felt absolutely homeless. . . . It was if the house I had finally found had no floors.”

Over the course of the next six months, Nouwen moved from agony “to a new inner freedom, a new hope, and a new creativity.” Following are some of the “spiritual imperatives” that Nouwen wrote to himself during this journey, as he sought the path home:

Coming Home and Trusting Your Heart

Sometimes people who do not know your heart will altogether miss the importance of something that is part of your deepest self, precious in your eyes as well as God’s. They might not know you well enough to be able to respond to your genuine needs. It is then that you have to speak your heart and follow your own deepest calling.

There is a part of you that too easily gives in to others’ influence. As soon as someone questions your motives, you start doubting yourself. You end up agreeing with the other before you have consulted your own heart. Thus you grow passive and simply assume that the other knows better.

Here you have to be very attentive to your inner self. “Coming home” and “being given back to yourself” are expressions that indicate that you have a solid inner base from which you can speak and act—without apologies—humbly but convincingly.

Sharing Your Pain as a Fellow Traveler

You wonder whether it is good to share your struggles with others, especially with those to whom you are called to minister. you find it hard not to mention your own pains and sorrows to those you are trying to help. You feel that what belongs to the core of your humanity should not be hidden. You want to be a fellow traveler, not a distant guide.

The main question is “Do you own your pain?” As long as you do not own your pain—that is, integrate your pain into your way of being in the world—the danger exists that you will use the other to seek healing for yourself. . . .

But when you fully own your pain and do not expect those to whom you minister to alleviate it, you can speak about true freedom. Then sharing your struggle can become a service; then your openness about yourself can offer courage and hope to others.

For you to be able to share your struggle as a service, it is also essential to have people to whom you can go with your own needs. You will always need safe people to whom you can pour out your heart.

You Are Welcome Here

Not being welcome is your greatest fear. . . . It is the deepseated fear that it would have been better if you had not lived.

Everything Jesus is saying to you can be summarized in the words “Know that you are welcome.” Jesus offers you his own most intimate life with the Father. He wants you to know all he knows and to do all he does. He wants his home to be yours. Yes, he wants to prepare a place for you in his Father’s house.

Keep reminding yourself that your feelings of being unwelcome do not come from God and do not tell the truth. The Prince of Darkness wants you to believe that your life is a mistake and that there is no home for you. But every time you allow these thoughts to affect you, you set out on the road to self-destruction. So you have to keep unmasking the lie and think, speak, and act according to the truth that you are very, very welcome.

(Henri Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey through Anguish to Freedom, New York: Doubleday, 1996)

[photo: “To die by your side,” by Hugo Marcelo Mendez Campos, used under a Creative Commons license]

Three Quarters of World’s Population Live under High Religious Restrictions

From mid 2007 to mid 2010, the share of the world’s people living in areas of “high or very high” restrictions on religion grew from 68% to 75%. This is according to a recent report from The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The report combines scores on government restrictions and social hostilities involving religion. Findings include the following:

  • The percentage of countries with combined high or very high restrictions rose from 29% to 37%.
  • Six countries scored “very high” in both categories (government and social), as of mid 2010:
    1. Afghanistan
    2. Egypt
    3. Indonesia
    4. Russia
    5. Saudi Arabia, and
    6. Yemen
  • In the year ending in mid-2010, 28% of countries showed “moderate” levels of government restrictions, while 35% were in the “low” category.
  • At the end of the four-year period, 19% of the global population lived in countries in the “moderate” range of social hostilities, with 6% living in “low” countries.
  • Overall, from 2009 to 2010, 66% of countries showed an increase in restrictions, while 28% showed decreases.
  • The three groups that were harassed in the highest number of countries were Christians (in 139 countries), Muslims (in 121), and Jews (in 85).

While the United States ended the four-year study in the “moderate” range in both categories, it was one of sixteen nations whose scores on both indexes rose by one or more points in the final year. This was a first for the US during the four-year period.

(Rising Tide of Restrictions on Religion, The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, September 20, 2012)

Are You Listening? Really Listening?

Finding good listeners is very important to missionaries. In fact, when member-care trainer Brenda Bosch surveyed missionaries about what they wanted from their mission agency, the top answer was “someone to listen to me.”

German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes that listening is necessary in Christian community. He calls it the “first service” that Christians owe each other:

Just as our love for God begins with listening to God’s Word, the beginning of love for other Christians is learning to listen to them. God’s love for us is shown by the fact that God not only gives us God’s Word, but also lends us God’s ear. We do God’s work for our brothers and sisters when we learn to listen to them. So often Christians, especially preachers, think that their only service is always to have to “offer” something when they are together with other people. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking. Many people seek a sympathetic ear and do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking even when they should be listening. But Christians who can no longer listen to one another will soon no longer be listening to God either; they will always be talking even in the presence of God. The death of the spiritual life starts here, and in the end there is nothing left but empty spiritual chatter and clerical condescension which chokes on pious words. Those who cannot listen long and patiently will always be talking past others, and finally no longer will even notice it. Those who think their time is too precious to spend listening will never really have time for God and others, but only for themselves and for their own words and plans.

For Christians, pastoral care differs essentially from preaching in that here the task of listening is joined to the task of speaking the Word. There is also a kind of listening with half an ear that presumes already to know what the other person has to say. This impatient, inattentive listening really despises the other Christian and finally is only waiting to get a chance to speak and thus to get rid of the other. This sort of listening is no fulfillment of our task. And it is certain that here, too, in our attitude toward other Christians we simply see reflected our own relationship to God.

In the latter paragraph, Bonhoeffer describes a false, inadequate kind of listening. In reading what is lacking there, we can see the qualities required of a good listener. Are you someone who listens in that way?

  • Do you listen with a “whole” ear?
  • Do you presume that you will hear something unique and valuable?
  • Are you patient?
  • Are you attentive?
  • Do you love the speaker?
  • Do you waive your right to speak?
  • Do you hope to keep the other person in your presence, sharing with you?
  • Are you fulfilling your task, to your neighbors and to God?

The New Testament records Jesus saying several times, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” In The Message, this is translated, “Are you listening to this? Really listening?”

Thanks to Brian Stankich at FULFILL for drawing my attention to the survey in his post “11 Types of Care Missionaries Want from Their Sending Agencies and Co-Workers.”

(Brenda Bosch, “Summary of Missionary Survey Outcomes,” Global Member Care Network Conference, April 2012; Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 5, Augsburg Fortress, 2004, 98-99)

[photo: “Listen carefully,” by Justin Lynham, used under a Creative Commons license]