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This blog will come in three categories…1) stories from the road about worship 2) theologizing and reflections from Tracy about worship and restoration 3) ideas, encouragements, and tangible practices for songwriters who care about peacemaking.


blogs :: The Restoration Project :: June 25, 2008

Post-Colonialism and Songwriting: Our Challenge and Opportunity

by Traci Howe

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It is good to be a songwriter.  I just returned from Envision, a gathering at Princeton University where theologians, activists and leaders of all kinds gathered and dialogued with the goal of uniting the church and moving more deeply into the public square. Some of my own living heroes were in attendance like John Perkins, and some friends I have not been able to connect with in quite sometime like Shane Claiborne.  There were also a slew of people who had influenced me greatly through their own journeys and books, people like Ruth Padilla DeBorst and Ron Sider.  I, along with about 500 others, listened to them speak.  We listened to panel discussions and response panels to speakers, and I shared songs.  I play a lot of house concerts for groups of 30-50 people, who are usually a hodge podge of my friend’s friends, but there I stood in a small auditorium at Princeton University, tickled to death that THIS group was captive as I sang.  Reflecting back, I know things sunk in much more deeply and a whole other dimension was brought to the gathering through the artists.

In 2007 I co-produced a worship CD with Brian McLaren called “Songs For a Revolution of Hope.”  The CD contains many different kinds of songs including a lament called “Hymn of Remore.”  One of the verses reads:

What of the lands of tribes and nations who lived here first?
Who took the best with broken treaties ad left the worse?
By whom were slaves bought, used and sold?
Who valued people less than gold?
Who told us racist lives until our hearts went cold?

In the Bronx during a panel discussion, a young Latino theologian and leader questioned our assumptions when we asked everyone to sing the lament.  He questioned whether the ethnic minorities in the room were indeed perpetrators and asked us to consider if we (the leaders of the gathering) were asking everyone to conform to a certain story and take on the sins of others.  He had a valuable point.  I continued to sing the song in worship, but I did start prefacing it by saying I do not assume where people fall within the story of the lament, but I believe we can worship together, hoping and believing for full reconciliation. 

At Princeton there was a panel on post-colonialism presented by Brian McLaren, Ruth Padilla DeBorst, and Ray Aldred.  I have not studied post-colonialism extensively and have a casual acquaintance with the term when it comes to my regular vocabulary, but I do understand that I live the way I do as a direct result of colonialism, and in contrast, others suffer as they do as a result of colonialism.  But what are WE to do NOW?  This is the post-colonial dilemma.  All the panelists shared and then responded to questions, but Ruth repeated a phrase over and over in her talk.  She said, “Father forgive us, for we know not what we do, or we know all too well but it is much to costly to change.”

Change.  Yes.  While touring with Brian, he fielded many live question and answer sessions and I heard people on more than one occasion ask about how to choose our political leaders and government officials.  Brian asked people to consider who seemed to care about the most pressing global crises of our day (as opposed to the most pressing American consumer issues of the month), but also reminded people, and I agree, that no matter who gets elected, the individuals in office will not solve all the problems.  In fact, he asked people to consider that instead of politics being at the top of the pyramid when it comes to having global impact and the power for social change, that maybe politics is actually downstream of things like art, education, science, business, architecture, ect…

It both encourages and sobers me as a songwriter as I now have to see myself as a principal agent of change, instead of a bottom-of-the-pyramid, I-hope-I-get-a-piece, trying-to-imitate-the-last-successful-thing, reflection of something creative.  So what is my charge?  What is the challenge?  I think it is to reconnect people to the True story.  Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw diagramed very beautifully in their book, “Jesus For President,” that history has always been recorded by the powerful in charge, but God’s story has been consistently revealed through the prophets.  I think songs can fall on either side of that coin as well.  Just as the Truth revealed in a song can potentially spur someone on towards life, so too can we be hypnotized and self-justified by a lot of our consumer pop-culture, and sometimes, by our own “worship” services.

