Where "Unleashed" Goes from Here

In 2011, I recorded a CD called Unleashed, and if you know me or follow this blog, you've heard something about that.

The whole process was a strange ride, a sort of biopsy out of my life, especially my interior, spiritual life (which has always had characteristics of a three-ring circus).

I had an urgent sense of a call to do the recording, a strong desire that flamed up, and a boatload of questions and worries that just dared me to wrestling matches. My interior questions were bad enough, but my biggest objective concern was, of course, the cost. Even with the reasonable studio I found, the budget for recording and duplicating was not going to be chump change I had lying around. I told the Lord one day that if He really wanted me to do this, He would have to provide the money. The following day I had an unexpected rebate check from Ford in the mail. It wasn't enough to cover costs, but it was significant enough to get my attention. I was assured that God knew what He was doing.

So I proceeded in faith.

My ducks began to line up, and I even began recording.

Two weeks after we began, my sister Bonnie died rather unexpectedly, although she had been suffering from cancer and complications for some time. Several weeks later it came as another surprise to me that an amount of money was coming my way from her. It was more than enough to cover all the expenses I eventually incurred with the CD.

After the CDs arrived (the official "release" date was the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes -- more on that in a bit), I had a little flurry of having friends buy them, selling them on-line, and happily celebrating what had been a significant stretching for me.

Not long after that, those of you who follow this blog might recall that I hit what I can only call a spiritual dark night, and among other things quite frankly I could not even listen to the CD for about a year, let alone think much about it.

But before all that happened, and while I was recording, I did invest a lot of prayer into this whole thing. The feast of Our Lady of Lourdes timing was significant to me, because it seemed that there was something about healing here. I prayed always for the conversion of those who would listen, and for their healing.

Also, during this "dark night" time, I began to be convinced and convicted that selling these CDs was not to be primarily how I would go about getting them where they needed to be. It became clearer to me that Bonnie's death and the money that funded the recording was by no means incidental. My sister, who was mentally ill for most of her adult life, was well known for being generous even to a fault, and gathering up things only to give them away. I became more convinced that I should give the CDs to anyone who wanted them.

Recently I began to see that the time has come for me to take a fresh look at this whole journey, and to ask the Lord again what He wants. It is no great burden to me to have these CDs in my house, but I realize if the Lord wanted me to do the project and give them away, then they do not belong to me and I need to find where they do belong. In praying and discerning and talking with people, I have decided to offer these free of charge to hospices, to those who work with the mentally ill, with grieving families, to those suffering illnesses, to religious orders who minister to those who so suffer, to those who use recorded music in therapy. And really, to anyone else who simply asks.

I will still make them available for sale so that those who want to help fund postage to these other people can do so. (Amazon and CDBaby sell them, but if you buy from me directly they don't get a cut.)

I am beginning to work through some contacts I have in these areas, but I would be greatly pleased to hear from anyone with further leads for me. Anyone who wants to hear the album to judge if it is something you want can do so at my Facebook page or at my website.

If you would share this post generously I would appreciate that too.

Looking for New Christian Music?

Lyrics that say something?  nice melodies? a good beat?

Well, look no further.

Actually, look just a little further. Go here, to my website, and listen to pieces of my album. Then buy, oh, say 200 copies of it. Please.

You'll like it!

(Ok, start with just one.)

Why Record a CD?

(This blog post originally appeared on my website, www.mariehosdil.com, where you can buy the CD in question.)

Recently someone asked me why I made this CD. I think there’s a story worth telling here, because everyone has phases when discerning one’s way through life is an all-consuming need. Reading nitty-gritty testimonies of someone else’s journey can help.

 On Christmas Day of 2010 I stood in my kitchen chatting with a friend who mentioned that a local recording studio could digitize cassette recordings. My mind shot to my beloved 1986 cassette version of “Daughter” (Track 8) that had already survived a 2003 toddler attack. Had to get that preserved before it was lost forever.

So, to the studio I went. I reminisced a bit with the tech about recordings I’d done in college and found myself wondering out loud to him what all it might take for me to do some real recording now.

That wondering followed me home and I prayed about it frequently. As I prayed, the wondering became a demanding question. Marie, will you record again? Will you make a CD?

Simultaneously, I had begun spending more time than usual playing guitar. Circumstances gave me a couple of hours a month to play alone in a church. This was exactly how I had spent hours and hours during college (except that now, the church had the Blessed Sacrament in residence; then I was in what had been a convent chapel, with only the memory of the Blessed Sacrament there!) That winter I began writing the song “Deep Inside” which took me months to complete. It literally grew along with me as I discerned, the only song I’ve ever written explicitly as a studio song.

January passed and February came, and I wrestled with The Question. My greatest practical concern was financial cost. However, the far more powerful question in my heart was the “Why bother?” My songs had a certain importance to me, but I couldn’t justify spending all the money to record and share them. The world had so many songs in it already. While I found buried in my heart a spark of a desire to proceed with it, try as I might I could not surmount the “Why bother?” question.

