Today’s offertory is especially planned for Father’s Day. When it comes to finding good music for Father’s Day, there’s so much to choose from, but for Mother’s Day, it’s a totally different ballgame. As I got to thinking about this, I made a note to find a Mother’s Day anthem for next year. I think I’ll use a setting of the 23^rd Psalm, by Bobby McFerrin. In his adaptation, he references God as our mother and uses only feminine pronouns. Some people actually change the words when they perform the piece, but I think it carries a very powerful implication when you keep it like it is. I hope you can wait until next May. It’s already on the roster of upcoming anthems!

For today’s anthem, I would like to point out that the piece is a canon. A canon is a melody that is played together with itself, but with staggered entrances. It’s like singing “Row Row Row Your Boat,” or “Frere Jacque,” and when arriving at a certain point in the melody, a second person starts the tune, while the original carries on. You can stagger as many entrances of the tune as you like, and when you get to the end, you can repeat. Canons can go on forever. In the Middle Ages, the word canon (which means strict law) was used to describe this kind of contrapuntal writing because it follows a strict rule, or law of composition. In England, the word round was used to describe music like this. The earliest known, English canon is an anonymous composition called “Sumer is a cumen in,” and in the manuscript, it has the word rota, which literally means wheel. Have you ever wondered how something like a canon is written? By the way, not all tunes work this way. Try singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” in a round, and you’d get a cacophonous racket!

With a canon, there’s a trick (or law) to it. Start by composing a fragment of a catchy tune. Write out the first part on some staff paper, then write out the first part again, but on a different staff. Next, return to your catchy tune and continue, but make it fit harmonically with the first part of itself. You continue this process until, presto…. a canon appears. But not so fast! It’s harder than it sounds. I remember having to do this in undergraduate, counterpoint class – a torture I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy! But if you want to really be impressed by a composer, research the “Crab Canon” by J.S. Bach. The piece is not only canonic, but it works if you play the melody backwards and forwards at the same time! What kind of prestidigitation is that!

If I haven’t already lost you, at least you can appreciate how much cognitive brain power it takes to compose, even something as seemingly simple as a canon. When we appreciate creativity in our fellow humans, it helps us to appreciate creation itself. But think of the most impressive of all “inventions” – you and me and our ability to perceive ourselves as living beings.  We spend a lot of time marveling at the genius of this or that artist or inventor. But God, the ultimate inventor, is rarely given a second thought for the most mind-blowing prestidigitation of all – the creation of possibility itself, and our cognitive ability to be aware of it all, even if we don’t fully understand. God is indeed both the Father and Mother of creation. It’s not God as duality, but God as author and finisher of an unending “round” of possibility. Just as a father is, a mother is, and God’s cyclic, all-encompassing essence is what makes them both the same, in perfect harmony with each other. So today, we can simultaneously celebrate human creativity, like in Cherubini’s ability to fashion this beautiful canon, while we admire the handiwork of the One who completely, and lovingly, invented our cognition to “see” the wholeness of life itself. Soli deo Gloria!