February 20, 2005 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

February 20, 2005

Singing for Our Lives

I am very glad to be fulfilling my obligation to preach an auction sermon for Brian Hanson who bought that option at our January 2004 Service Auction. That was an unusual auction when my usual single offering was bid into three, which raised about $1000 for this congregation and gave me three sermon topics to work on, all of which made me happy. The person who buys the auction sermon gets to choose the topic of his or her choice, and music was Brian’s topic, and he chose the music you are hearing today as well.

Music is a wonderful topic for several reasons, but perhaps one of the most important is that we tend to take much of the music of our lives for granted. Music pervades our lives, and to such and extent that if we were to suddenly find all music absent, I suspect we would find the world rather empty of a deep spiritual element which nurtures us without our knowing. Which is not to say we like all the music we hear, for clearly we have distinct preferences. I personally would consider it a blessing never to hear another rap song.

Which makes me think of the trio who were making music for the residents of a nursing home. After the third song an old gent asked if they played requests. The leader said, "Yes, we do. What would you like us to play?" The old fellow said, "Pinochle."

The fact is that music seems to be as old as humanity, and is certainly well established in the earliest historical records. Further, every society has some kind of music. Whether it is primarily rhythmic, tonal, instrumental or vocal, music is part of human evolution; most likely music serves some biological purpose, and it undoubtedly serves a sociological purpose. Music communicates.

Music is also physical-when I hear good rhythms, a good tune, I want to move, to tap my toes, and my children would tell you that I dance around my house when the spirit moves me. Lots of you do to, but you just don’t tell the whole world. Further, there appears to be good evidence in studies that the sounds and rhythms are related to our brain waves and heart beats.

You do not have to read all the research to know that music is powerful in human lives. Powerful in its transcendental powers, to move beyond time, language, social norms, and especially emotion, music truly moves us.

I recall hearing an interview a year or two ago with Studs Terkel, well into his 80s, the great writer of the common person’s story, and the interviewer got to the fact that his beloved wife of nearly fifty years had died some years ago. Terkel was asked why he had not remarried, and he said the best thing he could respond was to point out that most of women wouldn’t know the music, meaning the music he knew. Pointing out that each generation is marked by the music it loves, so that we only have to sing a line and those of our generation usually will know it. (E.g.: If I sing this phrase: I shot the sheriff. . ., people in my age range know the rest of the line of the Bob Marley song, but I did not shoot the deputy.) It is a special kind of connection. This connection also goes to root of the family, it goes on to the nation. There is music that marks us, our origins, our place of belonging.

It always saddens me to know that the music of Richard Wagner, much of which I love, and many people love, is so marred by Wagner’s associations with Hitler. But this association cannot be dismissed, precisely because of these associations, for they are too horrific to ignore.

Of the significance of music one writer stated:

Like food and water, music has nourished [humanity] for generations. Singing a centuries-old song about the power of love, the magnificence of God, or the beauty of the earth even in a language we do not speak can bring tears to our eyes. Music’s power connects us across the barriers of time, culture, and language.

There are those more obvious connections, such as the music of the church/synagogue/temple, the music of ceremonies that herald the wedding, bar mitzvah, birthday, the funeral, music which transmits history as well. The Star Spangled Banner, Yankee Doodle, the Battle Hymn of the Republic, God Bless America; all these have the power to stir our sense of national pride and love of country. And think of all the occasions that begin with the ritual Star Spangled Banner, sports chief among them.

Following the horrible acts of terrorism on 9/11, it was important to millions to feel the unity that the Star Spangled Banner instantly transmitted. Also, Amazing Grace has come to have that same effect as a non-sectarian spiritual song of unity as we unite in mourning.

These powers of music cross all cultures, and point to our similarities even as we note our differences. During the long years of war with various European enemies, the music was still able to move across those boundaries of war. Wagner is the exception. People still listened to Tchaikovsky, and all the great Russian, German, and Austrian composers. Beyond that, learning the music of another culture has a lot to do with our ultimate enjoyment and understanding of that culture. Edith Piaf is France, as an example; the incredible harmonies of the Zulu singers of South Africa is another.

