I began, as is my way, quietly and almost shyly. I have in time grown into myself and have found my voice. I am loving it. It is great to sing and to sing with others.
The other day as I was walking through Altrincham when I bumped into the choir leader Rose having lunch with her husband. We began a conversation beginning with her asking questions about Molly. She is my superpower when it comes to engagement. Rose then began to ask about my work. Asking if I was a priest. I began to explain that I was not a priest. I am not set apart as a special kind of person. I am not a holy man, anymore holy than anyone else. I am a minister, which means to serve. I am a humble servant, in the truest sense of the word humble. My role is help others to engage with the holy themselves. Rose then began to talk about her role as the choir leader as being something akin to what I was describing as ministry. That her role is to help facilitate the choir, to help the voices come together and sing. I said something like, yes similar and I thought to myself it sounds like holy work, as what she is doing is bringing the spirit to life. I then felt I had been there too long. Made my apologies and left her and her husband to enjoy their lunch.
I have loved being part of the choir. It is hard work, especially to begin with as they were singing songs unfamiliar to me. Rose and the other choir leader Brooke have been wonderful and accommodating, as have all the others in this wonderful and diverse collective. There are many different social activities too. I have not become a part of them as of yet, as I am there to sing.
I have been thinking about choir singing and how it is a wonderful metaphor of the spiritual life, of free religious living. Singing is about listening, about listening in such a deep attentive way. The only people who can’t sing are the truly tone deaf, for they can’t hear. There aren’t many truly tone death people in this world. To sing with others requires you to listen to the leader, to listen to your section, to be aware of the other section without getting too caught up in what they are doing. You need to focus on your part. It is not merely a mechanical process, it requires heart and soul and breathing. You have to breath in the right way and at the right time too. You have to work together with others, being part of something incredible and wonderful and only works if you play your part. You make something more wonderful in harmony as the music comes together. You need to focus and yet relax at the same time. You cannot be timid and or tentative, you need to let your heart and soul out, while humbly playing your part to create something more wonderful than the individual voices could alone. You may have your moment to shine, but mainly it is about playing your part as piece of the whole. I believe it is a wonderful example of true humility.
I was talking with some friends the other evening. The subject of humility came up. What we mean by humility. We all spoke and listened to one another. The very activity seemed to personify humility to me. Humility to me is about accepting my human limitations. Accepting my finiteness, whilst at the same time being responsible for what is mine. To be humble is to be fully human, finite, from the earth, but with a responsibility for what is mine. A Jewish friend told me of a conversation he once had a with Rabbi about humility. He asked him about how he copes with suffering, how he keeps faith in world with so much suffering. To which the Rabbi answered that each morning he prays “to be the best person he can be.” To me this is to live humbly. It brought to my mind some favourite words from the Book of Micah Ch 6 v 8 that points to a way to live by ethical and spiritual behaviour: "He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God".
The conversation was both beautiful and humble in its nature. We listened to one another, we added from our own hearts and experience and we all gained from the sharing together. It lifted all of our spirits. We sang a beautiful song in harmony together. Not singing the same notes, but our blending together made something beautiful and moving.
The conversation reminded me of singing in a choir together. Singing together with others seems like the spiritual life personified. It is humility in action. Each plays their part and creates a greater whole. Something far greater than they could do alone. Hallelujah.
There are many benefits to singing. It lifts me up when sometimes I feel fallen in heart and soul. 'When you sing, you cannot be sad for long,' a chorister was quoted as saying in a study of singing. This seems to be a universal response. Singing feels great and it's good for you. It decreases feelings of anxiety, loneliness, and depression. Singing is good for the brain, it can counteract the effects of brain aging. In her book The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain, Barbara Strauch includes joining a choir as one of the things you can do to enhance neuroplasticity. Music increases gray matter and the number and strength of neural connections in the brain. It connects to others and to the moment, it brings the soul to life. This increases many fold when you sing with others in harmony and not discord.
