Hi folks, I hope you are doing ok? This week we are meeting at the Quarry Pub on the Broadway, I hope you can join us, meeting from 7.30.
As I write this I am coming off the back three amazing gigs, with another to look forward to tonight, I read a blog recently by Maria Popova, and it captivated my thoughts, the line that struck me was this… she says:
“I remember wondering as I sang whether music is something we make or something we are made of”.
This is also what Pythagoras wondered when he discovered the mathematics of harmony. He called it ‘Music of the sphere’ – it was this idea that every celestial body produces in its movement a unique hum determined by its orbit.
It was Kelper two millennia later that dived back into Pythagoras’ work as he wrote ‘The Harmony of the World’. Kelper believed this ‘celestial music’ was not just a metaphor, not just symbolic for the cosmic order — he believed in it literally, believed that the universe is singing, reverberating with music inaudible to human ears but as real as gravity. He died ridiculed for this belief.
Unbeknown to him, half a millennium later our radio telescopes detected a low frequency hum that pervaded the universe! It has something to do with black holes colliding in the early universe, as they merge they send out a low note. and so they create this low hum… We have heard the universe sing!
This is what is wondrous about music, it moves through the air and reaches our ears, and it makes us feel and experience something other. We of course have the ability to make sound, to sing, one of the joys I have spoken about before is my love of the community singing group i’m part of, Mariners and Marras, not just because i’m meeting new people but i’m expressing myself through singing. For me it is worship, the very act of opening up one’s vocal cords does something to me… and needless to say to others! Alongside love, music may be our best way of saying “yes” to life, and to our life together.
The latin root for the word person…… is…. ‘to sound through’! How magic is that… through that we realise that that is about relationship, it indicates a listener. We sound through to something other than ourselves. When we speak, when we sing, when we channel this sound wave of the soul, we reach beyond the self and partake of the great harmonic of belonging.
And then I came across this poem by Marie Howe, read the words below , and watch the video , it’s beautiful… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4fPqNcovJw&t=123s
HYMN
by Marie 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.)
So some questions:
- What are you listening to at the moment?
- What was the last piece of music that stopped you in your tacks?
- “I remember wondering as I sang whether music is something we make or something we are made of”. Thoughts?
- How does the bible talk about music/sound?
- What does singing mean/do to/for you?
- How does ‘to sound through’ relate to people’s relationship to God?
Peace, Rob
Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay
Rob Wylie is the founder of BeachcomberFX and guides its leadership team. He has worked in the North East for over 20 years and has vast experience from various roles he has held. He has a passion for Fresh Expressions of Church and Pioneer Ministry as well as beer, beaches and Miniature Schnauzers.