Brian mentioned to me that much of music, such as that our singers are giving us today, is retrospective for him. This goes back to what I mentioned earlier about the generational aspect of music. Music also transports us. There are some songs of the 60s and 70s that instantly transport me to a particular place and time, often seemingly insignificant, but the music has for some reason emblazoned a scene, a setting of days gone by, on my mind. I know this is true for all of you. Those of the World War II generation are probably even more familiar with this aspect of music. The songs of the war, and there were many of that period, often stayed with people, especially the servicemen and women, far better than many of the more fearful aspects of the war.

Music also has the wonderful facility of renewal as later musicians rework the music of former days. For classical music, it is the duty of the conductor and arranger of later times to interpret the music for the modern audience. Certainly of popular music it can be said, what goes around comes around. It always irritated my children for me to hear one of their popular songs and say, “That was from my day.” Of course, much different in most cases with popular music, otherwise, how would it speak to the new generation.

I was lucky to grow up in a house where music was a daily event. My mother was of the radio generation, and it was on much of each day. She also sang a great deal as she went about her work. There was also the music of the church, the old songs that were often known by heart by the regulars. Many of my family members played instruments, like most country people the piano, accordion, guitar, mandolin, banjo, and fiddle were commonly played. Friday evening music sessions at people’s homes were a hold over from days when people made their own entertainment, and while less common today than in those bygone days, making music remains a part of our rural culture.

Not surprisingly, if you listen to the folk music of most of Europe and the near East, it sounds pretty much the same. Based in simple stringed instruments, drumming, flutes, and accordion type instruments, with rather twangy voices to modern ears, there is little doubt that this music has a deep commonality. Perhaps it is that as children we all make much the same kinds of music, and it goes from there to get more involved and complex over time.

Children seem to naturally gravitate to music, to sing, hum, drum unselfconsciously. It is not until they begin to be criticized that the impulse gets dampened. Few things make me sadder than to hear someone say, “I can’t sing.” Or “The teacher told me to just move my lips,” effectively curtailing any future attempts to sing. The fact is that there are very few tone deaf people; but there are many inhibited people. Singing requires a bit of courage, especially if you have ever felt unsure of your voice. But most people who can sing along with the radio can probably learn to sing reasonably well. Still, it is always best to learn early, to develop an ear for what sounds good, which is why it is so important for children to be exposed to lots of music, and lots of kinds of music from their earliest days.

I love this story about an aspired musician:

When Sid McMillan sold his trucking company in 1973, he was a multimillionaire. At age fifty-one, he was still a relatively young man and could do most anything he wanted. One of his great dreams was to conduct an orchestra. He never let the fact that he knew nothing about music interfere with his dream. He assembled an orchestra of classically trained musicians on the lawn of his palatial home, and proceeded to lead them in selections from Wagner.

The musicians of the orchestra understood at once that they must totally disregard what Sid was doing with his baton. But that scarcely solved their problems. Without the guidance of a real conductor, they produced enough cacophony to frighten the animals for miles around. In total disregard of the awful sounds, Sid continued to wave his baton as he had seen Arthur Fiedler and Leonard Bernstein do on television. Appreciating their well-paid gig, the musicians went along with him, and continued meeting regularly to rehearse for two months.

Finally, the cymbalist could take it no longer. Willing to risk his lucrative tenure, he lifted his cymbals during a soft and delicate passage, and with one mighty swipe, delivered the loudest and most resonant cymbal crash the musicians had ever heard. Shocked by the thunderous crash, Sid dropped his baton, and the entire orchestra came to a stop. The resounding cymbal clap rang on and on as though it would never stop.