Then came one of the strangest days in my recent memory. Waiting for Mass to being at Franciscan University’s Christ the King Chapel, I prayed fretful and fuming prayers. The Question was ringing in my heart like a gong, and frankly I was annoyed with God and weary of myself. Suddenly I remembered an event from a year earlier. I had felt divinely compelled to invite a certain visiting priest to our house for dinner, despite this feeling silly to me. Long story short, I finally obeyed the prompting, talked to the priest, we played phone tag (which is mortifyingly difficult for me), and eventually he left town and never did come for dinner. So, as I prayed that day, I reminded God of that escapade. “What ever came of that, huh, Lord? I did what I felt like you wanted me to do then, and all that came of it was me feeling stupid! What about that?”

That Mass began, and in walks that same priest. I’d not seen nor thought of him in a year. My fuming came to an embarrassed and confused silence, and I “came to” about the time this priest read the gospel of the day. It involved Jesus rebuking the disciples for their lack of faith and asking them “Do you still not understand?”

All I could say was, No Lord. I don’t understand. At all.

Back at home about two hours later, I was still reeling from the impact of what had just happened. My son burst through the door, demanding I come with him immediately. A block away, he had witnessed a woman who had been walking her dog in a field behind an abandoned building collapse and begin seizing.

What happened next is hard to explain. In a complete internal daze, I found the woman, dialed 911, and proceeded to wait with her for the paramedics. A neighbor came and spoke soothingly to her.  A nun who lived down the street came running, cradled the woman and scrambled to help the paramedics when they arrived. The woman’s adult son arrived.

And all the while I stood there, completely silent and motionless inside and out, feeling as removed from the situation as if I were waiting for a bus. When she was taken care of, neighbors congratulated my son on his quick reaction that probably saved the woman’s life. Everyone took a sigh of relief and went back to their day.

I, however, could not.

Hours later as I told my husband the episode, my delayed reaction brewed – something erupting from a deeper level than emotion or stress. My response to the woman felt both natural for me, and yet wrong, wounded, broken. And somehow, I felt I’d entered into a mysterious cloud from which God was responding to my complaints about The Question.

That night after choir practice I began to tell a friend about the woman. But as I described “just standing there” something broke open in me. I started to cry, shake and hyperventilate and I ran out of the church. I made it home with great difficulty and for hours I continued in this state, hyperventilating, crying and shaking violently. It seemed my body was reliving traumas to which I had long since turned off my ability to feel.

The next day, feeling like I’d had my stuffing knocked out, I again turned to the Lord in prayer. Without any process of analysis I understood that the “bother” was not about the world needing eight more songs or another CD. The “bother” was about my need to surrender my soul to God, to obey, to follow, to give. The God who has given me so much was calling me to stop counting what it costs and to be freed to pour myself out. And what I found in my hand to fulfill this calling was the music that comes from my heart.

But it would take money, so I told God if this were really His idea, He’d have to provide some. The very next day we got a notice that we’d get a $600 reimbursement on some car repairs because a recall. Sadly, it was my sister’s death just after I began recording that provided the “more than enough” that God is famous for. My sister was musical, and she was always generous to a fault. When I received an unexpected share of her savings, I realized that God holds all of our lives in His hands.

This is only the story of how the CD got started. When I finally finished the project, I realized everything I’ve learned has only just begun. What God has done “deep inside” my heart (Track 4), I now need to take a live out “deliberately” (Track 5). Thanks be to God, each day of life gives each of us a new opportunity to surrender to God, to obey Him, to follow Him, to give ourselves to Him and to the world at His directive. Let’s all pray for the grace to do these things to the fullest possible extent in everything we do.

Can't Stand what you Hear on the Radio?

Just yesterday I spent an hour listening to some of the top pop music of the day. It hurt my head a bit.

If you are not much of a fan of it, you'll be happy to know that my music doesn't sound much like it at all. This album features real musicians, my real voice (no autotune!), and songs with thoughtful lyrics. Take a listen, and if you like what you hear, share it with someone else.

www.mariehosdil.com

St. Claude's Feast, and the Challenges of the Day

Today is the feast of St. Claude de la Columbiere (1641-1682) who has been the patron saint of my recording project. This came as a surprise to me today -- that it was his feast day, I mean. I had known the date of it at one point, but obviously forgot. When I chose this saint through my favorite Saint's Name Generator I had no idea who he was. But then as I read about him and especially when I read his writings, I could not doubt or deny the perfect fit he has been for me in this project. Although it is hard to convey the particulars, I read one passage from him on Holy Saturday last year that shifted something very significant in my soul. I believe I am still working through the fruit of that. I have asked his intercession every day over the last year, and in particular whenever I've face some moment of critical felt need with recording. And I see now I'll need to continue doing so as I am faced with getting this music into the hands, ears and hearts of listeners.

