Monday, April 29, 2019

Golden anniversary of being a two-talent person

A choir score with piano accompaniment: Holy, Holy, Holy


© 2019 Christy K Robinson

I don't usually give personal details about age, health matters, or other things that can be harvested by data miners for nefarious purposes. But here's a factoid that I'm a little proud of: 2019 is my golden anniversary (50 years) of serving as a church worship pianist.

My mom was my first and best piano teacher, and she encouraged my love for religious music of all kinds. I played "special music" as a piano soloist, and accompanied school choruses and choirs, and a terrible little ensemble of instruments that really don't "go together" (for instance, a Flutaphone and a saxaphone).

My mother and I played piano and organ duets, and I accompanied vocalists from strained croakers to fine musicians. Rather than watch the soloist over the written music, I listened for the intake of breath, or the sign that they were running out of air, and adjusted my playing to accommodate them. Further, I learned that the accompanist should enhance the ensemble or soloist, not overtake it, and piano solos and piano accompaniment are very different animals.

I was elected one of the church pianists at age 10, and in rotation, I played congregational hymns on the piano along with the organist, as well as took my turn playing offertories and preludes.
One of those pipe organ thingies.
This one has only two manuals, but most have
three or four manuals in addition to the pedalboard.

My teachers wouldn't teach chording and improvisation (they trained me classically), so I taught myself to play from lead lines so as to play the Christian Contemporary music then in its early years. I memorized chords in every key, and practiced playing them in inversions, in several styles.

About eight years ago, listening to a recording of Carole King and James Taylor, I realized that my contemporary improv was very much like theirs, that playing along with my vinyl records when I was 13 had developed that style, as well.

I wasn't the only kid to be nurtured in music ministry at such a tender age. My schoolmate Ronnie was a year older than I, and for a while we shared the same piano teacher, but he was always a better pianist than I. When a mutual friend lost his father a few years ago, Ronnie played the piano for the memorial service--and he's still better! I don't envy him (much) because of the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30).

For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more... His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’
The Master gave Ronnie five talents where I received two talents. Both of us invested wisely by practicing and giving back, but Ronnie got the larger deal. It wasn't our deal to make. The Master decided who got what, and we accepted the gifts and didn't squander them.    



In addition to formal piano and organ lessons from age six through university, I often sat with accomplished keyboardists to turn pages for them in worship services, funerals, weddings, and evangelism campaigns. The best of them had a small stack of books with them that they could quickly turn to if the service changed direction unexpectedly, and this has stood me in good stead many a time! (Thanks to those early mentors, Mrs. Doris Starkey, Herbert Work, and my mom, who coached me on expression and phrasing by noticing the lyrics as I played through.)

 And thanks to those little monsters who were my classmates at Christian school. We had worship in our classroom every school day, and the teacher would take requests from our old, beat-up hymnals. The kids would invariably search for the most difficult hymns to make me play, like "Onward Christian Soldiers" in four sharps, or "For All the Saints" with its walking bass, or "Once to Every Man and Nation," with its long phrases of triplets in a minor key. I practiced every hymn of the 600+ numbers so the little monsters couldn't embarrass me when they tried. Mwahahaha!

I learned to listen carefully to the scripture readings, the sermon, and to surreptitiously read the reactions of the congregation, though my face was generally turned to the pulpit.

This was me as a teenager, playing at my
Christian high school.
 By the time I was a teenager, I was playing for small weddings, and when I was in my 20s, I began playing professionally with many denominations. I've played massive pipe organs, pianos from Yamaha to Steinway to clunky old uprights, and synthesizers with more knobs and buttons than the 88 keys. There have been a fair number of what I call "cha-cha" organs, the spinet with buttons for bossa nova and foxtrot percussion that people had in their homes in the early 1970s and then donated to the church when they moved or Grandma died. I never used the percussion settings in services, but confess that I thought it hilarious to use it when playing the Bach Invention No. 8 in my practice time. It was a metronome with attitude.

I saw the look of alarm on the faces of the 80-year-old pillars of the church when a digital synthesizer keyboard was purchased, and I chose settings like plucked harp or piano and strings to soothe their fears that a rock band was taking over. At other churches, I played with a "praise band" and it's a blast to work with others after practicing piano as a sort of solo sport for so many years.

One of the benefits of playing for churches (besides the much-needed income) is the fellowship of like-minded musicians and directors. Another is the professional development as I enhance the worship experience by expressing the music a certain way or knowing to jump from accompaniment to vocal parts and back during rehearsal.




