Psalm 63:1-8, Colossians 3:12-16
He was so busted. In the boys’ bathroom at Longmeadow High School. The principal heard something through the walls and came barging in to catch the culprit in the act. The culprit? Ric Carl. What was he doing? Playing the harmonica. It turns out the boys’ bathroom had great acoustics, so Ric liked to slip out of class to practice in his make-shift studio.
Fortunately, the principal was interested in doing more than busting another kid; equally fortunate, Ric’s homeroom teacher happened to be the music teacher. The principal brought Ric back to his homeroom, and whispered to the teacher, “Hey, this kid’s pretty good.”
Soon thereafter, at a school assembly, the music teacher sat down at the piano and called Ric up. He started playing a 12-bar blues rhythm and invited Ric to join in. He did. He felt the music. He discovered the gift and the joy of improvisation.
What a great story! It’s one of many great stories I’ve heard this week, as I’ve spoken with just a few of the musicians in this congregation. I’ve heard about how hard it is when you hear a great song but you can’t dance because you’re in the car, strapped into your car seat. I’ve heard about finding the courage to sing while playing a cowardly lion. My interviewees ranged in age from 5 to 72. All brought unique perspectives. As the week went on, common themes emerged.
They talked about the emotional—or spiritual—impact of beautiful music. Susan Minor, our pianist, puts it well: “Even with the smallest musical interval, I feel something so strongly. It can break my heart.” Kate Muhs doesn’t have to use words to describe what music does for her; she just lives it, dancing all day to the songs on the radio and the songs in her head. Nicola Seaholm describes going to see her favorite mandolinist in concert, and her awe as she watched him improvise. “It gives you hope,” she said, “that someone can create something just for that moment.”
Olivia Sorensen had a similar experience when she went with her mom to a 21 Pilots concert. Their music, she said, addresses human experiences like loneliness and anxiety. By naming them in song, they offer hope and the assurance that we aren’t alone. Ellie Leigh-Manuell, when she was grieving the loss of her cat Bubb, turned to music, the same songs she used to play when she danced with her kitty. “The music,” she said, “helped my sadness melt away.”
The power of music, for these folks, is multiplied by the ways they get to participate in it. Ellie, a clarinetist, remembers a time in 6th grade, when she and her friends played a piece for an assembly. When it was over, a teacher came up to them in tears. His Dad had sung that song to him when he was a child. It was so powerful, Ellie said, to be part of moving a teacher she respected.
Susan, talking about the power of music to touch us, says, “I love being able to mold that under my hands. It gives me great pleasure, and I like to think it gives others pleasure too.”
A second theme that emerged in these conversations is the way music connects us to one another. Olivia and Ellie talked about the finding a group of friends interested in the same things—and the inside jokes that come from shared interest in music. There’s the sense of connection at a concert, where total strangers are enjoying the same piece of music.
Marge Roy wrote in an email about how music enables connection deeper than words that fail us: “Music became a blessing as Dave descended into the depths of Alzheimers and was not be able to communicate verbally. The only way I had to communicate and feel a connection with Dave was through listening to music together. I would load up his CD disk player, attach twin earphones (so the music wouldn’t disturb the other nursing home residents) and we would listen to his favorite music together. Music had always been an important part of each of our lives and had become particularly potent at the end of his life.”
Ric Carl described the connection he feels when he’s jamming with On the Fence—that sense of being on the same wave length. Nicola talked about singing in a chorus: “When we are locked in place in harmony, and you can hear the overtones,” she says, “you look around, and everyone is vibrating on the same level.” Susan loves to be an accompanist, especially working with high school students preparing for a competition. “When you click with a young kid who has music in their soul,” she says, “it’s such a wonderfully intimate moment.”
The third theme that emerged points to a paradox that is real both for music and for life. Music is all about the present—listening to other voices right then, allowing a creative impulse to blossom in the moment, treasuring the beauty of notes that fade into silence, never to be heard exactly that way again. And music is all about preparation—about practicing, planning, analyzing, working hard. The music that awes us in the moment happens because of all the mundane moments that happen first.
