"This is My Story, This is My Song"

Part One -- When I was growing up, . . .
Part Two -- . . . Lend Me Your Ear An ULTRA-SONIC SPIRITUALITY
Part Three -- This is My Story, This is My Song
Part Four -- HEARING AND HEALING
Part Five -- God Gave the Song
Return to SoulCafe Index

"This is My Story, This is My Song"

The meaning of life is music.

But wait another minute, you say. Where is this in the Bible? Let's start at the beginning . Note that the beginning of the Bible is a hymn, a creation hymn. Actually, one-third of the Bible is either poetry or hymn. The "Holy Book" is one-third hymbn book. It could just as easily be called "The Holy Song." Genesis 1 hymns how God created the world: "And God said, 'Let there be light' and there was light." Creation was a speech event. Creation was sounded forth, literally. Sound became sight. Cosmic vibrations became galactic visions. The cosmos began with a Sound.

All creation is a song of
praise to God.
Hildegard of Bingen

Composer/conductor Leonard Berstein came up with one of the best difinitions of music ever uttered: "socmos in the midst of chaos." Berstein was fond of pontificating from his conductor's perch that the best translation of the Hebrew was not "and God said" but "and God sang." For this reason the original Hebrew text of the Pentateuch was read aloud--or more accurately chanted. In fact, it still often is in modern synagogues.

Then God [sang], 'Let there be light,' and there was light. (1:3)
Then God [sang] ... and it was so. (1:9)
Then God [sang] ... and it was so. (1:11)
Then God [sang] ... and it was so. (1:14-15)

When the Bible says God "rested" on the Sabbath day, it doesn't mean God got tired and took a break. It simply means that God entered those spaces and silences without which there would be no music. In the monastic tradition, the lectio divina was read out loud because as one heard the text and felt its vibrations, the monks believed that the words would sound in the depths of one's being, and the Bible's black letters would dance in the soul.³² The word meditatino, in Latin, meditatio, actually means "recitation." The meditation mantra "Amen," the crystalline reduction of the sacred in the culture of Christianity, was our "Om."

^{For the ancient Hebrews, to enter the world of music was to

enter a magical sphere. The hymnbook in the heart of the Bible called The Psalms

makes the measureless mysteries of sound into a major theme:}

^{By the word of the Lord the heavens}
^{were made, And by the breath of His}
^{mouth all their host . . .}
^{For God spoke, and it was done;}
^{God commanded, and it stood fast.}
^{(Psalm 33:9)}

^{Psalm 29 makes God's creation through sound explicit in this

hymn:}

^{The voice of the Lord is upon the waters;}
^{The God of glory thunders,}
^{The Lord, upon my waters.}
^{The voice of the Lord is powerful,}
^{The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars,}
^{the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon.}
^{The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness,}
^{the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.}
^{The voice of the Lord makes the}
^{oaks to whirl, and strips the forests bare;}
^{and in his temple all cry, 'Glory!'"}
^{(vv. 3-9):}

he aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and refreshment of the soul. If heed is not paid to this, it is not ture music but a diabolical bawling and twanging."
Johann Sebastian Bach⁷⁹

Athanasius, the great bishop of Alexandria, took the "voice of the Lord" one step further and described God the Creator as a grand musician:

For just as though one were to hear from a distance a lyre, composed of many diverse strings, and marvel at the concord of its symphony, in tht its sound is composed neither of low notes exclusively, nor high nor intermediate only, but all combine their sounds in equal balance--and would not fail to perceive from this that the lyre was not playing itself, nor even being struck by more persons than one, but that there was one musician, even if he did not see him, who by his skill combined the sound of each string into the tuneful symphony; so the order of the whole universe being perfectly harmonious, and there being no strife of the higher against the lower or the lower against the higher, and all things making up one order, it is consistent to think that the rule and King of all Creation is one and not many, who by his own light illumines and gives movement to all.³³

Creation sounds. Scientists are still picking up those soundings. In fact, according to the most recent scientific findings it is sound waves that have shaped how the cosmos is structured. Let me quote this exactly so that you don't think I'm making something up: "Sound waves generated in the early universe may have helped orchestrate the striking pattern of galaxy clusters and huge voides seen in the sky today."³⁴

Or to imbue it with street cred, "The melody lingers on." Researchers like Alexander S. Szalay, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, argue that acoustic oscillations (sound waves) given off when the universe was a cosmic soup and fog of protons and electrons helped to structure the matter of the universe into galaxies and galaxy clusters. These scientists argue that the world is the creation of "acoustic waves" -- i.e. sound.³⁶

Once again, in other words, in biblical words: "And God sang, 'Let there be light.'"