So what is the connection between post-colonialism and songwriting?  Well, post colonialism presents us with a challenge and opportunity to connect with a story, and practice our faith by believing God to redeem the ENTIRE story and not just our lifetime’s worth.  Songs can help us connect to more than our own individual reality, and worship songs, I believe should transcend our individual perspectives and plunge us deep into the heart of God and the reality Jesus painted for us in the Kingdom.  However, connecting to more than our own realities is perhaps one of the biggest challenges we (young generations) face, as we have become a hyper individualistic and entitled group of people.  In this culture, we can eat food without any connection to cycles of the earth, or geography and climate, or what kind of process it takes to get the food to us.  We design suburban neighborhoods reflecting our own entitlement regardless of the indigenous climate; everyone gets a piece of Kentucky blue grass.  We are disconnecting more and more from natural cycles, seasons and processes.  We are even disconnecting from each other and favoring mass texting and online message boards.  I take advantage of Facebook and cell phones as much as the next person and do not want to debate benefit and cost here, but I do want to share a single observation.  Whether they are related or not, our consistent disconnect and immediate gratification individualism seems to have an eternal ramification and counterpart:  we are disconnecting from legacy.

I will lift myself up as a poster child.  My father was born in the Philippines.  He is Filipino but I know nothing about that part of the story, partly because I have not viewed it as part of my story.  MY story, after all, begins in Boulder, CO in 1979 when I was born.  It has to do with my own desires and abilities, not my dad’s, or my grandparents for that matter.  I’m a self-made woman…aren’t I?  My success can only be accredited to myself…can’t it?  To top it off, my parents got divorced when I was 9 years old.  Both worked full time and any tradition that was formed in those 9 years quickly took a back seat to the schedules of my parents and the “fair” custody deal they had made during the divorce hearings and my brother and I would forever spend Tuesday nights, every other weekend and every other holiday with my dad.  It made me recoil further and want to establish my own tradition, and disconnect from the dysfunctional mess of what actually was going on.  The irony is that I hold marriage in high regard and consider family the most important thing in life, but I still cringe trying to balance Christmas schedules.  Weird.  In other words, my ideals have been able to maintain a separate track from my reality.

Enter post-colonialism.  In my experience, most young leaders are quick to back issues of justice and have deep concern for the earth, for people suffering from AIDS, and war torn areas.  However, this concern and educated perspective seems to be able to ride right alongside individualism and entitlement.  The world of colonialism seems absurd to us (younger Western generations). How could races and cultures devalue others to the point of genocide?  We know we are not our great grandparents, or our fathers in some cases.  But the far-away ness of it all makes it that much harder to connect to the story ourselves, and the danger is we will disconnect, once again, from legacy.

“What will it cost me?” is the primary question of any entitled people group.  Yes, reconnecting to the entire story means we might reap what others have sown.  After all, we are eternal beings, entrusted to set things in motion with every action and every word that leads to life or death…and when we view ourselves as anything less than eternal, the result is always devastating. And, deep inside maybe we are scared because we know full well God seems to slant things in a way that favors the poor and oppressed.  But my friend Claude Nikondeha from Burundi says it this way; “It will be better for you, if things are better for us.”  Perhaps we do not realize what we are at risk of losing by our complacency and NOT reconnecting to the story.  After all, it is through legacy and covenant that God passes promise.  When we fail to recognize generations before, even if we are not proud of where are own legacy flows from, we neglect the power of God to redeem.   And when we fail to see generations in front of us, we neglect the fullness of hope we are heir to. 

So where do songs come in?  Well, perhaps songs can help us connect to the ENTIRE story.  Whether it is joyful or painful, there is beauty in Truth and in this age when we have a real inability to connect, maybe songs can help, again, by carrying Truth that is transformational and that weaves our current times and what we’ve sown in the past into the consistent story God tells about all of humankind.  I love that the Psalms are full of specific people, places and historical events.  I long for our worship songs to be specific, for them to name people groups, nations, crises...I believe it is the "with God" dynamic that makes it fruitful, not the content or drawing from a pre-approved group of words and phrases.  Remember, it was in Lamentations that Jeremiah arrived at the revelation that God's mercies are new every morning.  I heard Dan Allender speak and he said it beautifully as well...we need to know our own stories.  Then, the mystery and power of Christ is to realize our story is not actually about us.  Songs can convey that.  We are specific and we write from our perspective and our authentic experience and faith, and illuminate something much bigger than our experience and perspective.

I have actually met some incredible prophetic writers and artists who have helped me see the fullness of possibility myself.  And so maybe this is my encouragement to many who are fed up with worship songs altogether because of the disconnect between injustice and the words we sing, or maybe from the perspective we sing from. But might I suggest that it is not a pyramid when it comes to songs either…no one is at the top who will write THE song that will transform the world.  We need every part, every unique perspective, from all parts of the world to see a glimpse of the fullness of God’s heart, and experience the vastness of God’s creativity, which spans horizontally across cultures and nature, and generationally through the ages. 


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