"Tempestuous"
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[from: The Parable of the Zebra Finch]
The day after a family friend named EJ took his own life last June, the Bishop of our Mormon congregation opened a council meeting by reading the hymn “Master the Tempest is Raging.” The lyrics were written by Mary Baker, a Baptist woman who had lost her faith for a time after the loss of her only brother whom she deeply loved. The Bishop’s message focused on the wide range of the emotional spectrum covered by her descriptive lyrics. In the hymn, feelings of anguish, grief, wrath, and terror are depicted as blackness, billows, torrents, and demons. That bleak imagery is then followed by the completely contrasting depictions of peace, calm, bliss, and sweet rest.
I know of very few hymns that are as authentic and honest in their lyrics. A few years ago I found myself missing the will to live during a brief but very intense anxiety attack; at least in my experience, Baker’s description of the raging storm includes some of the most powerful words our language has to convey what someone might be feeling in the midst of a deep loss, a depressive episode, or an anxiety attack. Those unrelentingly tempestuous images are then followed by terms that just as powerfully describe the ensuing serenity with its accompanying radiance – a form of light that has both the unequivocal right and the absolute power to drive out demons and dispel all darkness.
I went home after the council meeting and started to play the song through on my keyboard. The last time EJ had been over at our house, he had sat down to play at that same keyboard; at the time, though, I had no idea of the inner turmoil he was dealing with. As I repeated the song with his tragic turn and memories of my own bout with depression in mind, I tried to vary the volume and tailor the tempo to better reflect the lyrics. Each time I stepped through the chord progression to the crescendo in the chorus, I played it a little louder. To avoid annoying the neighbors, I finally just put on my headphones and turned it up all the way, letting the mood oscillate back and forth between stormy and calm seas – as real life so often does – by trying to harness the full range of emotions stirring around in my head: anger, fear, guilt, sorrow, and regret, mixed with resolve, determination, solidarity, fortitude, and hope.
The lyrics depict a fearsome battle against the elements that is symbolic of any struggle with a dark force that might be thrown our way. Although the title of the song in the current LDS hymnal highlights the stormy tempest, the tune was originally called “Peace be still,” or simply “Peace.” And in the end, I guess that’s the whole point of it – not to leave us tossing in the tempest but to ultimately bring us that peace; in that spirit, the last verse ends with the self-confident statement that with heaven’s help, “I shall make that blest harbor!”
In my younger days, I was in the drum line of some marching bands; in that setting, I have sensed the unison that comes from marching side by side to the same beat. As I kept playing the song through with my out-of-practice fingers and wrists starting to ache, I tried syncopating the rhythm into a march beat and added a snare drum. And then a bass drum. And then a bass line. It’s certainly not how it was written but that interpretation helps me visualize the hosts of heaven alongside us in our daily battles with whatever tempests surround us. [When we read about a “host”, we might at first picture a butler or a servant or a cook or a maid. But a host is an army – in my German Bible, it’s the same word – like the armies of heaven who are singing and shouting in the anthem The Spirit of God. And the term hosts doesn’t refer to just any rag-tag army, but a large and powerful group of armies actively engaged in a battle.] If we could tune into celestial frequencies, I believe we would sense these spiritual soldiers at our side in the daily march ahead; armed with that perspective, we might sometimes find ourselves singing and shouting and marching in step with them.
Maybe for EJ’s family the current battle is just trying to put one foot in front of the other in getting back to the daily routine of marching to the grocery store, picking up kids from school, or heading into their rooms to tuck them in over the coming weeks and months and years. But whatever the battle might be about, I do believe that there’s an army of angels around us. And I believe that whatever life throws our way and however mundane and routine our daily tasks might appear, those heavenly hosts – and the Savior Himself – will, as promised, “be on your right hand and on your left, and…round about you to bear you up.” (D&C 84:88) And I think that has to be especially true during those times when just getting through the day is a battle in itself.
Through the crescendo of the hymn’s chorus, I can picture an ever-expanding army joining us in our individual fights – with more instruments blending in as the song progresses. In the end, dissonant minor chords resolve back to the root chords in a familiar circle, with the crux of each chorus culminating in an image of the Savior Himself in command, while all of the tempestuous elements that are seeking to destroy us are ultimately subdued by His will...and an accompanying measure of our own faith. For me to even begin to feel the contrast of that peaceful ending, though, the stormy parts have to be played really, really forcefully – and preferably with the bass turned all the way up. I have a hard time doing it justice on my little electronic keyboard, but it works particularly well in my favorite version of the hymn, which was performed by a BYU Men’s Choir in the April 2015 LDS General Conference. Have a listen here. When they zoom in on the singers in the back row, you see them dwarfed by the largest pipes of that awesome organ in the Conference Center. Even turning up the recording all the way with an amazing sound system wouldn't quite reflect its full potential, though; for that I have to imagine myself standing right there in person in front of one of those pipes.
As a missionary in East Germany, I got to hear some organ recitals played on original Silbermann pipe organs in massive cathedrals, where the air was filled with all the nuances and subtle changes in sound that you can only pick up in person. I remember some concerts where the air itself seemed to move around me – not just pulsating from the sound waves, but actually having been set into motion from the organ’s bellows, with each of the thousands of organ pipes' unique sounds coming toward me from a different direction. I can still hear the harmonies resonating inside the acoustic surroundings, with the statues, the stained glass, the altar, and even the pews producing their own overtones in response. I heard Händel’s Messiah performed in that setting, and I imagine that's as close as one might get to hearing choirs of angels with their trumpeting accompaniment. It was a surreal experience for me, representing not just something musical, but at the same time peace, beauty, humility, and all that is good in humanity [more on that story in Chapter 19 here].