Which reminds me! Click right here right now to go buy that album, and reassure my husband that this was a worthwhile investment! That's http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/mariehosdil

Every day lately the Lord seems to be rather sternly challenging me with a directive of faith. To say that more plainly, every day I feel convicted to stand in faith, and to act in faith, even though emotionally I feel flatter than a pancake about it. This is exactly how it struck me when I realized this morning it was St. Claude's feast day: it is another sharp reminder to live in faith. I feel weak and silly. I feel suddenly how terribly self-centered my life has been, without my even realizing it. And yet God calls me to great faith. I suppose this is really why I feel weak, silly and selfish. God's light reveals the crud. I don't want to say "no more light!" so I face the crud. And my children ask me why I keep spontaneously exclaiming "Lord, have mercy!" throughout the day!

Faithlessness, Music, and the Freaky Priest

It's not often that a homily at a daily Mass at my parish hits me between the eyes, but one did this morning. The gospel of today is Mark 8:11-13, where Jesus is hitting a spiritual brick wall with the Pharisees who come to argue with Him. And the homily I heard went something like this: Remember that Jesus has been doing tons of miracles, healing people, feeding people, casting out demons. And these Pharisees come asking for a sign. "Gee, Jesus, what can you do? Let's see something impressive so that we might consider whether you are worth considering."

And my pastor went on to muse that he figured that just seeing one of Jesus' miracles would be enough to convince him and get him firmly on the side of following the Lord. And what was blocking the Pharisees from doing just that? Their lack of faith.

I thought back to an interesting incident that happened just last week. I don't believe in reading tea leaves or finding directives from God in the shape of a cheese curl or a smudge on the wall, but I do believe that God's ironic sense of humor shines through reality pretty clearly. Last Thursday my crates of 1,000 copies of my CD Unleashed arrived. And I knew they'd be arriving later that day when I went to Mass at Noon, and there encountered The Freaky Priest. Oh, I don't say that because he himself is freaky, but because of some freaky interactions -- between God and myself -- that have happened because of this priest.

It was last year in February that I was wrestling hard in my heart over whether or not I should pursue recording a CD. I had this sense of a call in my heart, this sense that God was actually asking something of me, but I wanted, like, all my questions and concerns answered beforehand and a written statement stamped by God Himself pointing out His Divine Will. A run-of-the-mill powerful drawing in my heart, nourished by prayer, fortified by favorable circumstances and punctuated by a sense of the need to obey just wasn't enough.

And I went to Mass one day and was complaining to God about this. I reminded him that once, a year before that, I had felt a similar overwhelming compelling need to invite a certain priest to our house for dinner. I don't invite strangers to dinner lightly, so this was pretty unusual for me. In fact, I passed up one chance to speak to him and felt so compelled that I promised God if I had another chance I would do it, but I let another chance pass by, too. A few rounds of embarrassing phone tag ensued, and the dinner never did pan out. He had been a priest in town only for a few weeks on sabbatical and shortly after my attempt he left for his home. So I reminded the Lord of that: "And what came of that weird compelling need, huh?!"

Not 30 seconds later that very priest, whom I had not seen in a year, processed in as a concelebrant at that  Mass. I was dumbfounded, and only came to myself again when he started reading the gospel, in which Jesus chastised his disciples for their lack of faith and their slowness to understand what He was teaching them. I was still dumbfounded when, about two hours later, my son came running in from playing saying that a woman had fallen on the sidewalk and was having a seizure, and that I had to come immediately and deal with it. That experience in turn grabbed me by the innards, turned me inside out and shook me so hard that that evening I felt like I experienced the emotion of every traumatic event I had ever witnessed but had not been able feel. It was like some sort of psychic-spiritual cyclone picked me up and threw me down really, really hard.

Days later when I finally recovered equilibrium, I knew that I should no longer dicker with my heart nor with God about doing His will with this music thing, and I officially set out to make Unleashed. I still didn't understand everything or feel secure, but I knew I shouldn't make Jesus "sigh from the depth of his spirit" anymore as He does in today's gospel.

And, yeah, Thursday that same priest was there at Mass, visiting again. It's odd how just the sight of a person can remind one of a lesson once taught. And today there was the homily. Do not be faithless. Have faith in God, obey in what He shows today. Do it. It matters. God is holy; do not toy with Him.

Overture to Carmel?

It's been a little shocking to me to realize how intricately my life has been wound around working on my CD. In one way or another, either the question or the reality of this project has been etching itself into my heart and soul for over a year. I suppose etching is one of those things one might not notice is actually happening while it happens. I mean, I did, but... It's like a sound that is constant, and all of a sudden there is silence. There's a little bit something death-like to having that part of this process be complete. And yet it is not so much a grieving type of death. It feels maybe more like the end of one movement of something and the silence before the next movement starts.

It just feels weird.

I feel like I have done everything I need to do. Yes, I have 1,000 of these puppies coming my way in a few weeks, and I will need to do what I can to sell them and reassure my husband that I have not wasted a couple thousand dollars. But already I know the money is not wasted. I did not make this CD because I think I have this amazing, stellar talent that needs attention and showcasing. Gag. I did not make this CD because of a desire to "minister to people." God does that. Really, I made this CD out of a sense of obedience to God, and out of a sense -- now I see how accurate that sense was -- that I needed this process for the salvation of my own soul.