The church I currently work for has been such a blessing to me, not only in terms of income, but in fellowship and service. I love the church, love the musicians, love the director and his talented wife, and can't imagine that my experience could be better. OK, it could be better in this way: we only sing from September through April because of the extreme heat in summer with people escaping on vacations, and I only get paid for playing for choir, which means I need keyboard substitute jobs to help pay my living expenses. I hope you'll join me in prayer about summer "gigs" at area churches.

Are you a five-talent, two-talent, or one-talent person? I'm satisfied with what God gave me, and the many ways he's sustained and blessed me over the last 50 years. 

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Will my pet go to heaven?


© 2019 Christy K Robinson

Baby me, on Easter, with my tabby kitten.
When I was two or three years old, my tabby cat didn’t come home one day.  As a four-year-old, I’d stand in the driveway and call for him to come home. Of course, he never did.

Over the years, our family had several pets that we treated well, fed well, and protected with a fenced yard or taking them out on a leash. They lived long lives with annual checkups and vaccinations. If they sickened with age, we gave them their thyroid medication or kidney-health special diet until we were sure it was time to let them go in euthanasia.

When I was a child, I asked if my guinea pig or rabbit would go to heaven so I could have them again when it was my turn to go to heaven. Lacking a Bible proof text, thinking that animals have no souls, and that pets can’t accept salvation in Christ, my church and my parents told me that sadly, we only have their short lives on earth to enjoy our pets. This made me cry all the harder as we buried the beloved cat under the apple tree or the jasmine vine.

Glazed clay sculpture of our dog,
made by my mother.
I remember my mother saying that in heaven, she wanted to have tigers and otters and elephants for house pets.

God gave animals to us for so many reasons besides food or clothing: love, joy, delight, companionship, life lessons in caretaking or our proper place in master-servant relations, to be God’s “spokesman” to our lives, to make us laugh, to let us cry, to guide or assist in our disabilities, to rehabilitate prisoners or wounded warriors, to rescue us in danger, to comfort in our sorrow or fear, to teach us or remind us to play, and to be family members.

Remember how Balaam beat his poor donkey when she saw an angel blocking their way? The donkey spoke to Balaam. And 3,300 years later, we can still learn from the donkey. (Click this link.)

I believe our domestic pets will be in heaven. God loves us so much that he gave us these "angels in dog or cat suits" to enhance and bless our lives.

God said in Isaiah 49:25 that he would save our children. For those who have traditional families, but particularly those of us who did not give birth, our animals are our children.

"Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains,
your judgments are like the great deep;
you save humans and animals alike, O Lord
."

Psalm 36:6






*****


Christy K Robinson is author of these books:
Mary Dyer Illuminated Vol. 1 (2013)  
Effigy Hunter (2015)  

And of these sites:  
Discovering Love  (inspiration and service)
Rooting for Ancestors  (history and genealogy)
William and Mary Barrett Dyer (17th century culture and history of England and New England)
Editornado [ed•i•tohr•NAY•doh] (Words. Communications. Book reviews. Cartoons.)


Sunday, April 14, 2019

Where is your line in the sand?

This photo of a Honduran child crying as her mother is arrested
won the WorldPress Photo of the Year,
at a ceremony held in Amsterdam on April 11, 2019.

© 2019 Christy K Robinson

In a world filled with terror and cruelty, we are called to be kind, compassionate, merciful, and fair. We help the helpless, we free those in cages, we protect the abused and neglected, we feed the hungry, we comfort the mourning, we reconcile the separated, we provide hospitality to the traveler and alien. These are virtues in every society, no matter which religion or denomination you espouse, or if you're a secular person. 

We know what is right and good.
We must do it.

We must do it, even if it means that we disobey a corrupt, vicious political authority. We find our humanity and our own healing when we open our hearts to the downtrodden. 

That is why I help with a loose-knit but well-organized network of volunteers, to feed, clothe, protect, and comfort the refugees coming from violent, corrupt Central American countries.

The following essay was written by an immigration attorney working in Colorado, and posted to Facebook on April 11, 2019. The bold highlights are mine, because I want to bring those to the attention of people who criticize the morals of the girls and young women who make up the majority of those we serve in the Phoenix area. "If they're good parents or love their kids, why would they subject their babies, toddlers, or older children to the dangers of a 2,500 mile journey?" Here's your answer. It's not like I haven't written it over and over again. But OK, if you want to talk "family values," "sexual abstinence," or "pro-life," then you need to read this.
Photo: The Guardian



I am an immigration lawyer (Colorado bar # 44591) at a nonprofit organization, and I wish to say something.

