MUSIC
One
of the ongoing jokes about Unitarian Universalists is that we sing badly. We
sing so badly, we say, because we are always reading ahead to see whether or
not we agree with the words of the song. At the auction last year (which is
coming up November 12th, y’all come) I offered the opportunity to
choose a sermon topic, and the person who bought it asked me to preach about
music. It happens that the Unitarian Universalist Association has just
published a supplement to go along with our hymnal, which is now ten years old.
The feeling was that our denomination was moving to integrate the more
heart-based Universalist tradition, swinging back to center from a long time
spent a bit over-invested in the heady Unitarian style. What people need these
days is Spirit, we want to feel our connection with God and with one another,
but not in traditional ways. This music is for feeling. Some of it, in good UU
tradition, is only singable by a choir, but a lot of it hits the spot! This
morning I’m going to talk about why we sing in worship, and we’re going to sing
some of the songs in the new book. We have thirty of them, so some sharing will
be necessary, and I have copies of hymns in case we need more than we have.
Some of you enjoy singing together in worship, and some of you can take it or
leave it. I hope this will help you at least appreciate more why we do it, and
maybe enjoy it more deeply.
Let’s
start with the basics. We have music because we have a heart beat. The first
sound that filled your ears as soon as they started working was your mother’s
heart beat. Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum…….
Mickey
Hart, who was the drummer for the Grateful Dead, has become more and more
involved in studying the relationship between drumming in a group and a return
to well-being. He has funded drum therapy for the child soldiers in Sierra
Leone, to return them to wholeness after their drugged killing sprees. Drum
circles for at-risk kids in the U.S.
and for Alzheimer’s patients and other elderly folks seem to have a good
effect. Here is some of what he said in his testimony before the US Senate on
the issue:
“What
is true for our own bodies is true almost everywhere we look. We are embedded
within a rhythmical universe. Everywhere we see rhythm, patterns moving through
time. It is there in the cycles of the seasons, in the migration of the birds
and animals, in the fruiting and withering of plants, and in the birth,
maturation and death of ourselves. Rhythm is at the very center of our lives.
By acknowledging this fact and acting on it, our potential for preventing
illness and maintaining mental, physical and spiritual well-being is far
greater.
According to the late ethnomusicologist John
Blacking, music is a mirror that reflects a culture’s deepest social and
biological rhythms. It is an externalization of the pulses that remain hidden
beneath the busy-ness of daily life. Blacking believed that a large part of
music’s power and pleasure comes from its ability to reconnect us with the
deeper rhythms that we are not conscious of. And it is the connection with
these rhythms that gives music the power to heal.”
For UUs, as a community, singing in a
group is a non-verbal reminder that, even though we are individuals, we
are also members of a community and we
all choose to come together to do
something in concert, to act or think or feel something together that is a
needed addition to those things we feel on our own. Look around the room. All of these people each chose this morning
to come be here to be with you and me, to see what happens, to feel what
happens, to find something, to experience a connection with mind, with body,
with spirit. If you are in the room with Atheist and Christian UUs, with gay
UUs and straight UUs, you may be with folks who are both comfortable and
uncomfortable with one another’s Atheism or Christianity or gay culture or
straight culture or white privilege or wealth or poverty or education
level. And we can sing together. We can
sing together. We can think together. We can feel together. We can know that
our bodies have the same hollow places inside which shape the sound, that we
are made of the same material, sustained by the same breath, hungry for the same compassion, comfort, meaning and belonging. We have much more room to move in our
commonality than we would have thought had we focused solely on our
differences.
Let’s
visit the native culture of our country, in a song adapted from our Native
American cousins.
1073 The Earth
is Our Mother
Singing
something like this, it’s easy to remember that from ancient times, humans have
gathered in groups to sing our songs, to tell our stories, to dance our dances,
all in rhythm. Gathering together in this way gives us a sense of community and
family. From time immemorial rhythm, and specifically percussion instruments,
have been used in healing
ceremonies by traditional medical practitioners.
Now,
let’s talk about the breath. The word
for “breath” and the word for “Spirit” in the Hebrew language are the same:
“ruach.” The breath, the spirit,
moves into and out of us, that same breath that circulates through the leaves
of the trees and the lungs of the badgers and skunks, it’s something we share. The next most basic element of singing
together is the breath being drawn in, given a sound and a shape, and coming
out of our bodies. It’s transformation, shape-shifting, magic.
First
let’s breathe with our mouths open. If
you can be comfortable, please now open them as wide as you can. Now sigh.
Again. Now we are going to make a sound with our sigh. Now let’s stop the sigh
on a note. Don’t worry about it being
pretty. That’s singing! Even if you
just do that, it’s energizing.
Let’s
sing something that may be familiar to many. If it’s not, just enjoy the
rhythm, and enjoy the picture of old time ancestors celebrating a baptism.
1046 Shall We
Gather At the River
1059 May Your Life Be As A Song
We
sing in church to feel. To feel good, to feel sorrow, to express the feelings that
go along with being human. Let us end with one we can sing out on…..
1021 Lean on Me
|
by Meg Barnhouse |
|
Free for
personal use. All others, please send written request. |