Luke 12:6-7
March 7, 2021
God’s eye is on the sparrow—and the Carolina wren and the wood thrush and the black-capped chickadee. They are so small; our human eyes miss them unless they show up at the feeder. God sees them. God hears them, for these tiny songbirds produce glorious music that reverberates far and wide. Surely God revels in their wondrous songs. Maybe they even inspire God to dance.
How do they do it? How do these creatures produce such resonant sounds from their tiny bodies? I found the answer in my new favorite bird book, What it’s like to be a bird, by David Allen Sibley. While human beings have a larynx, with vocal cords that vibrate as a stream of air moves through them to create sound, birds have a syrinx. The syrinx is located deeper in the bird’s body, where the airways from their right and left lungs join to form the trachea. Each side of the syrinx has its own tiny muscles that control air flow, so birds actually make two sounds at the same time. For many species of songbirds, the two sounds have different pitches. The reason these tiny birds create such a rich sound is that they are actually singing in harmony with themselves.
As I read about songbirds, I found myself thinking about the first multi-household anthem we created last spring for Edwards Church zoom worship. Willie Sordillo started us off—sending out a recording of “What a friend we have in Jesus.” Other musicians were invited to listen to the track and record ourselves singing along.
I was excited to participate—until I listened to my first recording of just my voice. I was distressed by how thin it sounded. I would have given up, but I had so vociferously urged others to participate that I had to keep going. Way too many tries later—just ask Fran—I sent my least-unfavorite recording off to Willie, remarking how disappointed I was in my sound.
Willie assured me that most people have that experience of recording themselves and suggested that the app I was using might not have captured the full resonance of my voice. He promised that it would sound good when he mixed mine with all the other recordings. He was right; it was beautiful.
What a wondrous creation this is! Tiny songbirds, otherwise easily lost in the trees, have evolved with a syrinx so they can sing in harmony with themselves. Great big human beings, with our propensity to think we can do it all ourselves, have a larynx instead of a syrinx, so we need others in order to sing in harmony. Talk about holy irony. God has a sense of humor.
There’s something more we can learn from the songbirds. While human beings may only have the capacity to produce a single sound at a time, we are incredibly complex creatures. At any given moment, a host of thoughts are swirling around our minds—some building on each other, some conflicting, some welcome, some not. At the same time, a multitude of emotions are stirring within us: joy and sorrow, hope and despair, rage and compassion—sometimes all at the same time.
Decades ago, a wise counselor offered a metaphor that helps me make sense of my own inner complexity. She invited me to imagine that within me is a community of voices, or perhaps a family of voices. There is potential, as with any family or community, for cacophony or discord; there is also potential for understanding and transformation. When the voices are valued, they each have something to contribute; when they are ignored or ostracized, they grow louder, more desperate, and sometimes destructive.
Focusing on the family imagery, she encouraged me to claim the wise adult within—the one who knows how to comfort a frightened child without letting fear take over, the one who can help an angry teenager feel heard without being overwhelmed by the anger. Over the years, I have come to identify the wise adult as Holy Wisdom Within, as the presence of Christ in me. For today’s sermon, I will call her the Sacred Inner Choir Director.
I wonder what it might mean for the communities of voices within each of us to learn how to sing in harmony. How might the sacred inner choir director enable that? Perhaps we can learn from the external-world choir directors we know and love.
I have observed a couple of ways Rick—and Elizabeth and Bob and Todd and Janie before him—have helped our choir sing in harmony. The first is by encouraging us to develop our voices—teaching us how to use our breath and focus our sound. The second is by creating opportunities for us to practice listening to each other. On Thursday nights, we often sat in a circle to rehearse, so we could hear the different parts better. Occasionally, we would hold a chord for a long time, noticing how we unconsciously adjusted our pitches as we listened.
There’s no magic, and there’s rarely anything approaching perfection. Church choir directors have to contend with all the things that make it hard for us to breathe deeply, with all the ways we have absorbed distrust of our own voices, with distractions and exhaustion. Over time, with practice and wise, patient leadership, we come to sing in closer harmony.
I envision a parallel process for our internal community of voices, as our inner sacred choir directors help the cacophony of voices in us move toward harmony.
It is a daunting prospect. For many of us, at times, that inner community feels full of conflict. Most of us have parts of ourselves we would like to get rid of—voices of despair or resentment or rage we try to push out the door, only to have them storm back in more disruptive than ever. How could they ever be in harmony? Fortunately, or blessedly, the inner sacred choir director—Christ within—is wise and understanding, loving and infinitely patient.
This holy choir director begins by honoring each of the voices in that inner community. She listens to them—deeply enough to reveal the fear beneath the rage, the longing hidden under despair, the sadness behind resentment. He assures each of those voices that they are valued and refuses to allow them to be ignored or belittled.
Ever so slowly, with fits and starts along the way, as the voices are consistently heard and valued and cared for, they stop needing to shout so much. They begin to listen to each other, to sit in a circle, to discover that it really is possible—though never easy—to listen to your own voice and another at the same time. Grace breaks through, and cacophony yields to harmony, if only for a moment. That moment is enough for the inner community of voices to begin to trust that healing is possible, to trust that this inner sacred choir director—this presence of Christ within—really is wise and patient and loving enough to create beautiful music.
I invite you to play with this metaphor, to ask how it might speak to your life. Does the image of a community of voices within ring true for you? Are there parts of yourself that you are inclined to ignore or reject? What would it mean for you instead to listen to what they have to say and honor their contribution?
The wise adult, Christ within, the inner choir director—whichever words you use, these are powerful images to express the conviction that there is a sacred source of wisdom within each of us. At times, we may doubt that is true. I invite you to choose to trust it is. Dare to imagine what that wise inner voice might be saying even if you aren’t convinced it is there. Act as if you believe there is a sacred choir director within you, and you may just begin to hear that voice.
I believe there is a sacred presence in you—a holy wisdom, a wise adult, a patient inner choir director—that longs for harmony in your life.
The sparrow sings in harmony with itself, and that is why its voice is so rich and full. As we seek to sing in harmony with ourselves—metaphorically–, the voice we bring to the world will become increasingly rich and full. Our efforts at inner harmony will help us as we seek to create harmony in our world, for as we practice compassion and understanding with our internal voices, we will become more compassionate and understanding with our neighbors and even our enemies.
It seems to me that the harmony we hear from songbirds is pretty close to perfect. Ours will never be that close. We will always live with dissonance—internally and in our relationships. That means we will also get to experience those miraculous moments when dissonance resolves into harmony. Those are holy moments. Those are moments when God is reveling in the beauty of our song. Those are moments that may well inspire God to dance with joy.
May we do the patient, life-long work of listening and practicing in preparation for those moments. May we treasure moments of harmony when they emerge. May they remind us that we can make beautiful music with our lives. Amen.