Recently, with the forcing out of DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen for not being “tough enough” on immigration, President Trump has resurrected the idea of separating families who arrive at the U.S./Mexico border to seek asylum, including those who present themselves at Ports of Entry to seek admission according to the proper procedures spelled out in U.S. immigration law.

This afternoon, I met with a single mother and her 14-year old daughter from Honduras. The daughter had a 4-month old baby boy, dressed in a purple dinosaur onesie, who grasped my finger and blew raspberries at me. 

The daughter had gotten pregnant at age 13 when five members of the MS-13 took turns raping her. They came three nights in a row before the mother finally fled to her sister’s house in another town. There, the mother went to ask police to help. But the police, who are themselves on the payroll of the gang, reported their location to the local gang hierarchy, who cross-checked with the MS-13 cell in their hometown and verified that they had tried to escape. In broad daylight, unmasked men with guns broke down the sister’s doors, dragged them into a car, drove them to an auto repair shop, and raped all three. 

Four months later, the mother had managed to borrow enough money from a cousin in the United States to pay a smuggler to take them through Guatemala to Mexico.

Two months later, in early December 2018, mother and daughter made it to the U.S. border in Laredo, Texas. The daughter was now seven months pregnant. They presented themselves at the Port of Entry and the mother said that they were afraid to go back to Honduras. They were put in separate rooms, where male Border Patrol officers interrogated both mother and daughter. They were then held in separate cells in what is known as the “hielera” (Spanish for “freezer”) for 4 days. Neither received news of the other.

The pregnant daughter was in a cold room where the only place to sleep was a concrete floor. She was given only a thin Mylar blanket that looked like aluminum foil. She and 10 other girls shared one toilet with no privacy curtain. The fluorescent lights were never turned off. She could not eat the food. She only drank water. The water came from a faucet on top of the shared toilet.

When the contractions began, she thought she just had stomach cramps. She was given aspirin. The next morning, when she was taken to a hospital, her mother was not informed. She did not give birth there. A male Border Patrol agent waited on a chair on the other side of the curtain in the emergency room waiting area. When the doctors determined that she was stable and released her, the agent drove her back to the concrete holding cell. One day later, mother and daughter were brought into a room together, given papers to sign, and driven to a local bus station where they were released. At that station, volunteers took them to a temporary shelter for migrants. They stayed there for one night until the same cousin arranged to buy tickets on a Greyhound bus. They traveled two days from Texas to reach Colorado.

Five days later, the girl gave birth. The baby was born at 7½ months. The two women don’t know the medical term for what is wrong with him. They just know that he has “a hole in his heart.” That is not a metaphor. The baby boy has a hole in the wall of one of the chambers of his heart.

This mother and child likely won’t win their asylum case. It doesn’t matter how unfair that seems to you, or if “that can’t be right,” or if you’re thinking any of the other phrases that most Americans who aren’t immigration lawyers (or immigrants) think when they hear stories like this and can’t believe them. The harm that these women suffered, and are likely to suffer again if they are deported to Honduras, is a “private harm.” They won’t be able to prove that it was perpetrated by a government actor or agent, specifically motivated by their membership in a particular social group, under the near-impossible standards for asylum made mandatory for all U.S. immigration judges by Attorney General Jeff Sessions (a political appointee and not a judge) in Matter of A-B- in June 2018. Nor will they be able to prove that their rapists were motivated by their (the victims’) race, religion, national origin, or political opinion.

In the perverse world of asylum law, what matters is not so much THAT you will be harmed, but WHO will harm you and WHY they will harm you. In a way, we are telling these two women that even here in the United States, the country that they believe will protect them, those men who hurt them are more important. Let me rephrase that. I had to tell them that, to their faces, today. I had to tell them in so many words that because their rapists didn’t rape them for the right reasons, they will likely be sent back to be hurt again.

For all those who say they should have come here legally: they did. There was no “line” for them to get into for a visa to immigrate to the United States. They didn’t have a U.S. citizen or Permanent Resident family member to petition for them, nor a U.S. employer to sponsor them. So they made the only lawful choice they could. They walked up to an official Port of Entry on the Texas border, stood in a line, and asked for protection. They did exactly what they were supposed to do under the law.

It seems to me that almost all evil in the world, from playground bullying to sexual abuse to genocide, results from valuing some human beings more than others. We repeatedly and willingly forget the most basic lesson that most of the world’s religions teach: that because every single human being is a child of God, every single human being has equal value. In fact, each human life has value far greater than we can comprehend, because God loves us all equally and infinitely – just as we love our own children beyond measure.