I have no idea what happens next, and frankly if nothing much happens next other than a few people buying CDs and saying "oh, that's nice," I'm perfectly fine with that. But I know that God is doing something interiorly in me. I know it is good. So many times I get this aching sense of God doing something, I usually can't say what, but I want to say something about it. And I usually can't, so why do I try? Why? I guess because I want to understand! I want to know where I am and where I am going.

That's reasonable, right?

All I know is that my heart is very drawn to Carmel. This is not strange. The Carmelite saints have made my heart burn since the first time I met them. I was writing a paper for my Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy class on Christian Mysticism, and as I read St. Theresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, as well as Hugh of St. Victor and others, I was bowled over. My heart had longed for a place it felt at home spiritually, and even though I was in a Lutheran college and attending a non-denom fellowship, I remember dropping the book on the table and praying emphatically, "Lord, if there is anyone left on the face of the earth who lives and believes like these folks, these are the people I want to be with."

A couple of years later when I first started talking with my friend who had returned to his Catholic faith and upset my whole life by it, I asked him, "are there people around still like St. Theresa of Avila?" I expected him to say no, of course not, but he not only assured me there were but later provided me with a little book about Teresian prayer. I spent lots of time at Holy Hill during my conversion process and afterwards.

And then a couple years ago, after my parish choir started messing with my life in divine ways, St. John of the Cross seemed to start resounding in my life powerfully again, especially through the book Impact of God, which I wrote about here. And on it has gone from there. I've been in touch with the local Carmelite community. It makes sense.

Being drawn to Carmel isn't about playing around, though. I discovered, for example, that recording is hard work. It is not only singing and deciding and doing musical things, there was a lot of emotional investment and a lot of working out being free interiorly so that the music could come out. It is hard work of every sort, body, soul and spirit. And I saw my weaknesses, for example in playing guitar -- I wished I'd spent more of the last 20 years playing guitar and not getting so dreadfully rusty. (God supplied the help I needed, thankfully, for I don't need to have all abilities myself!) But hard work demonstrates the need for hard work. If one doesn't work hard, one believes it doesn't matter, and the doors that could open otherwise stay shut. I have the same sense about being drawn to the commitment of prayer. Prayer can't be about giving me warm fuzzies of one sort or another. I don't, I mustn't love God nor people in order to please myself or get happy.

Really, being drawn to Carmel is really being drawn to Christ. He has so many ways to call to us and draw us and teach us and lead us on, but the goal is all the same: union with the Blessed Trinity in Christ. Part and parcel of that is being the frail, weak and sinful human beings we are and opening ourselves to the grace which infills and transforms.

I don't know what comes tomorrow. But this is what I see today.

What is God Whispering to You?

In the last few years it seems to me that the Lord takes about a year or so to communicate to me one sentence, one thought. And I don't mean that the Lord says the same thing over and over again to me for a year. It is more like the one thought takes that long to reach from His heart to mine.


Just today I read someone quoting Pope Benedict in asking "What is God whispering to you?" I didn't see the context of this quote, but I like it just the way it stands because it presumes rather than proposes this kind of Divine Whisper. Of course God whispers to our souls. Whispers can be easily overlooked when we are distracted, and I think they can be scary when we perceive them. At least I think of that when a human being near me whispers to me. I used to tend to ignore the first whisper I'd hear probably out of fear of looking too eager to respond, and worrying that it was just my wishful thinking that someone wanted my "secret" attention. I think I have treated God's whispers that way too sometimes. Couldn't be God. Wish it were. But why would God want my attention?!

What is God whispering to me? It takes courage to consider it. It takes faith; it takes trust. I am wanted by God. When I face that fact it makes me glow with joy.

What is God whispering to me? Right now?

This CD I've been working on is nearly complete, and soon I'll have 1000 copies (!) to try to pawn off on people. This project has been a work of faith from the very beginning. The only reason I undertook it was that I felt God call me to do so. It has been His desire. It has been like a large work of penance for me, and God has provided for all that I have needed along the way. I've learned a lot in many ways, and I've watched God prove His faithfulness once again. I feel my many shortcomings and I have a much more realistic view of myself. I've learned how good and pleasant it is to rely on other people for help, and how to value them rightly. I've changed a lot.

But through all that good stuff, what is God whispering to me? I think of the song Daughter which appears as the final track. This song spoke to me powerfully -- dramatically -- when I first heard it. The song in and of itself was an encounter with the Lord, coming as it does right from Scripture, and from the voice one whom God had already used in a powerful way in my life. This song ministered life to me, pure and simple. What God is whispering to me is that I've come full circle, and now He ministers life through me. I was a broken mess when that song reached me in 1986. I had "broken mess" as my identity for quite some time, too. What God is whispering to me is that long ago He crumpled up that identity and blew it away, and that something new has emerged.

