Sing a New Song
This is a sermon about music. It’s also a sermon about what some people might call God. How does the holy manifest in music, and what do we do about it? Our relationships with spirituality change throughout our lives, and we have some choices about our musical response. We might handle the change in three ways: adapt, create, or listen differently. Each response has its place, depending on how divine inspiration shows up. The force that I would call God is present in all three of these responses. We adapt, we create, and we listen differently.
I have an iTunes play list of Unitarian Universalist music. There are some predictable things, like albums recorded by congregational choirs: familiar tunes with the words changed, songs written in the last 20 years by UU composers, and old-time hymns with the classic words – I guess some things you don’t mess with. There are a few live recordings from worship services and concerts at General Assembly, the annual meeting of UU congregations. I also have some contemporary UU singer-songwriters on the play list. Some of the singer-songwriters think of themselves as religious musicians, some of them don’t. All in all there are 134 songs on the play list, and it’s not complete.
I put this play list on shuffle when I’m going through a time of discernment, and I’m looking for inspiration about the changes in my life. It seems to me that having a spiritual path means being open to surprise; if my path doesn’t change me, what’s the point? The mix of songs helps build a bridge between what has been and what is emerging; the past links with the future.
When I’m working on something timely – such as a social justice cause, helping a committee reorganize, or thinking about how to keep our faith relevant for younger people – I focus my listening on contemporary singer-songwriters. (Examples include Rick and Audrey Engdahl, Jason Shelton, and Meg Barnhouse.) In our own time and culture, we use new metaphors, we have different ways of relating to each other, we have a transformed sense of what it means to be in right relationship. Contemporary music can speak to our communities in the here and now in a powerful way. Hearing new music emerge from our movement gives me a lot of joy. I feel close to the spark of life, the impulse to live abundantly.
Sometimes I long for music that is deeply familiar. This is especially true when my heart is heavy with my own troubles or in sympathy with others. That’s when I listen to the old time hymns sung by UU choirs. Some of those songs have words that would have made me cringe in the past, and maybe still do. However, when I want to think about religious heritage, its gifts and its flaws, I listen to the old music. When I am seeking a relationship with my ancestors, the ones I’m related to by blood and the ones I claim because I admire them, I find that connection through music. There are lots of reasons to listen to music that is theologically inconvenient.
In my last sermon, I touched on music as a window to transcendence, both an experience and a result of discovering mystery and wonder. When music falls into this vein, we are faced with questions about how to name the encounter. Some of us use terms like God or spirit in speaking and music, some of us don’t. As if that weren’t complicated enough, our encouragement to spiritual growth means that someone’s language can change over time; the words we used last year may be different than the words we will use next year to describe our meetings with transcending mystery and wonder.
Because we’re in this together as a pluralistic community, sometimes we use God language during our services, sometimes we use non-theistic language. Everybody is comforted sometimes, everybody is challenged sometimes. A mix of comfort and challenge seems like a pretty good recipe for the search for meaning. As a congregation, I believe that we can and do make room for all of the songs trying to find voice among us.
This is a sermon about music. It’s also a sermon about what some people might call God. How does the holy manifest in music, and what do we do about it? Our relationships with spirituality change throughout our lives, and we have some choices about our musical response. We might handle the change in three ways: adapt, create, or listen differently. Each response has its place, depending on how divine inspiration shows up. The force that I would call God is present in all three of these responses. We adapt, we create, and we listen differently.
Adapt
In my early days as a Unitarian Universalist, I volunteered for a year on a regional Young Adult Steering Committee. This was a group who encouraged more and better ministry to people age 18 to 35. Our meetings always included lighting a chalice and singing some songs, to help remind us of our mission.
I don’t believe I have a great voice, but I do have a loud voice, so on one particular occasion I was asked to lead the song, hymn number 211, “Jacob’s Ladder.” I opened the hymnal, but I didn’t look at it. I knew this song from way back in my liberal Christian upbringing. In the hymnal, the song goes like this:
We are climbing Jacob’s ladder,
We are climbing Jacob’s ladder,
We are climbing Jacob’s ladder,
We are climbing on.
(“We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder,” African American spiritual, c. 1750-1875)
At the meeting, I got as far as the third climb, and stopped abruptly. The other singers stopped, too, like a musical tower of blocks tumbling down. I stopped because I realized that the next words out of my mouth were going to be, “soldiers of the cross,” and I was pretty sure that wasn’t right.
