Ahh! Music!

 Last Sunday, a Baptist church in California was fined $10,000 for two separate infractions -- 

1. Singing on Sunday morning -- $5,000.00

2. Singing on Sunday night  -- $5.000.00

Also last Sunday, Eric and I visited my Dad again. While he was busy overseeing the digging of a trench to lay electric lines, I found myself poking around in his home.  There in the corner, in a room just off the living room, was the piano, in need of some tuning.  I know that because I opened it up and tried it out a little.  A few of the notes made me cringe.  

Dad can’t play the piano, but the instrument had belonged to his wife, who passed away in January before the pandemic hit us.  And there, probably right where she had left it, was “The Lord’s Prayer” on a music stand.  It must have been one of her favorites.   In the bathroom, in a little basket, lay the music of “Heaven Came Down and Glory Filled My Soul,” by John W. Peterson.  

Ah … those were the days …

The Early Days and School

They say children in the womb can already hear and appreciate music.  Consequently, our children were submersed in worship music almost from the moment of conception. At our Sunday morning church services, while still in utero, they rocked to the rhythm of the music as my body swayed back and forth, and were very quiet. But they would begin to kick and squirm as soon as we sat down and the pastor began to preach.

And so I know I must have heard my mother sing early on. When my siblings and I were little, we loved to sing with Mom and Dad, standing up in the back seat of our big black Cadillac together (in the days before seat belts) during long trips.  I can still remember “She’ll be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain When She Comes” and “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” as the Cadillac flew across the desert and the water cooler blew mist on our warm faces.  

Mom would also sing random songs around the house, like “Zippety Doo-Dah” or “Oh What a Beautiful Morning!” … if it was a beautiful morning.  Or she would sing a few bars of “The Railroad Runs Through the Middle of the House,” “A Bushel and a Peck,” or “Baby Face.”  And there were a few other songs that I looked up later on YouTube, and I was shocked to find out she never sang all the verses around us kids. She told me how she and her half-brother and sisters had made up their own parody to “Pretty Baby” since they all slept in the same bed:

When you wake up in the morning and you find your bed is wet,

Blame the baby, blame the baby ...

I can remember a music teacher from some lower grade asking us to introduce ourselves musically and giving us an example with her own name.  As a result, everyone at the beginning of the circle used the exact same tune as the teacher – until she came around to me.  Either I was very creative or I was a show-off, or both. Probably both. With complicated runs and trills, reminiscent of Mabel in Pirates of Penzance (at least in my memory), I introduced myself, and everyone, of course, was taken aback.

We learned some pretty crazy songs in school music classes, and I still remember some of them.  It’s a little amusing to find out that I can still remember an extremely non-PC fun action song and dance called “Jump, Jim Crow” that would leave everybody gasping nowadays!

In an earlier post, I alluded to the solo I was supposed to have in third grade – “Susie Snowflake.”  Even though I didn’t get to sing it because our family moved to the Philippines before Christmas, my grandparents were impressed with my talents.  Grandma Pearl suggested that Mom should take me to Hollywood and get a screen test.  She was thinking I could be another Shirley Temple or something.  But Mom said she wanted me to have a normal childhood, so that was a no-go.

Singing at Church

My first solo happened when I was four.  The director of the Travis AFB Chapel Christmas program was looking for a soloist and my mom volunteered me.  As is typical for church Christmas programs, the kids were shy about singing by themselves in front of everybody, but I really never had a problem with that and my mom knew it.  

The program was about Christmas Around the World, and each grade in the Sunday School had to sing one song to go with the country.  But I got the song from Spain – a Spanish lullaby to the Savior, that I still remember to this day, very nearly 60 years ago.  Mom taught me the two verses and our next door neighbor sewed a small red and white Spanish costume for me to wear for the occasion. I know there was some kind of fancy black veil for my hair.  Too bad nobody had any castanets for me to use.  That would have been perfect!

There is no cradle ready, lullaby

For Mary’s little son, lullaby

But Joseph is a carpenter, and he will make him one.

Lullaby, lullaby, lullaby.

I want to see the baby, lullaby

That Mother Mary keeps, lullaby

I’ll sing a quiet song to him and kiss him while he sleeps.

Lullaby, lullaby, lullaby

Of course, the weekly Sunday School songs taught me basic theology.  It was important that I know that “Jesus Loves Me, This I Know,” and “Be Careful Little Eyes, What You See,”  My mom also had some Tennessee Ernie Ford Hymns in her LP collection, and I played them over and over again, and loved to hear him sing about the Ninety and Nine:

There were ninety-and-nine that safely lay in the shelter of the fold.  

But one was out on the hill far away, far off from the gates of gold. … 

“Lord, Thou hast here Thy ninety-and-nine.  Are they not enough for Thee?”  