I suppose the act of recording music for others to hear is itself an offering of healing to the world. That's my concept behind the CD cover art (which unfortunately I can't figure out how to post just now). The image is supposed to communicate one who receives from God, and in dramatic surrender to God extends himself to the viewer/listener for that healing to touch him/her, too. One could say that's the theme behind all of the songs, too.

But I know it is about so much more than singing, music, or these songs. These are just tangible markers for something God is doing deep within me. It is quite simple. God is love. He bestows love, Himself, on us His creatures. Experiencing God's love, I am drawn to love in return not only Him but in Him, all He has created -- primarily other human souls. My love extended out draws that which I love back to God, because there is this one rhythm of love that God breathes: I give to you, you give to Me, I give to you, you give to Me. When we love, we give that which we love back to God. Therefore we should never ever be afraid of love or afraid to love. The trick lies in the purification of our souls so that we are not calling "love" something which is simply the indulgence of our carnality and pride.

What is God whispering to me? Love. Go and love. It's not a feeling; it is definitely not an indulgence. It is giving back to God (by giving to others) that which He has given to me. It takes deliberate choice, courage, faith, humility. This is how I worship God.

Lord, graciously help me to walk in the light You have given.

The Meaning Series: Deliberate

This is the last of the songs from Unleashed I have to write about. It was also the last one to be recorded, because I had intended to use a different song called Song of the Bride, but I couldn't get that one to come together the way I wanted it to. I wrote this one October 26, 2011 at the direction of my friend Br. Neven Pesa, who had challenged me to write a song every week last fall. My particular assignment when I wrote this song was to get out my father's keyboard (which has been mine since he passed 10 years ago) and write a song entirely on keyboard. Despite the fact that I don't play the keyboard. It seemed an impossible task even simply on the emotional level of taking something of my father's and really making it mine in the intimate way one must to write music. Then of course there was the minor detail of having not seriously played piano, even to play around with it, for three decades. Then there was the time frame of one week. Then there was the need for inspiration for lyrics.

But, he had challenged me, and nothing motivates me like trying to live up to an agreement made to a friend. The result was a song that I really like (and Neven really liked to, and was impressed with) that just dug like a shovel right into my guts at the time. It is not complicated musically, as one might expect, and the song depends on the vocals for color and interest.

Here are the lyrics:

Can you tell me what you do to crack an egg

Do you tap-tap-tap that thing just a little bit

Oh no, no, no

But you can’t lose control

You can’t smash it with your fist

You gotta make the break deliberate

Uh huh huh

Make the break deliberate

Uh huh huh

Make the break deliberate

Make the break deliberate

Now you see I’ve got a heart that’s like an egg

What it holds down deep inside I gotta give if I will live

Oh yeah yeah yeah

Why do I resist the hand that comes to bring me life

I gotta make the break deliberate (etc)

I trust you

I trust You

I trust You

So in my life I choose to lay it all on the line

I will die with you so that my heart can truly live

Uh yeah yeah yeah

Taken blessed broken given now to feed a hungry world

This song speaks to me where I am right now. To serve Christ, we must make conscious choices for Him. This song goes through my mind, for example, when I wake in the morning and have to climb out of my warm bed in order to pray instead of sleep some more. Simple example, but most of our decisions to die to ourselves are of this order.

My friend Joe Zamberlan stepped in to play the piano for me as my own keyboard skills might be enough to create the music, but not to play it without lots of stops and starts. The whole song was rehearsed and recorded all on January 4. Finally, after six months of recording, I have gotten to the point where I can sing a song the way I mean for it to sound in just one or two takes. I think in reality I'm just about ready now to start recording!

The Meaning Series: Sunday Morning

Unleashed is now finished, in terms of recording. Tomorrow we do the mastering, and then it is done!  And I have two songs that I haven't written about yet.

I wrote Sunday Morning on November 16, 1986 when I was a few days shy of 19. (It was so long ago I was still Lutheran!) This song came to me as sort of a surprise, and for that reason I've always had a unique kind of respect for it. That is to say, I remember vividly starting out to write this song primarily as an expression of self-pity. It is about a lonely person who goes to church. But as I wrote about my fictionalized self in the third person, it was as if in my prayer the Lord met me, right there, and asked me to look at my situation with different eyes. As a result, the ending of the song literally surprised me as I wrote it, and spoke to me at a very deep level of my need. Jesus essentially told me that I was not the real lonely one in a religious, communal, or social setting; it is He. He is lonely and aching for us to see Him.

Here are the lyrics:

Sunday morning and he walks into your church

He sits in a pew towards the back

He listens to the sermon and he sings the hymns and he prays the prayers

Why still does he feel like no one here really cares

We go to church and we sit in our separate private clans

Unaware of the need our brother has

Do you see a tear trickle down his face

Or are you trying to soak up all God’s grace for you

Don’t you know that Jesus died for that one you’ve refused to see

Jesus’ love isn’t only for you and me

Back in church again, and yes I see him sitting there

But tell me please, what should I say

I say “good morning” look at him and I even shake his hand

I’ve done my duty, now I can be through with this man

Just like that I left him in my church today

Never meaning to give him a second thought

Then I looked into the hand that I shook with his a

And I saw the blood from the wounds of the nails that held him high

Through the eyes of the least of them

Jesus searches us

What answer will you give when he asks “where is your love.”

