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On Monday, August 20^th, Scott sent out a preliminary list of songs for when we lead worship on Sept 16^th.  The opening hymn was “Create in Me” which we used to do every week when we lead the 5 PM service.  Now granted this was about four years ago, but we got so sick of the song that we vowed we’d never do it again.  I open up Scott’s list and there it is: “Create in Me,” with a parenthetical statement “Didn’t I just say we would never do that one again?”  Why are we doing it? - Because the lectionary calls out Psalm 51 as the psalm of the day.   

I open up psalm 51 just to refresh my memory.  Here it is from the New Revised Standard just in case you need your memory refreshed as well:

1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. 3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. 4 Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment. 5 Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me. 6 You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.

7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. 8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice. 9 Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. 11 Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit. 13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.

14 Deliver me from bloodshed, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance. 15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. 16 For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased. 17 The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. 18 Do good to Zion in your good pleasure; rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, 19 then you will delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.

My first thought is to pull out a version I had written during lent two or three years ago.  But then I realize that this is a hymn that the entire congregation will need to sing.  That kills idea number one.  Then I think that maybe there is a hymn in the Lutheran Book of Worship that we could take and modernize ala Vince Gill and Amy Grant.  After about 30 minutes of fruitless searching, I get the idea of taking a well known melody and setting the psalm to it.  My first thought is to use Now Thank We all Our God.  As I prepare for my lunchtime walk, I review the psalm a few more times with the plan of setting the psalm to the hymn during the walk.    As I begin the walk, I try to recall the melody and the only thing that comes into my head is the Navy Hymn (MELITA by John B. Dykes).  Most folks know it as Eternal Father, Strong to Save.  Others might recognize the melody as My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less.  I knew that it wasn’t the right melody, but the more I tried to find the right melody, the more pieces of psalm 51 would fit themselves into the melody.   I gave up fighting, and after a few minutes I had: 

Have mercy on me O my Lord
Wash me from my iniquity
For I have sinned against your will
Sinned against You and You alone
Oh Lord restore in me Your joy
Create in me a clean pure heart 

I stopped and wrote that down and continued walking.  The next two verses came a bit slower, mostly because I had forgotten the rest of the psalm.  But I had the basic idea down.  The melody is just six lines of eight beats played in straight 4/4 time and fits many of the ideas in the psalm quite well.  I had some basic ideas, but I needed to be sure I had the psalm correct.  Upon returning to my desk, the next two verses quickly fell into place. 

With hyssop purge and cleanse my soul
Wash me, make me whiter than snow
Teach wisdom to my secret heart
Don’t cast me from your good grace
Oh Lord restore in me Your joy
Create in me a clean pure heart

O Lord forgive my sinful ways
I come with sad and contrite heart
Your sentence I accept with joy
My lips, my mouth declare your praise
Oh Lord restore in me Your joy
Create in me a clean pure heart 

I liked the idea of repeating the last two lines like in Eternal Father.  

Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea! 

That evening, I transcribed the melody into my music notation program and then gave it the acid test – actual singing.  The first and third verses worked well, but that second verse just wasn’t sitting with me well.  Especially that fourth line.  It seemed very forced.  So I tinkered with it a bit and eventually changed it to:

 Don’t cast me from your presence, Lord 

I really liked that, however, this produced a different issue.  Singing it through, the last three lines become:

Don’t cast me from your presence, Lord
Oh Lord restore in me Your joy
Create in me a clean pure heart 

That “Lord, Oh Lord” section was now bugging me.  Once again it seemed forced without a nice flow from idea to idea.  This one was a puzzler.  After about 20 minutes of various arrangements of the words, I decided to start from scratch and went back to Scripture.  After reading it through a few times, verse 10 seemed to be the crux of the psalm.  A few minutes of fooling around with that verse produced:  

A new, right spirit place in me
and a clean heart create in me 

One more acid test and I felt it worked nicely.  I sent off the file to Scott and recorded the demo.  Here is the final version: 

Have mercy on me O my Lord
Wash me from my iniquity
For I have sinned against your will
Sinned against You and You alone
A new, right spirit place in me
and a clean heart create in me  

With hyssop purge and cleanse my soul
Wash me, make me whiter than snow
Teach wisdom to my secret heart
Don’t cast me from your presence, Lord
A new, right spirit place in me
and a clean heart create in me 

O Lord forgive my sinful ways
I come with sad and contrite heart
Your sentence I accept with joy
My lips, my mouth declare your praise
A new, right spirit place in me
and a clean heart create in me 

That Wednesday, we decided against playing it for the September service, mostly for style reasons.  However, I did feel that the piece had merit.  I have since sent it off for consideration for publication with one of the sacred music publishing houses.   Here is a mp3 version of it.  This is a simple four track recording with overdubbed guitar and voice. 

Psalm 51

God bless,
Tom Whalen

Copyright © 2007 Thomas B. Whalen

This summer has been a very creative period for me.  Despite a two week time frame when I was back East, I have generated no less than seven new pieces of music, one adaptation, and several rewrites of older, rejected pieces. 

On Wednesday, August 1^st, before our band rehearsal, Scott was fooling around with a very cool bass line.  I asked what he was playing and soon we had an extended jam session going, with each of us playing off the other’s parts.  Even the next day, the melody was still bouncing around in my head.  During my noon time walk I thought up a simple lyric to go with it.  Here it is. 

Dear Lord, my life is in trouble,
Dear Lord, my life is a wreck,
I could use some assistance,
to help me through my distress.

I try, to work through my problems,

But my effort’s in vain.