When we value a child born on one side of a human-drawn line on a map more than a child born on the other side, we have forgotten what every prophet through the ages has tried to teach us. We have failed both children.
_________ end of Pavri's essay _________ 

So, what do you think? Is this issue, repeated tens of thousands of times over the last two years, important enough for you to use the privilege of your citizenship, your race, your economic status, your political party affiliation, your very conscience, and resist the evil that you see in the world? If it's not enough, what is enough for you? What is your priority? Where is your line in the sand? Do you have one?


For other articles on refugees seeking asylum in this site, click here -->> https://christykrobinson.blogspot.com/search?q=asylum

Thursday, April 11, 2019

Reaching out in person


© 2019 Christy K Robinson

Please consider this. All over the United States, there are churches, shelters, charities, clinics, food banks, and many other outlets for you to help with. It's more than politics, more than writing a check or swiping a credit card, it's about being personally involved in helping human beings.



They are not sub-human. They are not gang members. They are NOT, repeat NOT, drug runners. They aren't "murderers and rapists" -- they're actually trying to escape that violence. They aren't stealing your job or "using up" medical care and other resources in a country that's "full."

Trump has been outspoken about how dangerous he believes undocumented immigrants are, once referring to some of them as “animals.” His claims come despite the lack of evidence that the presence of undocumented immigrants leads to an uptick in crime. --HuffPost, April 2019

They're not coming here, like Trump says in his condescending voice, to go to Disneyland (single-day tickets at both Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure cost $97 on value days, $110 on regular days, and $124 on peak days). These are people who don't have shoelaces, much less mad money.



The refugees and asylum seekers are young parents with little children. They are members of the Central American caravans who are fleeing gang and drug cartel violence, rape, and massacre. They risked death at the borders, at bridges and river crossings, by riding on dangerously overcrowded vehicles, and from exposure to harsh weather when they were exhausted from walking 20 miles or more for a day, carrying a baby or a toddler. But all of the risks they incur are worth it, to escape the horrors of their home countries.

Her home in a rural area of El Salvador’s La Paz region became a death trap when a relative testified against a local gang member, Alvarado said. Uncles, nephews, classmates and others have been kidnapped or murdered in retaliation, she added. At the news conference, she held up a photo of a young girl, a neighbor, left for dead on a dirt road close to her home. --Houston Chronicle, 2019.

HUIXTLA, Mexico — As thousands of Central American migrants renewed their trek Wednesday through Mexico toward the hoped-for, but still far-distant U.S. border, the physical toll was beginning to show in sickness and exhaustion, especially among the children toddling along, being pushed in strollers or carried in the arms of adults.
And for their parents, it was their hope for their children’s futures, and fears of what could happen to them back home in gang-dominated Honduras, that were the main motivation for deciding to leave in the first place.
“They can’t be alone. … There’s always danger,” said Ludin Giron, a Honduran street vendor making the difficult journey with her three young children. “When (gang members) see a pretty girl, they want her for themselves. If they see a boy, they want to get him into drugs."
And it is well known that refusing either can be deadly. Honduras has a homicide rate of about 43 per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the highest in the world for any country not in open war.” --Albuquerque Journal, October 24, 2018 

Central American mother and two daughters, part of a caravan of asylum seekers.
Photo: The Columbian, Google Images
A Honduran boy and his father were tear-gassed, attempting to cross
from Honduras into Mexico.
Photo: Encarne Pindado, BBC.
One of the Central American mothers who made it out
of her dangerous country, through Mexico,
and into the United States seeking asylum. She and her
daughter stayed for three weeks in a detention camp
before being dumped in Phoenix by the Department of
Homeland Security, with no money, no clothes or shoes but
what they were wearing, and no food for the journey to her
sponsor where she would stay until her immigration court date.
Volunteers provided for her immediate needs.
Photo: Christy K Robinson

In the culture of our spiritual ancestors, hospitality was a great virtue. "Strangers" (travelers, aliens) were treated even better than family members!  
‘If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and are unable to support themselves among you, help them as you would a foreigner and stranger, so they can continue to live among you.' Leviticus 25:35 NIV 

I urge you to not just be outraged at the evil that has been unleashed by racism and bigotry, but to do something about your outrage. Don't sit at home and tap out frownie faces in social media. Find a way to act. Find a way to do something that engages you personally with those who are "the least of these." It will change another human being's life. And yours.  
 