I changed some of the phrases in the lyrics some years ago to better express the theological truth of the song (my original ending sounded rather harsh). But essentially the message is that the real measure of a Christian is his love for the forgotten ones who are right in our midst. For years and years I was quite invested in different avenues of spiritual pride, in making sure I looked very holy to myself and others. But acts of real love done in secret for needy ones? That kind of thinking or behaving wasn't even on my radar screen. There is truly nothing scarier than a loveless Christian. It is such a contradiction in terms. But if Christian formation is all about right doctrine, right information, and right experiences, and holiness is seen primarily in terms of keeping away from contaminants (namely, other people whose thoughts and experiences are not up to par with mine) -- that is pretty much a recipe for loveless Christians. The call to follow Christ has to be all about Him ravishing our souls, alluring us, awakening such a desire within us that we can no longer be satisfied with anything but more of Him. Let right doctrine follow, but let us not be skeletal and unenfleshed. Let us hang on His every word and cast ourselves into every one of His precepts not out of a prideful desire to be right, but out of a lover's abandon to her beloved: I don't care what you ask of me; everything and anything you say is the only place my heart can dwell in peace, but You who are all Good say nothing but that which makes me fully myself, so I also trust you completely....


The popular video of late by the young man who claims to hate religion but love Jesus has reminded me of this song. When I wrote this, I was quite in the thick of his thinking, and it was precisely because I was experiencing loveless Christianity. Catholics might rightly point out that going to church is not a social situation but a communal one; we are not there to love on each other, but to commune with Christ. As a Catholic, I know that now. But the missing factor is that if we do not have an experience of loving on each other we will not be able to enter into communion with Christ in the way He intends. Yes, God can and does supernaturally overcome all of our sin-created barriers, but His standard way of operating is using the love of the Body of Christ to bring sinners to repentance. Once upon a time, families came standard with a sense of communal love. In our culture I don't believe one should ever presume that today, even among "church" families. We can argue doctrine (and I believe fully that right doctrine is absolutely essential), but love must be the alpha and the omega. To love is to be holy. Period.  St. John of the Cross reminds us that our final judgment will be based on how we have loved. Period. And it is futile to think we can adequately love other people without surrendering our hearts in love to the Lover who seeks us and waits for access to our hearts, who awaits our surrender.

Anyway, these are some thoughts generated in me by this song today.

The Meaning Series: Psalm 51

Recording Unleashed is coming to a close, so I guess I'd better get this self-imposed project of writing about the meaning of each song wrapped up, too.

Psalm 51 is the only song I wrote while in the process of rehearsing to record, in May of this year, so it is the johnny-come-lately to the project. One night I was rehearsing "Led By the Spirit of the Lord" with Joey and Aaron (drummer and bassist, respectively) and we were joking about how the song reminded me of Linda Ronstadt's version of Mike Nesmith's tune "Different Drum". I tend to get songs stuck in my head, so that night I came home and listened to both Linda's and Mike's version of that song several times. The next morning, with Mike's tune still reverberating in my head, I was impressed with the words again and again "a clean heart create for me, Oh God." I tried going various directions with lyrics, but Psalm 51 asserted itself in my heart. The result is a general paraphrase of Psalm 51 with a country sound. There is something about this type of music that speaks to me of the humility, of earthiness, and of our rightful position before God as accountable, yet empty handed and with nothing at all that can impress Him, but our readiness to turn to Him completely trusting in and anticipating His mercy, His love and forgiveness.

A bit of trivia: (as if it isn't all trivia!) I wrote this song very early in the morning and so it has some very low notes in it. It took me a similar morning recording session to be able to pull off these notes.

The Meaning Series: Daughter

"Daughter" is the one song on this upcoming CD that I did not write. As soon as I had fully committed myself to creating this project, though, I knew this was the one song I absolutely had to record. It has been deeply meaningful to me for many years. It tells the story of the woman with the hemorrhage and her healing encounter with Jesus, and is performed as a duet between Jesus and the woman.

It was written in February, 1986 by Julie Reuel and Michael Turriff. I always refer to Pastor Turriff as the man who saved my life when I was a teenager, and I've told that story before on this blog more than once. You can read it here. The song was written (or completed, at least) in the chapel of my college, where I just happened to have been lurking about when they were working on it.

When I first heard "Daughter" it blew me away. It was the gospel in full and living color, as if I were in the scene with Jesus Himself addressing me as the woman being healed. Deciding to record it scared me at first, frankly, because of the intensity with which it always gripped me. But when I approached it this year I quickly realized that it is now my turn to pass on this gospel at it was delivered to me. I can only pray that God will use it for others as He did for me.

