The Role of Music in Spirituality
Comments By The Rev. Susan Manker-Seale
May 15, 2005
I.
In the spring, when the dove return from Mexico and other points south, my yard is transformed into a musical bath of birdsong. We have tall pepper trees and mature mesquites in which the birds love to mate and nest, and Curtiss fills the birdfeeder every couple days to keep them happy. Yesterday morning, I woke once again to the soft cooing of the dove and the call of the quail, sounds which will go on all day in one form or another. As I lay there listening, I realized that a high-pitched cheeping wasn’t dove, but baby birds, maybe wrens, in the nest above the light outside my bedroom window. Two new ones had arrived and were adding their sweet notes to the symphony of spring.
If we stop and pay attention, we realize that sound is all around us all the time. I remember hearing my friends Sam Wright and Donna Lee talk about coming home to Arizona after living in the wilderness of the Brooks Range in Alaska and how noisy life is in the cities and towns; constant truck and car engines and airplanes make a different background drone to the sounds of nature. Our lives can be as much a cacophony as a symphony.
We use musical terms to define the nature in which our lives are immersed. We talk about a “symphony” of nature to describe how all things, living and non-living, are interdependent. Our lives are in “harmony” when things are in balance and beautiful. Even the planets have been described musically.
You have probably heard the phrase “Music of the Spheres” (http://peyote.com/jonstef/spheres.htm). 2500 years ago in Greece, Pythagoras is said to have taught that the “movement of the heavenly bodies could be perceived and reflected in the intervals of plucked strings.” It has long been recognized that there is mathematical balance and beauty to the Universe and music is one of the mathematical disciplines. Plato takes the idea further in teaching that “the soul of the world is knit together by the harmony of music.” (http://www.philophony.com/sensprop/pythagor.html)
Now that is a beautiful thought! “The soul of the world is knit together by the harmony of music.” Maybe that is why we use music in religious gatherings. Perhaps sound is a way we connect with one another. Think of the OM. When we chant OM, vibrations come out of us and spread in circles throughout space, affecting whatever they touch. The same happens when we sing. We all are touched by the rhythms, the waves of sound, as well as the words, not just skin deep but in our hearts, physically and emotionally. Through music, we can become ONE in a spiritual sense, which is also physical. We are knit together in sound and soul.
It is no wonder that music is integral to our spiritual experiences. We have many types of liturgical music: chants, rounds, hymns, taize. We have bells and piano and drums. Whatever music we can make, we make. Even when we meditate, the quiet that we seek is the rhythm of our bodies, the silence within which we can hear our heart beat, feel its pounding, flow with the breath moving in and out of our lungs. When we are still, we find that we move to a music that is uniquely and universally ours.
I have heard it said that the universe still rocks to the vibrations of the Big Bang. Then there is rhythm in the smallest cells and all of life truly is a symphony in which we exist with deepest wonder and awe.
II.
Music touches us on many levels and heals both our bodies and souls, heals us physically, emotionally and spiritually. I was a Girl Scout most of my years growing up, and campfire singing is embedded in my heart. I carried songs around with me, too, singing them over and over until they became a part of me. Songs tied me to nature and to a set of values which Scouting taught as well as my own Unitarian Universalist upbringing.
When I hear those songs, I remember the places, the times, I’m carried back to them vividly, and I never forget the words, at least, if I remember the first few. Isn’t that amazing that we do remember words of songs even years later? My first career was as a Special Education teacher and we learned that music is one way to affect children’s memories. We’ll remember what we hear in rhythm and melody. That’s why we teach the alphabet in song, and why we sing a covenant or affirmation in church every Sunday.
One of the parents at the RE retreat yesterday mentioned that her daughter could be heard in her room singing the Chalice Song. I grew up singing the Affirmation: “From all that dwell below the sky, let faith and hope with love arise, let beauty truth and good be sung through every land, by every tongue.” (adapted 381, Singing the Living Tradition) Our children will sing “May the light we now kindle inspire us to use our powers to heal and not to harm, to help and not to hinder, to bless and not to curse, to serve you, Spirit of freedom,” (453) which are the words of the Passover Haggadah put to music by Jeff Chamberlain. No one else in the world sings that song but our little congregation, though that will change as we share this new song with others.
Songs, whether secular or religious, can be our guiding lights throughout life, reminding us of what is important, inspiring us to follow our values, healing us when we’re broken. One song I remember from camp, from Anytown, I believe, which is the inter-High School Brotherhood camp I attended and was a counselor for, is “May the long-time sun shine upon you, all love surround you, and the pure light within you guide your way on.” I sang that through difficult college years and it gave me peace.
Some people believe that sounds alone can heal us. There was an article in Thursday’s paper about the way our physical response to music and sound can promote our healing. (AZ Daily Star, 5-12-05). A group of holistic health practitioners are gathering people to do “toning circles” in which people chant or listen to the sounds of crystal singing bowls. They think that everything has a vibrational frequency and that parts of the body may respond to different frequencies which may stimulate healing and bring the body back into balance with itself. If anything, music and sounds can help us relax, and relaxation improves immune function. That is something of which we are sorely in need in our busy lives.
Whether you meditate, chant, or sing your way through life, or just resonate with the vibrations of the symphony around you, let us all be sure to celebrate the music of the universe which surrounds us, and allow it to guide and to heal us, physically and spiritually.
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Northwest Tucson