When I first joined the choir, I mentioned to some folk that I was quiet. There is a shyness in me, which may not seem obvious to folk, when I join something new. So, I slowly and quietly made my steps into the group. They were warm and welcoming and helped me greatly. They were lovely and friendly people. I slowly stepped into my section and the men helped me find my voice. Slowly over time I found my voice and my true personality began to find its voice. My friend Rob told me that this would be the case within a few weeks I would be shinning bright. He was right. It took me a while though. It began by humbly listening, and in time my voice began to give what it had to give. That said it took time and it began by truly listening, with the ears of my heart. This week I helped to welcome a friend into our circle who was joining for the first time. There was a special moment as we began to learn a new piece. Each breaking into their sections, getting close together in a circle, listening to each other, singing our parts and beginning to create something beautiful. It began with listening to one another, adding our voice and slowly raising each other up, raising our voices heavenward.
I feel most alive when singing. I wonder sometimes if what we are made of is music. That music is the heartbeat of life. It’s not we who make music we just let music be made through us and we join in the choir of life. I am not the first to think this way. A couple of years ago I spoke about Pythagoras’ concept of “The Music of the Spheres”, that every celestial body produces in its movement a unique hum determined by its orbit.
Now of course Pythagoras would not have used the word orbit in his day. This was a phrase coined by the German astronomer Joannes Kepler almost 2,000 later. Kepler resurrected Pythagoras lesser known theory in his “Harmony of the World” published in 1619. Kepler believed that the whole universe was singing, that it was reverberating with music that the human ear could not hear. At the time he was thought to be a fool and ridiculed for his beliefs.
Well maybe not. It seems that this hum may have been detected by modern radio telescopes, that were sent out into space and have detected a low-frequency hum that pervades the whole universe. This hum is the product of black holes colliding in the early universe, from the dawn of time. That each creates a different low note and that all these notes “sing” together creating some incredible cosmic hum, it would seem that the universe is singing in harmony.
This blows me away, it blows out my heart and soul. It connects we individual humans to the whole universe. It connects us to eternity. It connects our finite bodies to the beginning of time. Matter comes alive in our bodies and these celestial bodies in creation and destruction. It humbles me and makes me feel tiny but no less important. It reminds me I am mortal. Like the birds sing because they are alive. I believe that this is why we sing too. Singing together in harmony, listening to each others voices creates something even more wonderful and beautiful. We join in the music of the universe. We sing the eternal harmony of belonging.
This is beautifully illustrated in the following poem hymn by Marie Howe, that I came across in a beautiful article published in “The Marginalian” by Maria Popova. I will end with it.
“Hymn” by Maria Howe
It began as an almost inaudible hum,
low and long for the solar winds
and far dim galaxies,
a hymn growing louder, for the moon and the sun,
a song without words for the snow falling,
for snow conceiving snow
conceiving rain, the rivers rushing without shame,
the hum turning again higher — into a riff of ridges
peaks hard as consonants,
summits and praise for the rocky faults and crust and crevices
then down down to the roots and rocks and burrows
the lakes’ skittery surfaces, wells, oceans, breaking
waves, the salt-deep: the warm bodies moving within it:
the cold deep: the deep underneath gleaming: some of us rising
as the planet turned into dawn, some lying down
as it turned into dark; as each of us rested — another woke, standing
among the cast-off cartons and automobiles;
we left the factories and stood in the parking lots,
left the subways and stood on sidewalks, in the bright offices,
in the cluttered yards, in the farmed fields,
in the mud of the shanty towns, breaking into
harmonies we’d not known possible. finding the chords as we
found our true place singing in a million
million keys the human hymn of praise for every
something else there is and ever was and will be:
the song growing louder and rising.
(Listen, I too believed it was a dream.)
Maybe this is the secret chord, that David played and it pleased the Lord, that Leonard Cohen sung of. Is this the voice that is less than a whisper, but more than silence. Maybe it’s the sound in the silence. I don’t know. Maybe if we are still and silent enough, if we listen with the ears of hearts and open our hearts and join in the harmony of life, maybe just maybe we can truly join is singing the great harmony of the heart.
Please find below a video devotion based on the material in this "Blogspot"
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