The Meaning Series: Come Into My Heart

I wrote the song "Come Into My Heart" over the course of three days, from March 30 to April 1, 1992. This was between the time I had committed to enter the Catholic Church, but about a year before I actually did so. The song was inspired, oddly enough, by a vivid and intense dream I'd had. It involved soldiers wreaking destruction on everything around me, except for when I stood in front of them and said (in German) "I am Christian. Jesus Christ." As soon as I said that, the soldiers dropped their weapons and walked away, powerless. What struck me in the dream was the incredible peace I had, despite the danger and despite the complete ravaging that my familiar surroundings had endured.

The song is written in the voice of Jesus, calling to an individual. So often evangelistic outreaches emphasize our asking Jesus to enter our hearts and be Lord there, but in this song Jesus asks for something different: He asks us to enter His heart and hide there.

Musically it is a very simple song, and quite plain. As with most of my music, my focus is not so much on crafting beautiful melodies or instrumentals, but on the lyrics. I hope the simplicity of the accompaniment draws attention to the sense of yearning Our Lord has for each of our hearts to belong to Him.

The Meaning Series: Led By the Spirit of the Lord

"Led By the Spirit of the Lord" is a song I wrote in October of 1990, during an interesting time in my spiritual journey. I had been out of college for a year and a half and had just started my second "real" job post-graduation. I was happily and heavily involved at Risen Savior Fellowship, a charismatic non-denominational, independent, tiny church in Milwaukee which I had joined about three years prior to that.

A question had formed in my soul, a niggling, a prayer, a desire. (Deliciously dangerous, these kind are.) I truly adored the worship music and more so worship experience at Risen Savior. It was truly healing, and it was the deepest thing I'd known at the time. Certainly it was deeper than my experience with liturgy in my Lutheran church before that, which had come to feel like chains holding me down. But the niggling in my soul that would not be silent said to me that we were following a formula with our worship music, too. There was a predictable progression, and what was more, it was just as possible to go through the motions in this type of worship without any deep encounter with God.

That really bothered me.

Just a short time after I wrote this song, a matter of a few months at most, I was met with the impossible situation of three friends of mine converting to the Catholic faith, which made me begin to question all sorts of things. But for the moment, this song came to me as a series of questions about what it really means to follow the Holy Spirit. What would be left when self-effort was left behind? It speaks of a hopeful sense that a real answer to these questions existed, and that I would discover it.

Musically, what I've tried to capture is that while the Holy Spirit challenges us essentially to die to our own selves and our own ideas, He leads us to the fullness of life and joy. So this is a fun song. For me this means it is in the pop style of the 1960s. As I write, it is in mid-production, but I already love the sound. One thing I am learning in this process of recording is that the gifts of so many people contribute to a real transformation of the little song I offer.

www.mariehosdil.com

The Meaning Series: Deep Inside

When I heard the readings at Mass this morning, I knew I had to write about the song "Deep Inside" today. The first line of the first reading, in another translation, posted by a Facebook friend one morning, was this song's initial inspiration. Here's that reading from Jeremiah as we heard it:

You duped me, O LORD, and I let myself be duped;
you were too strong for me, and you triumphed.
All the day I am an object of laughter;
everyone mocks me.

Whenever I speak, I must cry out,
violence and outrage is my message;
the word of the LORD has brought me
derision and reproach all the day.

I say to myself, I will not mention him,
I will speak in his name no more.
But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart,
imprisoned in my bones;
I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.

The alternate translation which my friend posted gives an entirely different feel to the reading: "You seduced me, Lord, and I allowed myself to be led astray."

The second major influence for this song is a homily by St. Peter Chrysologus which is found in the Office of Readings during Advent. (You can read it here, Sermon 147.)

This was the one song that I wrote in the early part of this year, knowing that I would record it. Most songs I finish in a matter of hours, but this one evolved over a few months and with much wrestling, both with the music and the words. That is fitting, because it really reflects the spiritual evolution in my heart over the last few years. I don't relate to the portions of the Jeremiah reading that speak of his persecution, and seems to reflect anger. Rather, I see it as more a triumph of passion, both of God's and of Jeremiah's: God's to make His Word known and Jeremiah to stay with God in that mission, despite what felt like destruction and confusion and basic bad stuff in his life. Passion gives staying power through bad stuff, and an experience of God's passion in one's soul is at times the only thing that will preserve one on a path that seems filled with contradiction.

St. Peter spells out clearly how God draws, or seduces the soul. God doesn't just give commands for us to "do," He works side by side with us, calling us into a sharing of His own work. In this way God intoxicates us with the fire of His love, and we are consumed with the desire to see God everywhere. Latin scholars tell me this love that St. Peter speaks of reshaping our lives is the Eros of God:

Love refuses to be consoled when its goal proves impossible, despises all hindrances to the attainment of its object. Love destroys the lover if he cannot obtain what he loves; love follows its own promptings, and does not think of right and wrong. Love inflames desire which impels it toward things that are forbidden. But why continue?
It is intolerable for love not to see the object of its longing. That is why whatever reward they merited was nothing to the saints if they could not see the Lord. A love that desires to see God may not have reasonableness on its side, but it is the evidence of filial love.

