Today, His Grace Bishop Youssef announced the opening of the first of eight churches to be opened in the Southern Diocese to address the needs of the English speaking community, starting with "All English services for the week of Holy Week." This is in response to a feeling that many of us have had that there has to be a primacy of spirituality over culture in the practice of our Faith. My hope is that people don't take this as an excuse to throw the baby out with the bath water by prematurely and unnecessarily getting rid of all of our Coptic Hymnology.
The risk of not changing is real. The arguments that are put forth to say "we can't just be a transplant of the cultural Egyptian Coptic Church" are valid and are summarized briefly here:
1) The Russian Orthodox Church has taught us that culture is entirely negotiable, as evidenced by their creation of the OCA.
2) The Greek Orthodox Church has also reformed over the years in response to having "lost a significant number of her members, actual as well as potential, since the immigration period." Incidentally, the author (Fr. George Nicozisin) advocates integration rather than assimilation as a solution.
3) We should follow the example of our Holy Fathers the Apostles who became all things to all men that they by some means save some (1 Cor 9:22). This happened everywhere, including Egypt, where St. Mark worked with the existing Egyptian culture to create a uniquely Coptic Church that is distinct from its sister churches in the rest of the apostolic world.
While I agree that we do need to move on and "incarnate" the Coptic Church into our American culture, I do think that there is value to a balanced approach that places spirituality and not language at the center of the discussion. Language should take a back seat to theology, patristics, liturgical Tradition, and other central issues that should be formally discussed and agreed upon as the priorities for the Coptic Church in America. When all this is said and done, the language issue will still need to be addressed, and the cultural identity of these new churches will have to be defined. Even if this doesn't happen now in this generation, it will inevitably happen over time in subsequent generations. The argument being made by some people is that since this transformation will eventually be towards an "entirely American culture" then we may as well do away completely with "anything Egyptian" right at the outset. I disagree.
I want to start by asking "what does it mean to be entirely American?" Does that mean we have to have a McDonald's in the entry way of the church? Does it mean we have to report the latest celebrity gossip in the sermon? Clearly, there are parts of the popular American culture that are unnecessary and even undesirable. Similarly, there are parts of our Coptic heritage that we should preserve and include in our evolving identity as Coptic Americans. This integration of two ways of life is really the American Way. This is the melting pot of the United States and the cultural mosaic of Canada that allows people to retain their heritage to varying degrees. There is no such thing as a purely American culture. If we are to incarnate the Coptic Orthodox Church into a truly American tradition then this should not exclude but rather embrace the right amount of "salt and pepper" that gives our Church its own unique flavor.
Some people find no value in the hymnology of the Church. They think it is a waste of time and a burden on the people. This is a fair criticism in certain cases, but not as a blanket statement. This happens simply as a function of having too much salt or too much pepper, which we all agree makes for an unpalatable dish. The response should not be "we should never use salt and pepper again," but rather "we should use them in moderation." Just because some deacons have made liturgy run late by taking an inordinate amount of time singing a long hymn that had no translation and seemingly no point, doesn't mean that we can't in the future move towards:
1) translating as many hymns into English as possible;
2) always providing the congregation with the words to the long hymns and potentially a short contemplation explaining its spiritual benefit;
3) writing original English hymns in the same tradition of the Coptic Church;
4) preserving some Coptic in some of the hymns to retain some of the identity of the church in a way that does not compete with spirituality and understanding;
and 5) respecting people's time by always starting and finishing services on time.
These five points are offered here not as a final solution, but rather as an example of a way for Coptic Hymnology to coexist with American Culture. I hope you are convinced that the two are not mutually exclusive. Ultimately I believe in my heart that God will guide His Church to look however He wants it to look. This may mean that in the short term we completely get rid of Coptic Hymnology only to have a "revival" in 50 years that brings us back to a happy medium that we could potentially achieve now. All I ask is that, rather than rush to assimilate and eliminate everything that carries a Coptic label, we should consider what elements of our heritage are worth preserving for the grandchildren of our grandchildren.
Friday, March 6, 2015
Contemplation on Fai Etaf-enf
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If you love Coptic hymnology, then this is not for you. If you know this hymn, and love it, then this is not for you. Your own meditation and reflection is more than anyone else can offer you. But if you have ignored hymns, avoided them or (let’s be honest) flat out disliked them, then maybe today will be a first. Submit yourself for the next seven minutes to reading along and hearing (maybe for the first time) what lies underneath the surface of a Coptic hymn.
The most basic appreciation that we can have for the hymns is the meaning of the words themselves. We can meditate solely on the simple words of Fai Etafenf and appreciate the weight of the Love of Christ in offering Himself on our behalf on the cross. One point that we can meditate on is that the hymn does not say “He who was offered up against His will” but rather “He who offered Himself up.” Christ prayed in Gesthemane for the cup to pass for Him, but in the end submitted Himself to the will of the Father for the good of mankind. If that is enough to chew on for now, then stop reading now and meditate on this while you listen to the hymn.
If your attention is still wandering, then let us dig a little deeper into the actual hymnology. First let us define a term, “melisma,” that is common to many coptic hymns, meaning “a group of notes sung to one syllable of text.” This is a musical tool used often by classical composers like Handel (remember “Messiah” with the Hallelujah Chorus?) and has been popularized in modern gospel music by artists like Aretha Franklin, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston. Why melisma? It emphasizes a certain word or words to allow them to take a position of prominence in a song or hymn. It also allows the composer to create a mood or a feeling using the music; for example, we can listen to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy and say “this is happy music” without really knowing what the funny German people are saying.
In Fai Etafenf we hear the notes ascend, then descend, then ascend, then ascend some more and stay high. I know what you’re thinking “yeah, pretty much like every coptic hymn - it goes up, it goes down, it keeps going, and going - so what?” Well these ups and downs begin to take on some meaning when we pay attention to what is being said for these ups and downs. For example, when we say the word “epshoi” which literally means “up” we actually go up then down and then up again. Why? The author of this hymn is not around to tell us for sure but one contemplation is that Christ offered himself up by first leaving heaven (up), coming down to earth through the incarnation (down) and then offering himself up. We can hear that the lowest point of the hymn is actually during this word “up,” perhaps because of how low Christ had to go in order for him to offer himself up for us.
When Christ was on the cross He gave up the spirit with the words “it is finished,” which we can connect to the the singing of the word “pistavros” (the cross). First of all, this is the musical climax of the whole hymn, in that it ascends without descending. It is the pinnacle of the hymn, just as it is the pinnacle of His Love for us. It is the end of the intensely melismatic portion of the hymn (the subsequent words are said rather quickly), which musically conveys that in the cross Christ completes the work of "becoming human" through sacrifice.
To conclude, let us point out a simpler but still connected hymnological point - why do we sing to Christ 10 times a day “Thine is the power, glory and blessing” on a week where we know He will be crucified? The answer is in the paradox of the cross, that the ultimate perfection comes through weakness. We do not always see what God sees, and it may take us a lifetime to begin to truly understand. He sees the beauty of the flower in a completely different way, that maybe a botanist may partially understand more than we do. May we pray for God to increase our understanding so that we may have more of an appreciation for all the beautiful things He has created for us.
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