Finally, after long minutes, the last echoes of that thunder clap died away, and Sid, his face beet red with fury, said, "All right, which one of you wise guys did that?"

Sid had a lot to learn about music!

Music director of the Los Angles Chamber Singers, Peter Rutenberg, states:

As it turns out, research over the last few decades has increasingly shown that music, and in particular the singing and playing of music, helps the brain develop much more fully and extensively, especially in our early years. Music makes us brighter, more intelligent, more logical, more rational, and more capable. It improves study habits and test scores. It builds a better sense of self and community. It aids in our general sense of well-being and improves our quality of life. At times, it brings us closer to the divine in all of us. A recent study even suggests that the act of singing improves the immune system.

Here are lots of good reasons for more of you to get into the choir, especially you tenors, baritones, and basses! You will be smarter and get fewer colds, what more could you ask?

The music that most touches one’s soul, that music that as Rutenberg says, brings us closer to the divine within us all, that is the music that we need. Sometimes, it can even be painful. I have mentioned to Bob before that I simply cannot listen to an orchestral rendering of Albinoni’s Adagio in G without tears coming to my eyes to the extent that I weep as if my dearest had been taken from me. And I do not know why this should be. There is no association that I can call to mind that would account for this; and I have come to believe that this particular piece literally touches the heart strings in my being, my soul. That metaphorical understanding of heartstrings being touched that means our spirit, heart, mind come together in some great and mysterious way that is mystical. Mystical, as in outside the normal experiences of life. The mystical experience is one that affects us so deeply that we are transformed in the moment. Music does this for many people.

I talked to the children earlier about the chant as a way we can use music to relax, to meditate, to in fact achieve a mystical experience if done long enough. The key to the chant is the same key I mentioned about singing; that is, to be uninhibited which can often only happen when we are alone. I realize that it is harder to be uninhibited chanting in the church, especially a Unitarian congregation--but if we did it often enough it wouldn’t be. The monks mentioned in the reading chant to achieve a higher spiritual state, and they are not concerned with their neighbors, only with their own spirits. There is a lesson in that for all of us here.

Occasionally, I have preached about my understanding of God as that spirit of love and life that is present in all people in all places; God that is not confined to any one set of beliefs or narrow understanding. I have long believed that the only understanding I can accept about the nature of God is that God must be universal. None of this my god, their god, or my god says you have to do what I do, etc. There are not a lot of those elemental things; things we all must have, that are beyond culture, religion, or region. The basic needs, in other words: food, water, reproduction and nurture, love, and by all accounts, music, as one of the primary forms of communication. Music is one of those universals, and for most of us just as basic a need as the need for water

Former Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, once said of music:

Music is not a frill. Music is a response to our individuality and our nature, and helps to shape our identity. What is there that can transcend deep difference and stubborn divisions? Music. It has a wonderful universality. It can speak in many languages without a translator. Music does not discriminate.

Music does not discriminate. I love that! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it could be said of most things. Sadly, discrimination is still a powerful force in the world. Music though is available to everyone, can be enjoyed, participated in, advanced by anyone with enough desire to do so.

While many of us would easily say that we cannot imagine a world without music, many others might feel otherwise. Somehow, though, I think it is not really anymore in our imaginations to understand the absence of all music than it is to imagine the absence of all water or all food. For even nature provides rhythm, sounds that rise and fall, which stimulate us in all the ways of our human manufactured music. The bird song, the howling of the wolves, the rippling of water over stones, the rush of wind through the trees, the powerful crashing of thunder, the patter of rain on a metal roof; these have been emulated in composed works enough to teach us that nature makes her own music. So, we would never be entirely free of sound that touches the senses as long as we can hear, and even the deaf feel the rhythms of the world.

