Sister Miriam Therese Winter
A SINGER OF THE GOOD NEWS Gloria Winter
was born on June 14, 1938 in Passaic, New Jersey. Her
first recollection is that she loved the sounds of words that
sing. She knew nothing about music. But words! These
were her imaginary friends, the "playthings" of her youth
- which have carried over into adulthood. She wrote her
first poem at age six, and though it was only a "one-liner,"
she realized that poetrywould be her means of learning to
communicate. At thatearly age, the fact that her simple
poem was actually an original "composition" hooked her
- and since that time, she's never stopped creating.
Her
poems would become her interpreters. When Gloria turned seven she started taking
piano lessons at her church. She didn't really like the theory of it all. But
she still practiced every day on the old upright at her grandfather's saloon.
What the young pianist really wanted was to learn how to play chords and how
to sing popular songs. She dreamed of performing at parties, knowing the whole
while this could never be, because Gloria was, by nature, a very shy, reserved
and even a somber child. She stuck with the lessons for five years and mechanically
learned to play the classics. It looked as if her kind of music was being left
behind. Shortly after graduating from high school in 1955, Gloria entered the
Medical Mission Sisters in Philadelphia. After her postulancy, she and the other
members of her class, were given the traditional habit of the congregation,
a grey dress and scapular, a silver cross, a large rosary, and a brilliant blue
veil. Each novice was also given a new, religious name, and Gloria was given
the name Miriam Therese. The symbolism of exchanging a birth name for a religious
name was that each new sister was to "take off the old woman - and put on the
new." After making her first vows, Miriam Therese was assigned the position
of Motherhouse organist. Though she could play the piano, the assignment shook
her up. And to make matters worse, the chapel organ wasn't really an organ at
all! It was just a single manual keyboard which had a couple of knobs for tonal
changes, and a half-dozen pedals. It wasn't an easy exercise saying "Yes" to
God. Looking back at it - Miriam Therese realizes now that it was at this exact
moment in her life that the dreams of becoming a doctor and missionary ceased.
Rather than being sent to the university to study medicine, Sister was sent
to study liturgy. She was already enamored with the ancient Gregorian Chants,
which were the basis of Catholic liturgical life, and literally mastered the
genre. As an accomplished poet, she understood the rhythms and the marriage
of free melody and words. As her studies ended, the steeped traditions which
she'd just learned were already coming to an end. Vatican II's changes were
inevitable. She was placed in charged of shifting her community from Gregorian
Chants to vernacular song. Miriam Therese recalls, "I tried to do what the chant
had done, sing the themes of scripture, match the rhythmic pulse of the melody
to the accent of the word. My own compositions, my scripture songs, were simply
a response to God's word heard loud and clear through the lectionary readings
and the prism of the liturgical season celebrated in community." Her opuses
were songs of survival! In the early church, Scripture was the sound of people
singing! Now, the church was placing the formal choirs back in the pews and
encouraging congregational participation. However, the ancient, inspired word
was being re-translated into contemporary expressions, and no one quite perfected
this process like Miriam Therese Winter. She took traditional stories and themes
from the bible and put them to rhyme and music, and began to set the world aflame.
Where her poems had always been private, her songs took on a life of their own
- taking off without her. They traveled, across the country and world, to sanctuaries
of our own faith as well as those of other religions. They commuted to villages
half a world away - where she had once hoped to serve the needy as a doctor
- but now doubted she'd ever go. But God's plans for her had not been totally
rendered. Her songs called her from Africa and other lands where her dreams
often lived. And her congregation allowed her to respond. "I followed the songs
to their adopted families," she says, "and rejoiced as they returned to me enriched
beyond all telling to bless me a hundredfold. Rooted in my memory is the sound
of Ghanaian schoolgirls singing in joy-filled harmony, 'Joy is like the rain.'