For Ric, those seemingly mundane moments are part of the power of music. “More fun than performing,” he says, “is the journey of preparing.” When we first pick up an anthem, it can be what Ric describes as “harsh.” After a few times through, we are ready to fine-tune. “It ends up sounding pretty good, or sometimes,” he adds, “it’s awesome.” The wonder of the music is not just that awesome performance but the journey toward it.
At the edge of this paradox of presence and preparation is the trap of perfection. Olivia took an electronic music class, in which she was assigned to write a song. She kept getting stuck because she wanted it to be perfect from the beginning. “I learned,” she said, “that the first draft doesn’t have to be perfect.”
Sometimes that perfectionist trap comes from internal voices; often those voices can be traced to an earlier external voice. Several musicians talked about the trauma someone they love experienced when they were told they couldn’t sing. “Just lip sync; don’t make any sounds.” Or “You can be in the listening choir.” Perhaps because, as Kate Muhs reminds us, music is a whole body experience, those words cut deep, shaking confidence for decades, short-circuiting our capacity to tap a deep musical reservoir of joy.
The musicians also told me about mentors who encouraged them. Nicola discovered how much she loved to sing once a teacher told her she was good at it. Ric Carl learned to sing choral music because of the patient, persistent mentoring of Len Ezbicki and Rick Robinson. Olivia is grateful for teachers who encouraged her to stick to a practice schedule. A good mentor both invites us to trust our natural ability and challenges us to do the hard work of getting better.
For several of the folks I interviewed, music became the vehicle for learning a larger lesson about life. From music, Nicola learned that she can do things that are difficult. “I just have to slow down, break it down into pieces, and practice.” Susan has learned that she doesn’t have to become a perfectionist in order to challenge herself to improve. “You can always get better,” she says. With practice comes confidence, “ a sense of accomplishment,” Jacob Muhs-Corbisier adds.
As she described her circuitous route to becoming a professional musician, Susan said something that caught me short. She graduated from college with a degree in music during the Vietnam era–a time when there was a sense of urgency, a heightened awareness of responsibility to work to heal our broken world. Somehow music, she said, felt self-serving. So she got a masters in special education and taught. It was important and rewarding work. Still, something led her back to music. After practicing 5 or 6 hours a day, she was admitted to New England Conservatory and reclaimed her calling as a musician.
We live in a time when there is a similar sense of urgency, an acute awareness of the brokenness of our world. Is the music that brings us such joy too self-serving for such a time as this? My conversations this week assure me that it is not. Music has the potential to heal our lives and transform our world.
Music teaches us, at a level deeper than words, that we are all connected. If we open ourselves to that lesson, then we cannot ignore the pain of our neighbors. Music inspires and challenges us to do the hard work of living out those deep connections–through our choices about how we live, through acts of compassion, through our advocacy for a more just society. Susan, at a tender age, was right to ask the question about whom our music serves; a few years later she was ready to claim that music is part of a calling to be instruments of healing and peace.
All through this week, I kept thinking of a word that we sing a lot–though usually only around Christmas. “Emmanuel,” we sing–which means “God is with us.” Jesus, we sing, is God come to dwell among us, God choosing to share in the joys and struggles of human living. Another way of putting it is that, through Jesus’ life and teaching, death and resurrection, we come to know what has always been true and will always be true: God is with us.
“Emmanuel,” I thought, as I heard our musicians talk about the power of music. Music awakens us to God’s presence in and among us. God is in our breath, a sacred wind that vibrates our vocal chords to make beautiful music. God is in the careful listening that enables us to sing in harmony. God is in the stirring of our sorrow that leads to healing. God is in the mentor who sees our gifts and challenges us to do the hard work of living into our potential. God is in our human connection, deeper than words. God is with us–Emmanuel.
Ellie Leigh-Manuell told me what it meant to her this fall when she and Susan played Ode to Joy as an offertory. “It was kind of like taking God’s love,” she said, “and putting it out to the world.” There it is–the gift and challenge of music. Whether we are singers or clarinetists or prefer to listen quietly, this is our calling: to take God’s love and put it out to the world. Amen.