Brian Hanson is a faithful member of our choir and the Madrigal Singers in Wilmington, plus he in his middle years took up piano. Brian loves music. Many of you love music. I have long believed that we will take care of what we love, so I do not think music is in danger either here at Mill Creek congregation or elsewhere. But I do hope that those of you who feel music is not your thing, or that you have nothing to give or to gain from attending to music, I hope you will reconsider and go to a concert of some music you think you might like. I say this because I believe with the 17th Century poet William Congreve, who wrote, music hath charms to soothe the savage breast (often misquoted as beast, though it may apply). Or, as we would say today, music has the ability to calm the troubled or angry heart. This is the real and spiritual value of music for all of us, that when we are uneasy, distraught, unhappy, unsure, or troubled in any way, spending some time with music can be a meditation for the troubled or wounded soul. This is what has kept us singing the same songs with variations on a theme, sometimes incredible and beautiful variations, but singing and changing the songs down through our human history.

In one of our hymns is the refrain, we are singing, singing for our lives. When we sing, we are singing with our voices, but we are not singing without cause, for we are truly singing for our spirits, our lives. The music of the ages is the music and the story of human experience. So let us rejoice as King David taught, sing, play upon our instruments, and lift up our voices in praise to that which is divine in every one, now and forever. Amen

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

February 27, 2005

Give Me Air

This is the second in a series of four sermons on the elements of the earth that I planned for this 2004-05 church year, the first was on water at our Ingathering Water Communion, and today, the second element for consideration is air. After all, these elemental things, water, fire, earth/soil, and air, are all related to life, the existence of all living things. These things which we take so much for granted, but without which we cannot live, which make them both miraculous and mundane, in that paradoxical state that draws us to ignore what is all around us, but on occasion be inspired to see that there is danger in such ignoring, danger in such ignorance.

Let’s have a breathing exercise. I want you to breathe normally. (The odd thing about asking anyone to breathe normally is that almost immediately one becomes aware of the breath, and feels compelled to breathe deeply.) Nonetheless, I want you to breathe as normally as possible, while I tell you a little story, but keep your consciousness on your breath and I will help you.

One time I was playing with some of my cousins, we were all about six to nine, and we were being silly like kids often are, when one of my cousins, Jimmy, put a sofa pillow (Are you breathing normally?), one filled with goose down on my head and then sat on the pillow. I could not move, and my face was crushed into the back of the old overstuffed sofa, and the pillow was over the side and top and bottom of my head. (Are you breathing normally?) I was upset, first because this cousin of mine, Jimmy, was an overgrown bully, who was always doing mean stuff to the weaker and smaller of us, and I was thrashing around, and I could hear Jimmy saying, “Say Uncle.” Even if I had said it, no one could have heard it, for he was making a lot of racket, as were a couple others, but the main reason I didn’t say Uncle, was I could not. I could not breathe, and the harder I struggled, the more he pushed on the pillow. (Are you breathing normally?) I remember thinking I was going to die, and it felt like a great, lead-hard lump in my chest was keeping me from breathing in. (Are you breathing normally?) I struggled further, but I was perfectly pinned and just a skinny little girl with no way to get any purchase on my tormentor, or move, and it felt like my lungs were going to explode, I was in all reality suffocating. The panic which the suffocation was creating. (Are you breathing normally?) I was in a panic, and that terror, that panic that had been driving me to struggle all of a sudden passed away and the next thing I knew, someone was shaking me, and I could hear one of my little brothers screaming, “You’ve done and killed her!” (Grammar was not his long suite at age four.). My first words amidst the fussing of relatives who suddenly appeared, was, Give me air. I was gulping air, almost trying to refill and recharge my emptied lungs, and I too caught up in the buzzing in my head to appreciate that some backsides were being walloped (this was the early Fifties). (Are you breathing normally?)

For the rest of that day I kept taking these big deep, gulping breaths of air. How precious it had suddenly become. And ever after that, I could never see this mean cousin Jimmy without remembering how scary it was to be suffocated, and reacting with the need to take some deep, deep breaths. The last time I saw him, some twenty years ago, I reminded him of the time he almost suffocated me. True to his nature, he remained unrepentant.