Oh yes, I got to Africa, and would return again and again. I simply followed
the songlines and let them lead me home." In 1966 Sister Miriam Therese Winter
and ten other Medical Mission Sisters traveled to New York City to record their
first album at Avant Guard Records on West 57th Street. In the recording studio,
she snapped her fingers to and fro, giving the guitarist the initial beat, and
then the sisters took off, singing their hearts out. Seven hours later, the
award-winning Gold album, "Joy is like the rain" was birthed. During the recording
session, "investigators" asked her what she was trying to accomplish. "Singing
is part of healing, it's medicine." Sister believes that music is part of the
physician's art. "It's tonic to the spirit!" The brilliant, light, bouncy rhythms
of her songs have changed the way many Catholics worship. And no matter if the
songs are about sorrow or joy, they all share the same theme of life, and they
reflect the Bible - with a beat. The amazing part of the process of writing
scriptural songs - is that there's no end. In 1967, Miriam Therese was invited
to perform some of her works at Carnegie Hall. It was the first time, in the
hall's 75 years, that an ecumenical concert of modern sacred music was performed.
The event was called "Praise the Lord in Many Voices," and there was not an
empty seat in the house. Miriam Therese gathered seven of her sisters and an
ensemble of Paulist seminarians from Washington, D.C., and hurriedly planned
and rehearsed the evening's repertoire. There was very little notice. She chose
as the main selection, "Mass of a Pilgrim People." Since the church's faithful
had become so comfortable with the rubrics which had been enforced for centuries,
changes often tended to make them uncomfortable. Miriam Therese's music and
style was "motherly," offering a tenderness which was reassuring to the church's
"children." So, in selecting her "Mass of a Pilgrim People," she offered the
listeners a composition which maintained the traditional rubrics. For example,
the "Lord, have Mercy" and "Lamb of God" shared a similar melody - which so
often was the case in Latin Masses. The Creed, initiated with the lively rhythm
of unison voices and full combo, stops abruptly mid-way, where the nuns break
into three-part harmony and reverently sing, a capella: "And He became flesh
- by the Holy Spirit - of the Virgin Mary - and was made Man." Traditionally,
this portion of the Mass was very sacred. In fact, during the Solemn High Mass
on Christmas, the priest would literally leave his chair, go to the center of
the altar and, before the tabernacle, bow during this segment of the Credo.
Miriam Therese chose to include this musical tradition in her modern Mass -
and in doing so - reassured the frightened laity that "everything was going
to be all right!" What made the music of Miriam Therese Winter so popular? Was
it the purity of the sisters' vocal performances? The clarity of her translations?
The variations and modulations of chords regulating the stories and themes musically
as well as emotionally? In her song, "How I Have Longed," the composer wrote
the verses for a solo voice using minor chords, leaving the listeners with the
feelings of dire longing. But each time the refrain is sung, Miriam Therese
has the guitarist alter the mood by simply changing from minor chords to major,
and the nuns break into full harmony, making the words of the chorus joyous
and believable: "Come to Me, My little one, and you will be refreshed, and I
will give you rest." Her music, her style, works! Miriam Therese's music has
gone far beyond the Catholic Church. She has been commissioned to compose hymns
for Protestant Church hymnals, for anniversaries honoring church-foundings,
for dedications of chapels, and for church-school programs. She won the ASCAP
(American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers) Popular Award for 29
years in a row, as well as a Citation from the House of Representatives and
numerous honors for her best selling albums and books. As the 60s changed into
the 70s, and the years continued into the 90s, Miriam Therese was also transformed
into a new woman religious. In 1987 she released WomanSong, a double album of
biblically based songs from a feminist perspective. Her early songs tended to
offend some of the women in the church because the lyrics mainlined a traditional
male-oriented genre, and they even became offensive to her. So, before releasing
her anthology, Songlines, she painstakingly went through her favorite songs
and modified the lyrics so that they could to be sung inclusively. I can almost
hear the question: "Is she considered a radical?" Yes! Radical, just like Jesus!
Thirty-three years after she wrote and recorded "Joy is like the rain," Miriam
Therese Winter has 11 albums available, 10 books and 2 anthologies of music.
Her life has been an excursion of miracles in which she has doctored the ailing
church to better health. Though she never made it into the field of medicine,
her ability to spiritually heal so many illnesses of the body, mind and soul
through her talents, pays tribute to the God Who has made it all possible. Her
selfless giving of her spirit has made this world a much better place! This
nun and artist-rare sums it up best: "Join me, please, in a spirituality of
song and singing that seeks to integrate liturgy and life through a biblical
understanding of word that is so much more than words. Together let us sing
of Word enfleshed, Wisdom embodied, Spirit dwelling within and among us, day
after day, year after year, re-creating our world and re- imagining you and
me."