But the Shepherd made answer, “This of Mine has wandered away from Me.

“And though the road be rough and steep,

I go to the desert to find My sheep, I go to the desert to find My sheep.” ...

And up from the mountain, thunder-riv’n, and up from the rocky steep,

There arose a glad cry to the gate of Heaven,

“Rejoice!  I have found my sheep!”

This song reassured me that Jesus actually sought me out.  Individually.  Specially.  At personal danger to Himself.

And the other one that I especially remember is a simple prayer that Sunday School teachers had us sing with our eyes closed:

Into my heart, into my heart,

Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.

Come in today, come in to stay,

Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.

God bless Sunday School teachers!  All children need to hear that Jesus loves them, and that He wants to save them from their sins.  And songs like this speak to children so loud and clear!

Instrumental Music

When I was in sixth grade, I showed an interest in the accordion.  As that was a more practical instrument than a piano for a trailer-dweller, my parents somehow found an accordion for me and an accordion teacher.  I got pretty good at it, to the point where my teacher wanted me to take a paid gig at an Oktoberfest playing various polkas and waltzes. That didn’t work out since I was underage and there would be drinking, but I thought it was neat that my teacher thought I could do it.

The accordion opened up other opportunities for me, though.  When we moved from Iowa to Arizona, my 7th grade teacher, Mr. Loden, was also the director of the Litchfield Elementary School Band.  Because I could read music, he was desperate to recruit me into the band.  He said he’d teach me any instrument I wanted to learn, and he really really wanted a tuba player.  But that was NOT going to happen in our trailer. 

When Mr. Loden mentioned drums, I thought either he hadn’t heard me the first time or he was crazy!  I live in a TRAILER!  But he told me about these rubber practice pads, and how I could use one of them at home, but do most of my practicing at school every day.  So, I started in the Beginners Band, just long enough to learn some techniques and how to read drum music, and then advanced quickly through the Intermediate Band to the Advanced Band.

By the time I made it into high school, when we had auditions for the Agua Fria Union High School concert band in the second semester, I made First Chair (to the chagrin of the drumming upperclassmen), and got the pleasure of running around the back of the stage to play a tympani or a triangle, marimbas or chimes as needed.  That was the life!  Percussion is beautiful!

Choirs and High School Bands

Knowing how to read music also gave me an opportunity to sing, not only in the eighth grade school choir, but also in the Luke AFB Chapel adult choir.  They needed sopranos, and my mom volunteered me.  (Do you see a pattern here?)  I helped out the sopranos, and they appreciated me.  Under the direction of a Baptist lady choral director, we sang joyful cantatas by John W. Peterson, such as “The Sound of Singing,” and choir was a beautiful thing … until we got a new director.

The next one was an Episcopalian, and we had a Lutheran chaplain at the time.  We did a lot of liturgical songs as needed, which was quite different for us.  But for Christmas, the new director decided we needed to perform more serious music.  Peterson was not worthy of his time or ours.  Enter:  “Handel’s Messiah".

This director made it clear that this was an adult choir, and we would be performing adult music, so we needed to have the children leave.  But the sopranos got clingy and wouldn’t have it, so the director gave in and I stayed.  I helped them find their notes, and I learned most of the Christmas and Easter portions of The Messiah, which was the beginning of a great Haley family tradition ...

When we moved to California in the middle of my junior year of high school, I joined the ranks of the high school band at Artesia High School, and when I entered the classroom the first time, the director asked me what instrument I played.  When I said, “Percussion,” he spun around in his director chair.

“You hear that, drummers?  Margie plays percussion!  (Those guys back there just play drums.)”  

That year I was introduced to the drum set and the vibraphones and played songs like "Misty" in the jazz band.  And for a while, I was the lead drummer, in charge of teaching the other snare drummers how the cadences went.  (They weren’t very happy with that.)

One of the trumpet players in the band, Tim, noticed me, and did what all good church members should do and don’t do often enough – he invited me to his church on Wednesday nights!  The draw – the Baptist church’s youth choir was doing a musical!  The condition – one also had to go to the youth group the same night.  The choir did do a wonderful musical called “Come Together” narrated on the demo record by Pat Boone.  We performed at shopping malls and various other places, as well as their rather large church.  The choir liked it so well, they rebelled the next year against doing anything else and tried to petition the director to do the same musical all over again!  (Didn’t work.)

Meanwhile, in homeroom class that year, seated alphabetically, the guy behind me was Tom Brown.  He had two pencils that he used as drumsticks on his desk (the eraser side) – but he wasn’t in the school band.  This was intriguing, so, with very little prompting, Tom was persuaded to tell me all about a most wonderful thing – a band called California Cavalry Youth Band.  This band, which marched in the style of the famous drum and bugle corps, made all of the local high school bands pale in comparison.  For a real drumming experience, this is where I needed to be.