My theology had changed since childhood – I was critical of the “soldiers of the cross” image – but the words I knew by heart hadn’t yet caught up. I’m glad the words are changed. I wouldn’t want to lose this song. On the other hand, I don’t believe in religion as a violent conquest. I’m actually surprised that my hippie childhood church hadn’t taught me the alternate words in the first place, but that’s another story. I also like the adaptation on the next page, hymn 212, “We Are Dancing Sarah’s Circle” (words by Carole A. Etzler).
In many cases, I am a big supporter of adapting the words to familiar songs, to keep something of those songs alive without killing the spirit that moves us onward. Based on the lyrical talent here in Fallston, it seems like there are other fans of adaptation here, too. I believe that an honest search for truth and meaning is a discipline of personal change. People are transformed by new insights, by encounters with the holy. Of course our language isn’t static. We align ourselves with a living tradition, and change is a hallmark of life.
I like reclaiming songs I know, recycling those materials to build a safe bridge from the past to the present. I am not willing to give them up entirely. Songs that have been part of me, songs that flow from my heritage, don’t stop being part of me. Instead, they are joined by other notes.
There are some pitfalls when it comes to changing words. If the composer is still living, she or he will have an opinion about whether the song was meant to stay loyal to its original words, or whether the song was meant to be released into the wild, open to the folk process. For instance, the author of hymn 413, “Go Now in Peace,” has asked that we keep the line, “may the love of God surround you” intact rather than change the words. On the other hand, Holly Near told us when she was a guest at General Assembly that she has been delighted at the way people everywhere have stretched the words to “We Are a Gentle, Angry People” in order to make it more inclusive to people with different sexual orientations and gender identities.
Inclusivity is a big deal. Singing about a God who was more or less exclusively male was one of the things I didn’t like about church as I was becoming a young woman. I wanted to feel like the divine understood me. That was in the 80’s and 90’s, when a number of denominations were updating their hymnals to reflect more gender equality. Again, I’m glad they did. I’m not sure I could have come back to organized religion without a revised UU hymnal.
In addition to gender, we also want to look at some of the cultural assumptions in the older songs. Some hymns have been left in the past because they imply the superiority of one race or culture over another. There are other considerations. If we are tempted to borrow songs from a culture that is not our own, we have to be cautious about whether our use is appropriate. Our understanding of right relationship has changed in this generation, and we want to reflect that in music. I think that the more we work to dismantle oppression, the more open we can be to the true wonders of life.
I believe in the ordinary miracle of love, that there is something holy in every atom of this universe, and that life has more resilience than we can comprehend. Sometimes I will collectively name these forces as God. In that sense, I would say that my God is a God of change and growth, a God who is present in the evolution of life and of minds. In music and in theology, I find something religious in the practice of adaptation.
Create
The source of life is also present when people create art that is entirely new. Psalm 98 urges, “Sing a new song to the Eternal. Shout praise, all earth, break into music and song!” The wonder of life inspires people to create beauty in response. The impulse to “sing a new song” has a kinship with the drive to live abundantly.
There is a kind of electricity in finding the holy in the now moment, such as when the connections among a gathered group light up a room, revealing that people in community are more than the sum of their parts.
The first year I was on Joseph Priestley District staff, I worked with a committee to plan a District-wide Soulful Sundown at the JPD Spring Conference. We hired a band, and we worked with them to come up with an order of service that was spiritually nurturing and contemporary. In addition to the rock music that the band performed, we had a movement meditation, candle lighting, and congregational singing. We chose songs out of Singing the Journey, the teal hymnal that was published in 2005. I helped out as one of the section leaders for “Meditation on Breathing,” which is a three-part song by Sarah Dan Jones. It’s number 1009 in Singing the Journey. (Here is an mp3 of the tune.)
Being in worship that evening I felt the presence of the holy through the energy of the people in the room. I hadn’t yet been to a Soulful Sundown here in Fallston, so I didn’t know how good it could be. It seemed to me that spirits were renewed that night.
Part of that sense of renewal came from the energy of creation. The hymn is contemporary. Even though the lyrics are simple, the song comes from an epoch and an experience that many of us shared. Add to that the co-creation of the band and the congregation, and “a new song to the Eternal” was born.
For those who have the talent, and I know some of you do, writing and sharing songs that reflect a contemporary experience is a precious gift to the rest of us. We need music that names our current doubts and fears. We need songs that rouse us to the opportunities we have right now for justice. We need hymns that speak the metaphors of our own time and place. New music reminds us that we are on a journey going forward. If I name what I believe in as God, new music reminds me that God is not a relic of the past. God is still with us, present in the creation of beauty.
