I wrote Mountain Vespers in 2001, and recently released a new audio recording, and updated data CD for the service. The following is a response I wrote to Dr. Gilson Waldkoenig at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg’s class, opening up a series of discussions that will be taking place this week on their servers. I will hopefully get permission to publish some of their comments here, as well as my own.

Below is one of my initial essays, this one about the creation of Mountain Vespers, and my vision for its mission and future, as well as the meaning of the service. Dr. Waldkoenig was also interested in my reasoning behind writing a bluegrass liturgy. My response to that is encased in the surrounding telling of my tale.

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MOUNTAIN VESPERS

Mountain Vespers began as a response to the worship that I was exposed to every day at the place I lived, worked and worshipped, Holden Village, in the wilds of Washington state (You are all heartily invited to visit — it is a wonderful, idyllic, Lutheran retreat center that you will quickly fall in love with. www.holdenvillage.org).

Every evening of the week, the entire village, staff and guests (in the summer upwards of 500 people, and in the winter as few as 50-60) gather together for evening Vespers. There are readings, performances, prayers, hymns, sometimes following a liturgical pattern, and other times not. But every Friday evening was devoted to ‘Vespers ‘86’, a setting of the Evening Prayer by Marty Haugen, who was a musician in residence during the winter of 1986, and first ‘tested’ his Holden Evening Prayer service at the village during that time. I have a very sensitive musical ear, and love my ipod, because I can set it to shuffle, and be assured that I will not hear the same tune twice (with 10,000 tunes loaded into the gadget). After a full year, I tired of Haugen’s service, just as others grew accustomed to it, and loved it because they knew it so well. A friend suggested that I write an alternative.

So, I did just that. I dug into the Vespers texts, and wrote an alternative to Holden Evening Prayer. Mountain Vespers has been in constant use at Holden Village ever since, and is being used by hundreds of congregations across the country.

Part of the story that I didn’t explain is the personal part. I have a very odd life, and have experienced some great hardships in my 27 years. My bio, etc. is at www.kentgustavson.com/bio, if you want to read more, but I’ll tell a different take on it here.

I created a program in conflict resolution for teens in Jerusalem, living in Bethlehem, and very much hopeful and excited for the outcome. I had worked for 3 years with Seeds of Peace, (www.seedsofpeace.org), and had hundreds of contacts in the middle east. Then the Intifada began, and a good friend/favorite student of mine was beaten to death while wearing his Seeds of Peace t-shirt in a peaceful demonstration gone bad. He ran to help a friend, and was instead dragged into the woods, and beaten to within an inch of his life with the butts of the young Israeli soldiers’ M-16s. Asel himself was an Israeli, but had the wrong color skin, as did the others who died that day. He died in the ambulance, because it was required to go to another area of the country for treatment, and was not allowed through because he was an Arab. His ambulance stood at the checkpoint for 30 minutes as he died of bleeding.

That was a lot to handle for a young man who had been so hopeful for ‘peace.’ I was persuaded to come home, and, disillusioned, I retreated into the mountains, to Holden Village. I wrote, worked and hiked, trying to recover. Then, I began to work on Mountain Vespers, based in the faith I was discovering and forming as I found a God who knelt down near his friend Lazarus’ tomb and wept.

I left in March of 2001 to visit my parents, and had a wonderful time visiting them, telling them of how I was recovering from my disillusionment with the world. My father and I left for a hiking trip in the mountains of Arkansas for 3 days while my mother flew to a conference in South Carolina. My mother got off the plane in Atlanta to an attendant that told her that my father and I were in critical condition in the ICU at a hospital in Springdale, Arkansas. My father nearly died that day. He lost 95 percent of his blood. And my childhood died again that day. As did my twenties. I became an old soul on March 11, 2001, 6 months before 9/11. I heard my father’s screams next door in the ICU as the paramedics pulled the fencepost out of his chest. I was laying alone on a cold table in the ER with my wrist dangling, hearing my father die. And for the first time, I knew the pain of Asel.

I knew what pain was like. I knew what it might be like to have your son beaten to death. It is not something you can recover from. To read more about Asel’s life and death, please visit www.slider17.com (that was his online nickname as a 17 year old). And I discovered Christ that sat next to Lazarus’ tomb.

It was in the hospital, waiting for my father to come back to life, that I finished Mountain Vespers. And it was in the year after the accident, when I extended my stay at Holden Village, that I learned to be a composer of faith. I created music that expressed the feelings I had within. And I created a text that tied me to the deep tradition of my family.

I dedicated the service to my father, and to Holden Village. Because I was alive, and because I wanted to praise with a shout and a song.

I remember my mother and I singing “There is a Balm in Gilead,” and seeing her break down in tears. Uncontrollable sobbing. Because we didn’t know if they could piece Dad back together.

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I have grown immensely in faith, and in musical ability since 2001, but the same concept continues to live in my music. We die to our old selves when we become true believing worshippers of God. Paul talks about it. So do countless theologians, including my personal favorite, C.S. Lewis. And, out of all of our suffering, we are surprised by joy. The resurrection starts to make sense.

My father and I go on bike trips of 2-3 hours now, when I visit home. He is recovering still. An amazing thing for a 61 year old man to feel the vitality come back to his bones, nerves and muscles. But he has been reconstructed. Reborn. Given another chance to live, love, learn. And he has the same wonderful mind that has made him the best pediatrician possible for nearly 40 years.

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Mountain Vespers, again, was not written as a Bluegrass Service. It is a testimony to my faith, and the faith of my parents. It is an exercise in tradition that emerged from my deepest soul, out of pain, and out of a new-found joy and faith. It is the story of my coming of age.

I am the first composer to set to music the “Holden Prayer of Farewell,” a prayer that comes from the LBW, but has been adopted by Holden Village, and is recited by heart by all members of the community when a good friend leaves to go out into the world… My arrangement of the words goes as follows:

“O God, you have called us, to ventures where we cannot see the end, by paths never yet taken, through perils unknown. Give us good courage, not knowing where we go, to know that your hand is leading us, wherever we might go. Amen.”

That prayer means more to me than any other text in the entire world. And those are the words that kept me through the terrible days following our car wreck. My friends from Holden Village sent me cookies and stuffed animals, happy I was alive. They prayed for us every day.

That is what Mountain Vespers is about. It has nothing to do with Bluegrass.

My vision is that I hope both Mountain Vespers and Light into the World find lives of their own, enriching the lives of congregations, and telling a story. Worshippers will find their story. Bluegrass musicians, contemporary musicians, singers, congregants, all will see their own stories in the words. Or maybe they will simply sit back and listen. And we will all be connected by faith in that experience.

I will never make a living at liturgical composition. But that’s not what it’s all about. I have an opportunity to share my faith, my hope, and my little window into the liturgy. I craft words and tunes to help others sing their songs of joy, reconciliation, sorrow, redemption… What an honor!