I bit.  I still have my CCYB band jacket.  Actually, it’s my mom’s.  I don’t know what happened to mine, but hers was embroidered with “Marge” and that was close enough.  We went on tour and marched in Calgary, Canada at the Calgary Stampede Parade, taking first place for foreign bands.  We performed competition field shows with precision and esprit de corps.  And I marched either with huge shiny cymbals that made a huge impression when reflecting light into the eyes of judges in the stands, or a small rudimental bass drum, which was played along with several other bass drums of various sizes, to make a tuneful cadence.

Here’s the one video I know of, that shows our band in action.  The dubbed-in background music is not ours, but in the grainy picture (2:55) you can see a short cymbal player, that was me.

Jesus Music

But one of the best things about 1973 and ‘74 to me was “Jesus Music.”  Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa was having Saturday night concerts every week, and I was blessed to go there with a friend named Joe from Anthropology class, and hear groups like Love Song, Country Faith, The Way, and many more.  These were newly-converted ex-hippie guitar-playing Jesus People, who sang new songs straight from their hearts to Jesus.  Jesus Music was more profound to me than the starchy old hymns, the bouncy John W. Peterson, or the somber “Messiah.”  Love Song sang one that went:

“Sing unto the Lord and sing a brand new song.

The one that we’ve been hearing’s been a hit too long.

The lyrics sound confused as if they don’t belong

So sing unto the Lord and sing with feeling.

And sing a song of praise

And sing a song of gladness

Much too long our music

Has been filled with sadness.”

These simple songs, many of them straight from the King James Bible, spoke to my heart and I started collecting LP’s like Maranatha 1, Maranatha 2, Maranatha 3, and Maranatha 4, which were compilations of various artists’ work.  The hits just kept on coming.  These were the beginning of Maranatha! Music.

The Church Under Attack

Jesus invented music.  

The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty, is mighty; 

He will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy, with joy; 

He will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.

The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty, is mighty; is mighty!

There’s a perfect plan for you – we humans breathe in oxygen to live, and we exhale carbon dioxide to talk and to sing.  There will be singing in Heaven, and the Scriptures command the Church to sing unto the Lord while we are still here on earth.  There is nothing so natural and so sacred as using our exhaust pipes to praise our Lord.  That is why it is only practical to “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.”  You have to be alive and breathe air to do that.  Why, there’s an entire songbook in the middle of every Bible, and some New Testaments even also include that songbook.

But sadly, the Church is under attack these days, especially in California now, in the same general vicinity that I first heard that Jesus Music nearly 50 years ago.  The Body of Christ is being ordered not to meet and not to sing because, the reasoning goes, Covid-19 will be spread when Christians sing heartily to the Lord and fling their aerosol around.  The governor even wants all the congregants to wear masks, which restricts their breathing, and some churches are complying with that, as long as they can at least meet.

Not only is a singing ban an infringement on our rights as U.S. citizens (several of them), but it is just plain wrong. If Governor Newsome knows that singing is an integral part of worship to our God, then outlawing singing is nothing short of diabolical.  If he does not know, … no – he does know.  He’s been told by many pastors that they have to obey God rather than man, but he persists.

Some have taken their worship to the beach.  Huntington Beach has been filled with thousands of people on Friday evenings, who are there for one purpose – to meet together with other believers since their own churches haven’t opened.  And the singing is loud and really tremendous.

The bottom line is this:  We were created to worship God.  Singing joyfully to the Lord is not just a good idea because it helps fill in the time in a church service with a little variety – it is that part of the service that ministers to our weary spirits.  Worship lifts us from our misery to focus on the One who can heal us of that misery.  It is when we least want to sing to the Lord that we most need to sing to Him.  If we do not, Jesus said: 

“I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.  

~Luke 19:40

"Lord Jesus, You have breathed Your life into Man, and with that breath, we want to give you all our worship. Let us not bow down to those who have lifted themselves up over Your Church to dominate and subdue it, but rather, give us the courage to stand and sing as You have commanded. All glory and honor belongs to You. Let us enter Your gates with thanksgiving and into Your courts with praise.

"We pray for Your Church in California and in other places in the U.S., where it is now illegal to sing, or even to gather together. We pray for boldness for them, to obey You rather than man. "And we pray for Your Church worldwide, where it has been illegal to gather together for decades. We thank You for the example they have been to us, and we ask that You would continue to give them strength, courage, and endurance to do what is right, until You come again to gather us unto Yourself.

For it is in Your Strong Name that we pray, Amen!"