Lord, I could use your assistance

To ease my burden and pain.

 

Dear Lord, our world is in trouble,

Dear Lord, our world is a wreck,

We could use some assistance,

to help us through our distress.

 

When I got home and put it up against the melody, it seemed a bit forced.  The first two phrases worked well, but the last two rang hollow against the melody.  In a bit of inspiration, I repeated the melody for the remaining two lines and kept Scott’s main melody for between the verses.  I still didn’t have a chorus.  After a bit of pondering, the following came into my head:

 

Chorus:

I lift my voice to heaven.

I raise my voice in prayer.

I lift my heart to You, Lord.

Ask help with all my cares.

 

Place a chorus between each verse and the piece is complete.  I considered a bridge for the piece, but it seemed to break up Scott’s melody too much.  The recording is just me with two guitar tracks and two voice tracks.  Later I would like to capture the interplay between Scott’s bass and my guitar, as the effect is quite nice. 

God bless,

Tom Whalen

Lift My Voice to heaven

Copyright © 2007 Thomas B. Whalen

Sorry, I passed my personal deadline for writing about music every two weeks.  I think the following will explain the lapse.

 

On Friday, August 3^rd, I spoke with my mother and she told me that my Pop wasn’t doing well.  The only problem with that is that she had been telling me that for the past nine months.  First, it was his hips and knees, then his eyes, and finally it was the intestinal cancer that was discovered in March.

I had been planning a trip to see Pop for about a month and a half.  My wife Cheryl, my daughter Beth and I would be spending a week with him.  He and I had made plans on what we were going to do with those seven days.  Share stories and record them.  Visit some old friends.  Eat lobster.  Enjoy one another’s company.  I think we both knew that this would be the last time we would see each other, and we both wanted to make the most of it. 

We left Spokane that Saturday morning and flew to Portland then Las Vegas on Southwest.  When we got to Vegas we had a three hour layover.  After a quick lunch, we found our gate and waited in line.  After we boarded the plane, Cheryl checked her phone and found a message from my brother Pat.  He said that the family was gathered in Pop’s hospital room and that we needed to head straight to the hospital when we landed in Philadelphia.  On landing in Philly, I called Pat and he said to hurry.  “It’s going to be a photo finish.”

From then on, everything seemed to fall into place.  It was if the Lord was removing all obstacles.  The Hertz bus pulled up just as we walked out of the terminal.  At the Hertz place, they got us a car right outside the door.   At 1:30 AM, the highways were fairly empty.  The cops were no where in sight as I broke at least a hundred traffic laws speeding across Central and North Jersey.  While the route was one I traveled at least fifty times as I went back and forth between my father’s house and the Naval Academy, my memory of the route was a little rough and I was trying to fly ahead in my brain so as to not make a mistake. 

Driving west on I-80 through Parsippany, I had a moment where I couldn’t remember where the hospital was.  Here was the hospital that I was born in, that I had been to hundreds of times to visit family and friends, and that I had driven by every day for three years as I drove to the golf course where I worked.  I started driving by instinct through the streets of Denville and suddenly I saw the big “H” signs.  I found my way. 

My brother Dan and sister Maureen were waiting for us in the parking lot to escort me to my father’s room.  All they said was: “we have to hurry.” 

As I entered his room I mustered up a bit of bravado and in a very loud voice said, “Where the hell is Brian Whalen?” 

My mother turned to me and said, “Oh Tommy, he just passed.”  Pat was shaking his head. 

The nurse said softly, “I’m sorry, he’s gone.”

As I made my way to my father’s side, the nurse said, “Wait!”  My father was breathing again, but very slow, shallow breaths.  I took my father’s hand and whispered, “I made it, Pop.  I love you, Pop.”  And then to keep him going I started telling him about our drive north from Philly.  I stroked his hair as he struggled to breathe.  I kissed his forehead.  I kept telling him everything that came into my head. 

After about two minutes the nurse said, “He’s passed.” 

Pat said, “That’s was amazing.  He waited for you.  He came back when he heard your voice.” 

Pop was a nurturing, but firm father who saw the potential in each of his children.  He allowed each of us to find our own way in life.  But he also saw to it that we had a solid foundation in the faith and in the community before we started down those diverse paths. 

To my sibling and me, Pop was a trusted advisor and counselor, a technical expect on a variety of topics and eventually a dear friend.  He was active in the church and in the community.  He was a true patriot who served his country in the Navy and as a civil servant in the Department of the Army for 35 years.  He took his civic duties quite seriously and enjoyed debating the various issues facing our nation.  Pop also wasn’t afraid to question the decisions of those in authority and made a regular habit of it.  While he could be opinionated, he carefully considered those opinions and didn’t come by them lightly, but once he had formed them he could be quite stubborn.

As Pop’s health failed over the past year, he suffered with dignity and grace.  I spoke to him the Monday before he passed away.

“Pop, how are you?”

“Just great!” he said in a very hoarse, weak voice. 

“You don’t sound too good.”

“I’m doing fine with what I have and I can’t do anything about the rest of it, so why should I complain.”

In fact, I never heard him complain – ever.  Searching back in my memory, I cannot ever recall him complaining.  He has truly been an inspiration to my siblings and me.  He has set a standard of courage and faith that I hope to match someday.  He was at peace with the cross the Lord had laid on his shoulders and he accepted it without reservation.

So farewell Pop.  You are sorely missed.  You have set a fabulous example on how to live one’s life.  I love you and will always love you.

 

In Memoriam

Brian Michael Whalen

October 2, 1933 - August 5, 2007