Anyway, that’s the sort of scene I had in my head while I plunked away at the keys of my old keyboard, trying to mimic the calming of the seas – but with the resulting sounds falling well short of my imagination...and interrupted by disturbing thoughts about what I might have done differently to help prevent EJ's tragic choice. The harmony of words and music in this particular hymn is profound; but the main thought that struck me as I played it through time and again was how the lyrics assume a desire to be delivered. How far gone does your mind have to be to welcome the turbulence that would sink a ship? When Simon Peter walked on water, his faith wavered and he started to sink; but in the end he wished to be saved. How far from reality must I have been during my own anxiety attack to want to sink, wishing a sea of storm clouds would swallow me whole? How had those very thoughts been going on in EJ’s mind right there on that same piano bench without my having taken any notice? And what could I do about it now?
Perhaps there is some solidarity to be gained in sharing our experiences with each other and in the knowledge that we are all marching together – all seeking a form of peace, one way or another. Perhaps there is relief in the recognition that we all struggle in unique but surprisingly similar ways. On the very few occasions when I have brought myself to expose my own brief experience with depression to someone else, I have found that as lonely as it feels in the midst of it, no one is alone in their struggle. Like miscarriages, financial troubles, embarrassing health problems, eating disorders, spiritual doubts, or other burdens typically borne in private, the response from sharing them is typically not, “you psycho!” as you might convince yourself to expect, but rather a surprising, resounding, reassuring, “me too!”
I felt some measure of a release after playing my customized version of the song through over and over again; but as I dove right back into my daily routines over the next few weeks it soon faded to join all the other songs I used to know. Then just a month later I heard from a member of my old church youth group back home that her sixteen-year-old son Zeb – who had shared many of the same interests and passions as EJ – had likewise taken his own life. Thinking of what Zeb’s family must be going through on the other side of the world, it felt tragically familiar. I sat back down at the keyboard again to try to clear my thoughts and found myself playing that same tempestuous hymn. Knowing that EJ’s prized possession was his Lindsey Stirling-autographed violin, this time I added a violin track and decided to record it – and to post my thoughts about it here. I don’t know why – maybe EJ and Zeb have been called on a mission together, and maybe now they’re now knocking on my door to prompt me to share these thoughts and sounds with others. Or maybe I just needed to get it out of my system, and expressing myself by sharing these things is my own coping mechanism. Whatever the reason, I’ve gone ahead and posted the mp3 file here.
As a disclaimer, I’m no musician, and I’m actually a bit embarrassed to put it out there, since the tracks are out of sync and poorly mixed. I’ll blame that on the kids trying to climb on my shoulders while I was sitting at the keyboard. I recognize that it comes nowhere close to properly reflecting the roller coaster of emotions that Zeb and EJ’s families are going through; that said, if someone out there has the talent, equipment, and patience that I lack and can make a more professional recording of it, it’s all yours. Or if someone has the video editing skills to put it alongside of meaningful scenes and post it on YouTube as a tribute or to somehow help raise suicide awareness, go for it. I picture a video montage in my head when I listen to the music – particularly the BYU recording. I see an image of a tiny boat dwarfed by massive waves, which fades to a young man feeling alone in his despair, then a father in even greater despair as he constructs his son's handmade casket in a carpentry shop, fading to a zoomed in shot of an angel in Harry Anderson's Second Coming painting, then zooming out to show an army of angels, then panning over to the Resurrected Christ at the center – which finally fades to Thorvaldsen's Christus statue. At least that's a brief glimpse of what I see in my head when I hear the music, but I'm afraid my amateur efforts in making a video would fall even shorter from the objective than my music does.
Maybe I should explain that while I have been blessed with an ability to hear music in everything…I have been cursed with the inability to play back what I hear in my head (thanks to a stubborn refusal to take lessons or practice when I was younger). The interludes in the recording are intended to represent heartbeats. The calm heartbeats that initially keep you alive begin to pound and threaten to consume you when fear takes over, but they are ultimately coaxed out of anxiety by the peace of the Savior. The idea of the march beat in the last verse is that there are angels marching in unison with us to help dispel all fear. In the version I've posted here, the drums are just cheesy keyboard percussion buttons that have come out a bit messy; but in the mix in my head an entire marching band joins in with its drum line to provide the cadence at that point, drowning out the symphony orchestra that then fights back with its own fervor. My little keyboard is smashed to bits by a 12-foot concert grand that takes its place; the BYU Men's Choir enters the stage to provide the initial vocals; they're then joined by MoTab, my San Francisco glee club, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo in an ever-expanding global chorus that provides a colorful tapestry that you can actually hear in the diverse harmonies. Maybe I should stop there, but if I try to describe what I hear in my head when I’m out for a jog, the gospel choir from Rattle and Hum adds some spirit to it, the Les Miserables cast joins in with a medley of their passionate marches interspersed between each line, the ever-expanding marching band from OK Go's this too shall pass pops out of nowhere to keep the beat going, Lindsey Stirling starts cranking out the violin solo on top of it all, and then Taiko Dojo dwarfs them all with the concluding beats driven home on their 10-foot o-daiko drum; a Silbermann pipe organ blasts out the bars of the grand finale, with the symphony orchestra, the marching band, and the full chorale singing at the top of their lungs and joining the entire ensemble for an encore and a final bow. Maybe I’m crazy, but I get really worked up when I think about how prevalent and preventable a plague like suicide is; I don't know what to do about it other than posting my thoughts here, but if you could tap into my head and make an mp3 file of what’s inside when I'm out running by myself, that spectacularly crazy mix of the hymn is exactly what you’d hear!
In the meantime, at least the BYU version does a much better job hitting the mark than my own – especially the second verse. When I watch that army from my alma mater and focus on those young faces singing about the tempests of life,