Want to be an influential person, a person of substance and character, who is admired and respected by others? Here's how: http://christykrobinson.blogspot.com/2010/02/influential-people.html


For other articles on refugees seeking asylum, click this link: https://christykrobinson.blogspot.com/search?q=asylum



*****
Christy K Robinson is author of these books:
Mary Dyer Illuminated Vol. 1 (2013)  
Effigy Hunter (2015)  

And of these sites:  
Discovering Love  (inspiration and service)
Rooting for Ancestors  (history and genealogy)
William and Mary Barrett Dyer (17th century culture and history of England and New England)
Editornado [ed•i•tohr•NAY•doh] (Words. Communications. Book reviews. Cartoons.)

Wednesday, April 3, 2019

Vaccinations are not about you


©2019 Christy K Robinson

[Edit in 2023: This article was written and published 9 months before COVID-19 appeared in the United States. The facts are unchanged.]

I'm annoyed at the selfish comments by people who say a preventable disease is no big deal, or they had it and survived, or similar dreck that's all about them.


I’m annoyed by the crazy conspiracies that originate on mommy blogs and “health” websites that are not written by physicians, scientists, and immunologists. I hate the fact that there are parents who intentionally infect their children with diseases-- because it’s child abuse. Why would you make a child suffer, ever, if it can be prevented?

I’m annoyed—and repulsed—by the religious fundamentalists that say vaccines are formulated using the cells of aborted fetuses. They are not. And vaccinations do not cause autism.

My mother was chronically ill from her birth, and she took a veritable cocktail of meds that allowed her to live but suppressed her immune system. Because people would go to church sick, or send kids to school sick, she was often a prisoner in our home. We kids had to take precautionary measures. Mom belonged to a support group of others who had similar illness, and they were also restricted. They often caught colds or flu because they were breathed upon in the doctors' office, and would have to be hospitalized for pneumonia a short time later.

Our family always "patriotically" got the flu shot, the smallpox and polio shots, or whatever vaccinations were available so we wouldn’t experience life-threatening diseases ourselves, and we would not be carriers to others. I had the chickenpox and the measles and mumps as a child before the vaccinations were developed, and yes, I obviously survived. But some children do not survive the high fevers, scarring, the blindness, the brain damage from encephalitis.

Now, in this age, we have many more people, both adults and children, who have fragile health during or after chemotherapy or congenital illness. Some of them can't have vaccinations because of their compromised immunity. Just because you might not recognize their illness, vulnerability, or disability, doesn’t mean they don’t suffer. When my mother would park in the blue disability spaces that she had a permit for, people would criticize her for looking healthy and parking there anyway. Because she put on makeup and styled her hair and wore attractive clothes, she didn’t “look” like an invalid unless she was sitting in a wheelchair. Yet my mother suffered every day of her life, and died at age 54.

Should immune-compromised people be forced to live in a virtual bubble so healthy people can avoid the tiny needle prick of a vaccination, or indulge a fantasy that has been disproved time and time again by scientists with eight or more years of postgraduate education?

As an adult who enjoys rather high immunity anyway, I still get the shots for flu, pneumonia, and shingles because I'm a music teacher and church musician who circulates with many people, shakes hands, and sometimes hugs, and I don't want to carry diseases from one person to another. When my niece was pregnant, I got the DPT (diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus) so I couldn't pass whooping cough from some stranger through me to her newborn.


Think about your community: your family, your friends (and their vulnerable kids), your church, your neighbors who shop or work where you do. We cannot be "rugged individualists" and call ourselves caring, compassionate, godly people.

If we know we can help stop the spread of disease, permanent damages, and misery, why would we not?  

Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion. Philippians 2:5-8 MSG

It’s not about being some rebellious adolescent. It’s about the people you love, and the people you don’t love, who breathe the same air and touch the same produce in the supermarket, and sit behind you in church or the movie theater. It’s about your children’s friends and their teachers. It’s about compromised children who have recently overcome cancer, or who need organ transplants.

This is not some what-if dystopian fantasy: this has actually happened. A terminally ill boy was taken to the UC Davis medical center with seizures: he had been exposed to measles by an unvaccinated child. The story is HERE.

But it’s not about you. Get over yourself. 

It's about being selfless because it's what God does and we want to be like him. We don't have to suffer crucifixion. But we can get a tiny vaccination for ourselves or our kids because it's right for our loved ones, and it's right for the community at large. Preventing disease and suffering is a godly, kind, merciful thing to do.




*****


Christy K Robinson is author of these books:
Mary Dyer Illuminated Vol. 1 (2013)  
Effigy Hunter (2015)  

And of these sites:  
Discovering Love  (inspiration and service)
Rooting for Ancestors  (history and genealogy)
William and Mary Barrett Dyer (17th century culture and history of England and New England)
Editornado [ed•i•tohr•NAY•doh] (Words. Communications. Book reviews. Cartoons.)



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