Mathematician/astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) produced his final masterpiece in 1619 entitled The Harmonies of the World in which the universe is presented as a symphony of sound. The five visible planets and the moon with their elliptical orbits constitute a six-part harmony motet,³⁷ while the outer three planets (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto had not been discovered yet) add the "rhythm section" in which Pluto beats the bass drum. Two researchers from Yale University -- Willie Ruff and John Rodgers -- put the "songs of the planets" into a synthesizer and made a recording of it (The Harmony of the World). David Deamer has composed a musical translation of DNA sequences he calls DNA Music.³⁸

In some African tribes, there is a singing ritual. The parents who are preparing for the birth of their child sit under a tree until a melody is heard which celebrates the coming of the child. While the infant is still in the womb, and throughout the child's life, the parents sing to their child this special song for him/her. In some native American cultures, when a child loses its spirit when it becomes mean-spirited or down-spirited, ill-tempered or broken-hearted -- that child is sent outside to sit on the ground and hum its spirit back.

I God Plenty o' Nothin
     And Nothin's Plenty for Me . . .
          Got My Gal
          Got My God
          Got My Song
               George Gershwin, "Porgy and Bess"

Are you musical? There is no one who isn't musical. The body is the pipe organ of the soul. We don't make music so much as music makes us. It is more than "Music makes an altar out of our ears."³⁹ The woul is music. It that not why all art aspires toward the condition of music? Augustine noted in a commentary on the Bible that words tend toward the quality of music, which does not find its being in time and does not have any particular geographical location.

Why didn't the church make the movie Mr. Holland's Opus (1996) before Hollywood did? Why wasn't it the church that said to the culture, "Look around you. We are the notes and the melody of your opus. We are the music of your life."

With gratitude in your
hearts sing psalms, hymns, and
spiritual songs to God
Colossians 3:16

Is there anything more beautiful, more mysterious than the fact that God created the world from sound, and the world sounds back praises to God. The four final hymns of the Psalms (from Psalm 147 to 150) have inspired musicians and composers from Johann Sebastian Bach to Leonard Bernstein and Duke Ellington to offer thanks and praise:

Sing unto the Lord a new song . . . Let
them praise his name in the dance:
let them sing praises unto him
with the timbrel and harp. (Psalm 149)

singuntothelord.gif (33579 bytes)

Praise ye the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary: . . . Praise him with the sound of trumpet: praise him with the psaltery and harp. Praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with the stringed instruments and organs. Praise him upon the loud cymbals; praise him upon the high sounding cymbals. Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. (Psalm 150)

The cosmos is more than some random vibrational matrix. From the innumerable vibrations the cosmos could choose, it only chooses those vibrations that make "harmonic sense" and ultimately "musical sense." The electron shell of the carbon atom, physicists tell us, follows the laws of harmonics. As Joachim-Ernst Berendt first pointed out, the tone scale C through A is the hexachord of Gregorian chant. Could it be that all carbon based life is actually built on the Gregorian chant? It is more than a metaphor to say that every atom sings a song. The very nuclie of all atoms make music.

Wind sweeps through the trees like a violin's bow,
Rustling the leaves in boughs bended low.
Steady, the ribbitting rhythm of frogs
Echoes its temp through hollowed-out logs.
The many-voiced brook as it babbles along
Is ever creating new words to the song.
All Nature resounds the divine symphony,
And upon the great stage, the dancer is me!

Nanna, dancing with her grand-daughter,
in the children's book How Far to Heaven?⁴⁰

In other words, the universe obeys the laws of harmonics. Scientists who are studying complexity now say that scientific findings are not so much meter-readings or statistical discoveries as "resonances." For those engaged in the new scientific method, a scientific experiment results not in a formula, but in a resonance.⁴¹

When super-string physicists tell us that we are "vibrating threads of energy," they are really telling us that you and I are at base sound -- the human organization of dancing energy. Sound is a function of vibrations, which give off frequencies. We hear something because we pick-up its vibrations.

The Scriptures have always been trying to teach us what we are now hearing from super-string physicists: each of us is a song. When God created you, God created you to be an unrepeatable, irreplaceable song, the likes of which will never be again. We are the "unheard melodies" John Keats talked about in little-known lines from his well known poem "Ode on a Crecian Urn."

Heard melodies are sweet, but
     those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft
     pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more
     endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of
    no tone.⁴²

Elemental biblical insights have been perceived and protected more by poets than by theologians: poets like T.S. Eliot: "music heard so deeply/That it is not heard at all, but you are the music/While the music lasts." You don't have an atom in your body that isn't singing a song. Your genes, your ganglia, your liver, your lipids, every one of your trillions of cells vibrate. Do you see brainwaves? Do you see vibrations?⁴³

In reason's ear they all rejoice,
and utter forth a glorious voice,
For ever singing, as they shine,
'The hand that made us is divine...
Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
"The Spacious Firmament on High"

My favorite e.e. cummings' poem would replace all the "thou shalt nots" with one positive commandment, "you shall above all things be glad and young." It ends by zinging our Enlightenment obsession with critique over celebration:

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand starts how not to dance.⁴⁴

^{One postmodern way of looking at the church is as a "Singing

School" where each of us learns to sing by heart the personal song that is you and

me. From the "singing-masters of my soul" we learn the spiritual practices

that help us to keep time, and keep in tune.}

^{Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing}
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own mangificence;
--Irish poet W. B. Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium"⁴⁵

Postmodern evangelism becomes at base helping people to sing the chorus of the Fanny Crosby song "Blessed Assurance" with some altered lyrics. Instead of the show-and-tell evangelism of "This is My Story, This is My Song," postmodern evangelism is helping others to see how God is already at work in their life, and helping them to see themselves as "You are God's Story, You are God's Song," and showing them how to sing their song to the glory of God.

Music is the ultimate non-representational art form. I have begun seeing my life and faith in musical, non-representational, non-materialistic terms. I don't "work" at relationships so much as "play" at them. (You don't "work" a musical instrument, you "play" it -- although the "playing" of it requires a lot of practice and rehearsal.) I'm not planning my life from the outside-in any more. I'm composing my life from the inside-out.⁴⁶ The Beatitudes function in my life not as laws or principles or one of life's rulebooks but as a set of notes, a chord that I must strike with my soul on a daily basis if life is to make melody and harmony.

While we sing the Praises of our
God in his Church, we are employ'd
in that part of Worship which of all
others is the nearest a-kin to Heaven . . .
Isaac Watts, "Preface,"
Hymns and Spiritual Songs

Perhaps now it becomes clearer why Luther placed music "next to theology" and gave it his "highest praise." Now it is explicable why Luther's enemies claimed that Luther's hymns "killed more souls than all his books and speeches."⁴⁷ Now it is understandable that "musical experience and religious experience are seen as closely related," observes British anthropologist J. S. Eades, and "religion has nearly always involved music in ritual as one of the main menas of heightening religious awareness."⁴⁸ Now we can understant why "Music is the kids' religion," contends sociologist Donna Gaines.⁴⁹ Now we can understand wny the music area of the church is often called "The War Department."

drum.gif (54785 bytes) 82

Now we comprehand why it used to be said that when Lucifer fell, he landed in the choir loft and has been there ever since. He was there in the Hebrew scriptures, necessitating Amos to cry out: "Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream" (Amos 6:). He was there during the Protestant Reformation, when the Reformers were criticized for their kinds of music. He was there during the Wesleyan Revival, forcing John Wesley to cry out in frustration, "Is not this formality creeping in already, by those complex tunes, which it is scarcely possible to sing with devotion? Such is, 'Praise the Lord, ye blessed ones:' Such the long quavering hallelujah annexed to the morning-song tune, which I defy any man living to sing devoutly."⁵⁰ The forces of evil unleash their greatest energies in the musical arena because, when you mess with music, you are messing with the building blocks of the universe. In the words of nineteenth-century Dublin poem James Clarence Mangan,

He fled for shelter to God, who mated His soul with song.⁵¹

There is no better way of getting closer to God than music. How does one build the body of Christ? How does one build community? Musically. There is an old Warner Brothers cartoon in which a construction crew builds the "Umpire State" building musically. The foreman is the conductor, and he literally "conducts" the construction. His musical score is the architect's drawings, but as he looks at the blueprints he conducts the brick-laying, the hammering, the cement-mixing, which are all done to a piece of clasical music (I forget which one but I am reminded how today's kids learn classical music: watching the Cartoon Network).

One of the most important things religious leaders can do is to be a Good Vibe for God in their faith communities. Does the notion of "vibing" others sound strange? Thirty-one year old Per Hakansson works for a subsidiary of Bonnier, Sweden's oldest and most respected book publisher. He heads up a division that develops new products, Web zines, and other cutting edge resources for clients as diverse as Volkswagen, the Swedish Post Office, and IDG. His title as head of the division? "Vibe Evolver." He says "I used to be the 'boss.' Then I realized that the real job of a leader is to create robust environments for personal development good vibes'"⁵² Maybe the "Beach Boys" with their "Good Vibrations" had something spiritual to offer us after all. Leadership is above all else a shaking of the soul.

butwait1.jpg (6670 bytes)

When in our Music God is
     Glorified and adoration leaves
     no room for pride,
     it is as though the whole
     creation cried
          Alleluia.
How often, making music,
     we have found a new
     dimension in the world of sound,
     as worship moved us to a
     more profound
          Alleluia.
So has the church in liturgy and song,
     in faith and love, through
     centuries of wrong,
     borne witness to the truth in
     every tongue,
          Alleluia.
And did not Jesus sing a psalm that night
     when utmost evil strove
     against the light?
     Then let us sing, for whom he
     won the fight:
          Alleluia.
Let every instrument be tuned for praise!
     Let all rejoice who have a voice to raise!
     And may God give us faith to sing always
          Alleluia.