Listen Differently
Although religious experience is not exclusively a relic of the past, there are times when calling the past to mind is good, too. When I am looking for a way to relate with my ancestors or with Christian neighbors, sometimes I can look past the literal incongruence between the words and my own beliefs, into the hope and comfort contained in theologically inconvenient songs. Sometimes. My ability to do this depends on my current struggles on my spiritual path and how much conflict I have with the song. When I am able to listen differently, classic hymns can be a source of strength.
About eight and a half years ago, on a Tuesday morning, I was awakened by a phone call from my sister-in-law. She lived just across the San Francisco Bay from us. Normally, I would have been up by that time, but a friend from out of town had arrived the night before, and we had been up late reminiscing. Anxious not to rouse our guest, I leaped out of bed and answered the phone before the second ring. “Something happened to the World Trade Center in New York,” she said. “It’s like we’re at war or something.” That was the beginning of my day on September 11.
I couldn’t think of what else to do, so I made breakfast. The sound of preparing hot tea and a big pot of oatmeal brought the rest of the household into the kitchen, where I relayed the news. We didn’t have a television, so we checked the Internet and tuned the radio to NPR to find out what happened. In between horrifying updates, we talked in low tones about what this might mean for our country.
During one transition between segments, NPR played an instrumental version of a familiar tune, “Abide With Me.” It’s number 101 in Singing the Living Tradition. Our houseguest and I both recognized it right away. We had a shared moment of drawing solace from the same few measures. We wondered if we would have had the same recognition if NPR had played a vocal arrangement. He got out his Mormon hymnal and I got out my UU hymnal, and we compared notes. The words were the same.
Abide with me, fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens, still with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me.
(“Abide With Me,” words by Henry Francis Lyte, music by William Henry Monk)
Now, if I were going to sit down and write a pastoral hymn about the presence of the holy, this is not the song I would write. I’m not fond of using darkness and light metaphors that way, because I think the dark is just as sacred as the light, and because dark-equals-bad reminds me too much of racism. Intellectually, I really disagree with the second verse, where God is addressed as “thou who changes not.” As I have mentioned, my God is all about change and growth. That being said, it was really nice to have something to hold on to, something that could be a shared resource, on a day that challenged my faith.
Changing the words is an option, and “Abide With Me” could be a good candidate for that. Having access to the old words made it possible for my friend and me to draw strength from each other. Classic words open up a line of connection with my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents who sang the same words. Even if they hadn’t, old hymns connect me with my role models from UU history. I can draw strength from that heritage of resilience. When the words and the tune remain the same, a new song can come from listening differently. Here’s the third verse:
I fear no foe, with thee at hand to bless;
Ills have no weight and tears no bitterness.
Where is death’s sting? Where, grave thy victory?
I triumph still if thou abide with me.
Putting aside what this song seems to say about God and the afterlife, there is still something I can learn from it. Illness and death are inescapable. Postponing them is nice, but not the point of human existence. That observation is not exclusive to Christians. Buddhists will tell you that in a heartbeat. How do we respond? This song suggests that companionship is what makes illness and death bearable. Along with Teresa of Avila, I believe that God has no hands and feet in the world but ours. Compassion between human beings is the closest tangible thing we have to divine presence. We don’t win at being human by walling ourselves off from the suffering of others. The triumph of the human spirit is evident when we abide with each other.
There have come times when listening differently has allowed me to revisit other songs. When the surface-level incongruence holds less bite, we can hear the deeper music that resonates with recognition of transcendence or meaning. We can learn from the past, visit with our memories of ancestors, and connect with our neighbors. This doesn’t work in all times for all people for all songs. I’m not sure I can ever reclaim “Onward Christian Soldiers,” but that’s just me. When it does work, we can sing a new song through our listening as well as through our speaking.
Conclusion
Expect spirituality to cause change. When a new insight or a fresh experience of transcendence pushes us along that path, there are at least three artistic responses. We can adapt, combining the best of the past and the present. We can create something new that speaks to our specific time and place and worldview. We can listen differently, reinterpreting the voices of the past with new ears. This is true for music, and for all of the arts of living.
May we be blessed with the Spirit of Life in our growth and learning. May we be blessed with the breath of renewal in our reverence for the present moment. May we be blessed with memories of comfort and hope, passed down to us through the generations.
So be it. Blessed be. Amen.
2 years ago