While some of the pieces on the Ancient Echoes album are arrangements of Hebrew melodies transcribed by researcher Abraham Idelsohn about 100 years ago, most are not Middle Eastern: they’re original work by Christopher Moroney, the leader of the performing group SAVAE. Perhaps the centerpiece of the album is his presentation of the Our Father, or from the first word of the Aramaic text, Abwoon (“Father”). This rendition starts with a minute of creepy group-chanting — it would take a heart of stone not to laugh at it — and goes on to a male voice pronouncing the text.
Here’s the “translation” presented in the album notes:
O Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos,
focus your light within us. Create your reign of unity now.
Your one desire then acts with ours,
as in all light, so in all forms.
Grant what we need each day in bread and insight.
Loose the cords of mistakes binding us,
as we release the strands we hold of others’ guilt.
Don’t let surface things delude us,
but free us from what holds us back.
From You is born all ruling will, the power and the life to do,
the song that beautifies all, from age to age it renews.
Truly — power to these statements — may they be the ground
from which all our actions grow. Amen.
That’s from the modern Sufi author and Creation Spirituality teacher Neil Douglas-Klotz, whose book Prayers of the Cosmos inspired the album. Isn’t it nice that we can get some insight from Sufis about what Jesus really meant?
Let’s stop for a moment and remember that this is coming from the top publisher of parish music and missalettes, and it’s being pitched to the liturgy types in your parish and mine.
Anyway, the drummers come in for a minute or so with some movin’ beats, and then Mrs. Moroney ad libs her solo version of the text. Groovy, and no doubt very spiritual.
*shudder*