The refrain of this song is my testimony to what God has done in my life as a result of the strange fires He lights, and in a way it summarizes the whole message of the CD: "Deep inside my heart you broke away the chains."

As I write, the recording of this song is not finished yet, but I do hope when someday it is you will give it a listen.

www.mariehosdil.com

The Meaning Series: Holy Mary

I'm really in the habit of laying my heart on the line in this blog, and why stop now?! Doing so helps me try to be honest with myself -- to at least swing the bat in that direction.

So the other day at adoration I had an idea form that felt pretty meet, right and salutary (what, you don't speak Lutheran?), which was to write about the meaning of/testimony behind each of the songs I am in the process of recording for the CD to be entitled "Unleashed."

I'm going to start with the song I worked on most recently, called "Holy Mary."

I wrote this song on April 12, 1995 while I lived in Minoo, Japan. On the surface, I wrote it because each Friday evening I had dinner with one of the communities of Sisters who ran the school I taught in. I prayed evening prayer with them, which they did partially in English for my benefit. As evening prayer traditionally ends with a Marian hymn, they asked me to come up with a Marian song in English that had the word "Alleluia" in it, for the Easter season. It's quite rare for me to have written a song based on someone else's request, but this is one of them.

Of course, there is a much deeper story than that. My time in Japan had a huge impact in my life, as is reflected in the title of this blog, for example. But it is not an impact I write or talk about directly very often because frankly the experience was painful with a type of pain that is hard to work into a conversation. When I arrived in Japan, I had been a Catholic for about 18 months. I went with an idealistic notion of what it meant to be a missionary that was disconnected from the reality of the person I actually was at the time. I had very little sense of community, of belonging, in any tangible way to the Church, the Body of Christ, and more importantly I didn't think it mattered. I thought I'd be just fine not being able to communicate, having no friends or even acquaintances, and being rather alone -- and that I'd still be able to reach out effectively with Christ's love to the people around me. I was supposed to be a teacher. I was told I'd be teaching in a Junior College, and this appealed to my vain notions of discussing literature and having interested students excited about bookish ideas. The books would bond us, I presumed.

Reality: I was assigned to the elementary school. We used Sesame Street curriculum; no one understood me at all, and I was essentially there as a Caucasian sound-bite-offerer, managed by the native-speaking teacher, so that wealthy parents felt their daughters' English would sound impressive, if ever they decided to speak a word of it.

My spiritual reality was far worse. I was like an old table with layer after ugly layer of paint, and God was out to refinish me. It felt more like He was trying to finish me off. Slop on stripper. Scrape off gunk. Repeat liberally. The stuff that was getting purged and stripped from me was so much of the religious trappings and ideas I had clung to for my identity. It was confusing. I remember sitting in my tiny apartment and looking at the religious art on my walls and screaming in anger. Everything religious in my life felt empty, like so many meaningless shells. Reading my Bible left me tormented. My prayers while alone bounced off the ceiling back to me. Mass and prayer in common left me aching, because it was all in Japanese and it was so hard to engage my heart. I felt deeply unholy, because I had nothing that I had relied on to feel holy, either as a Protestant or a Catholic. And it didn't help that in my desperate loneliness I had gotten into a relationship with a man who, surprise, spoke English. He was a very interesting character, but given my state, the relationship was not healthy for me at all. I was not physically healthy, either. Stripped bare. This process lasted two and a half years.

But, God was not out to leave me like that. During all this time spiritually I kept bumping up against the Blessed Mother. Recall that I had not been a Catholic very long at this time. Even though I had intellectually accepted the truths of who Mary is, I can't say I had any experience of her at all. She was a doctrinal category, not a Mother for me.


This bumping up against Mary eventually required me to learn from Jesus how to contemplate who she is. It was in the midst of this that I wrote "Holy Mary." A statue of Our Lady of Sorrows compelled me so that I had a photo of it blown up. I thought of her as Our Lady of Utter Boredom, because when I looked at her

face, I felt divine empathy with the painful emptiness inside me. Several other experiences drew my heart to understand Jesus' words to John "behold your mother." One of these was a dream I had just before I left Japan. I'm not saying it was a dream of divine revelation, but it certainly summarized my "take home message" from the experience. In it, I saw Mary, and I fainted from the sheer radiance and power of her beauty and purity. She pointed out my window, showing me my place next to an unidentified person (whom I think of as simply "humanity" or human community) with whom I was to walk forward from there.

And that was exactly God's point in refinishing me. I had barnacled myself over with a do-it-yourself, me-and-Jesus spirituality where others were not necessary to my salvation, nor I to theirs. God employed His Mother to teach me that this is not His will. God saves us in community with everyone whom the Holy Spirit has called, and sends us to all whom He will call. This is the great communion of saints. This is our family as Church. This is our call as disciples and our mission as evangelists.

Mary is with the Redeemer at the cross, pointing out our Salvation. We do well to learn from her how to behold her Son.

www.mariehosdil.com