2024summary

2024: Birds and Music

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 3 Comments

After three years of living a very different existence, in the midst of and in the decline of a global pandemic, I found much of it rather exhausting. 2024 felt like playing “catch up” on projects and plans that had been deferred while managing COVID-19. Frankly, that wasn’t easy.

Church of the Holy Cross was able to give energy and focus to things we hadn’t. We resumed welcoming people into membership, and we launched an Open and Affirming committee. We continued to live stream worship via YouTube, since it serves both people who live at a distance and people who cannot attend worship. Video did not replace people in a sanctuary, and it won’t. It’s a different experience, and still worthwhile.

I completed my service as Chair of the Hawai’i Conference Council in June, presiding over an in-person ‘Aha Pae’aina for the first time. The meeting included a lengthy debate over an issue that continues to trouble the Conference: what financial support the Conference should give toward a position in one of the Associations. During my four years, the delegates chose both to fund it and not to fund it by narrow margins. I’m pretty sure that it will take more time and discussion before people consider it resolved.

To my sorrow, I found myself returning to the Chair of the Hawai’i Island Association Committee on Ministry, from which I’d stepped down when elected as Conference Council Chair. I returned to the Committee in May in great part because of the shortage of ordained ministers on Hawai’i Island. During the summer our Chair, the Rev. Larry Walter, died. The Association asked me to fill in, and then elected me to continue the work in the fall. The Committee was further marked by tragedy when one of the lay members, David Williams, died unexpectedly in October.

I continued to make a lot of music. I wrote eight songs in 2024, and all eight are available at 2024: The Songs. The instrument count remained the same (this year’s major expense category was cameras). I sang the spring and fall seasons of the Big Island Singers, which was both great fun and a huge amount of work. The fall concert included my solo performance of “Creature of this World,” which is now two years old. I continued the weekly “Song from Church of the Holy Cross” and the monthly Community Sings. I decided to reduce my solo Community Concerts, however, to four times a year. As the year closed, the musical community of east Hawai’i made its way to Church of the Holy Cross the sing Handel’s Messiah together.

I continued to write weekly LectionPrayers here on my blog, and also contributed to The Living Psalms project of the UCC. Preparing for worship I wrote liturgical materials, sermons, and stories. In the fall, I was welcomed onto the Board of the UCC Media Justice Ministry, my first appointment to a national ministry of the denomination.

I didn’t have a lot of visitors this year – and after welcoming my brother by getting a stomach bug and my cousin by having my water heater break I don’t blame them. Ben and Dee Anderson (no relation) came to Hawai’i in February and Ben did a dialogue sermon with me in church that Sunday.

Kilauea summit, April 1, 2024.

My primary outlet this year (and the most expensive) has been photography. I returned to many of my favorite subjects in 2024, including flowers, sunrises, the occasional sunset, landscapes, and natural shapes. A couple of my favorite images this year were black-and-white. I gave a lot of my attention, however, to birds. I can no longer claim I am not a birder.

Selected Favorite Birds 2024 - 1 of 59

I not only pointed my camera at birds, I made plans to go photograph them. Rather foolishly, I promised a friend I’d take a picture of a bird I hadn’t seen in eight years (the i’iwi, a distinctive Hawaiian honeycreeper with a distinctive long curved orange beak). I got a photo, and I even liked it. I even saw (and got a bad photo of) a bird I hadn’t even heard of, the ‘akiapola’au, thanks to two birders who were seeking it by the trail.

Next year, I plan to spend some time on other islands, and yes, I’ll bring my camera.

I didn’t do a lot of traveling in 2024. I made three trips to O’ahu as part of my Conference work, and flew to the northeast in July/August to visit my more-scattered family in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York. I could have added Maine to that list, but I spent too much time in the rental car as it was. With driving being my primary activity, my photos tended to be of people I love, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I will say that the day Paul Bryant-Smith and I kayaked down a river in New York State was great fun and amazing birding – I saw great blue herons and bald eagles veery closely – but fortunately for my camera, I didn’t bring it along to share my dips in the creek.

2025 will bring something I’ve been waiting for this year: the second sabbatical of my career. Expect to see less new writing, as I’ve got a project for the time, but also expect to see some more photographs.

I suspect that a number of them will be of birds.

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2024: The Songs

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 4 Comments
My Kala six string ukulele, Guild twelve string guitar, Martin six string guitar, and Kala four string ukulele (photo from October 2023).

I wrote eight songs in 2024, one more than the previous year but still less than the dozen songs I wrote each of the pandemic years 2021 and 2022. I sang six of them in live streams, one for the 2024 Easter recording, and one was… well. I was asked to write a song about performing with the Big Island Singers, and so I sang it at the party following the closing concert in November. Someone took some video, but it didn’t include the entire song. At the request of one of the “Dougs” (the director and accompanist both are named Doug), I recorded it to be included here.

Shine, Star, Obscuring Light

First performed January 10, 2024.

This is an Epiphany song, arising from the curious way that a star heralded the birth of Jesus when public proclamation of a Messiah’s birth was deeply dangerous. Herods, both ancient and modern, are vicious. People have found that putting lights on an object can, in fact, hide it from view.

First Denial

First performed on February, 28, 2024.

This song is based on “Simon Peters’s First Denial,” a poem I wrote as part of my “lectionprayer” series (prayers I write based on one of the texts for the coming Sunday in the Revised Common Lectionary). As you’ll hear in the introduction above, a friend commented on the poem asking if it was set to music. A week later, it was.

In the Silence

First performed on March 27, 2024.

Written for Holy Week, the song goes to the hard place of waiting for something bad to happen. We all know its strain, and of course so did Jesus as he prayed in the garden, knowing that the soldiers approached.

Tell Me to Turn Around

First performed for What I’m Thinking the week after Easter, April 2, 2024.

Inspired by the meeting of Mary Magdalene with the risen Jesus in John 20, the song begins just before Mary turns around to see him.

Twelve Years and a Moment

First performed on June 30, 2024.

I wrote this based on the healings of the woman with a hemorrhage and the raising of Jairus’ daughter in Mark 5:21-43. I think it also shows some melodic and harmonic ideas that have dominated my songwriting much of the year. Translation: I think it sounds familiar.

I’ve Got a Jar of Flour

Performance from October 23, 2024.

I like to write a song for Vacation Bible School. It doesn’t always happen, and sometimes when it does, they’re pretty lighthearted. That isn’t true of this one, based on the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath in 1 Kings 17.

We are the Big Island Singers

I sang both the spring and fall seasons of the Big Island Singers, a great group led by Doug Albertson and accompanied by Doug Howell. Another member of the asked me to write a song about the experience, and this is the result. I’m afraid it’s full of inside jokes, but choral singers, directors, and accompanists may recognize some of the challenges and the joys of this kind of music.

I made this recording in December, 2024.

Christmas Filled with Christ

First performed on December 20, 2024.

Over the last few years I’ve taken on some songwriting goals, usually around major holidays of the Church year. 2024 included one for Epiphany (as noted above; I also sang “Shine, Star, Obscuring Light” during this December 20 concert), one for Holy Week, one for Easter, and yes, one for Christmas. I’d seen enough inspirational messages about keeping Christ in Christmas by doing the things Christ asked us to do that I decided to include it in a song.