Are you breathing normally? I hope so. I hope you can appreciate and perhaps understand why mystics of many of the world’s religions have found deep spiritual presence in the very act of consciously breathing.

It is, though, interesting how almost any talk about lack of air, seems to cause us to breathe more deeply. It is almost as if we are programmed to notice the labored breathing of others, even the suggestion of, and need to breathe more deeply. This is also believed to be at least one of the possible keys to the yawn reflex. You know, someone yawns deeply, and everyone around yawns too, or stifles the response.

Dr. Alfred Tomatis, wrote:

[T]his breath of life which breathes in each one of us is what one basically calls freedom. In biology it's called Life, in affectivity it's called Love, in psychology it's called Consciousness, and in theology it's called God. The difficulty is to bring these all together within everyone's understanding

Air, so important yet so neglected until we do not have it, or until we can see it with all its load of pollutants, this air is indeed the very life of life.

The word for breathing, inspiration, comes to us from the Latin, inspiratio, meaning to breathe or to blow upon. No doubt you also recognize the word for its religious association, for inspiration means also to have the spirit of the divine breathed into one. The writers and the words of the Bible are called inspired by many religious groups, for it is believed that the Holy Spirit, or holy air one might say, is breathed into them. So inspiration has the quality of the supernatural about it from pre-Christian times, and stated as absolutely so by later Christians and Moslems.

So the words spirit, inspire, inspiration, inspirational, are first and foremost about the breath of life as holy and miraculous.

Now you do not have to be someone who believes in the supernatural or in miracles (meaning caused by some outside or unknowable force), to think of our way of deriving our living air as rather wonderful; and to be able to breathe as miraculous for its reliability and elegance of ease and simplicity.

Further, we know that without the air that we breathe, the air that all animals and organic things need, without the air there is no life, no spirit. Which is all the more reason for us to be concerned about all the factors that are at play in the world today that threaten our supply of clean air.

I recall a Cree Native American Indian prophecy I read that says: Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten. We could add, only after the last drop of clean water is being drunk or the last breath of clean air is being breathed will we find that money cannot be drunk or breathed. For it is largely about money we are talking when we talk about all pollution and its causes. The reason our government has refused to sign the Kyoto Treaty is that it might hurt our economy.

There are two critical factors we must be aware of, and for some reason after several years of real work toward environmental awareness in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, the whole effort seems to have been pushed aside in the last couple of decades and this is to me a grave error of complacency. These two critical factors of which I am speaking are over-population and over-use (and careless use) of natural resources: the oil, the land, the water, and the air. We now have a planet with over six-billion people. When I was that little girl being tormented by my cousin, the world had a less than three billion people, and three billion was the figure I was regularly taught all the way through high school.

According to the U.S. government census data, in 1950 there were approximately 2 ½ billion people, by 1980, there were 4 ½ billion, and by 2000, 6 billion, with a conservative projection that there will be 8 billion by 2025, just twenty short years from now, and by 2050, about the time my granddaughters are fully grown women, we will be edging up to 10 billion. So population is the root problem of most of the world’s problems, from immigration, nationalism (which is a nice word for protecting our land and resources from others), deforestation, water pollution and loss of vital water supplies, and, all related in one way or another to air and atmosphere, with air pollution, acid rain, and the hole in the ozone layer. All of those issues, those critical human problems, are worsening every day. All forms of pollution are getting worse worldwide, and will not get better unless we take action.

The capitalistic nations of the west, like ours, are interested in selling things to all these people, or using the over-populated poorer parts of the world for cheap labor, to make more things to sell more people, and all that making and selling leads to wasting, for we do a pitiful job of using our resources wisely, so lots of food and stuff--for want of a better term for all the material goods sold and bought--lots of it winds up in landfills and dumps in the rich countries.

The air is suffering from our foolishness, for all the systems suffer. The causes are multitude, but just look at the roads, and the number cars in our garages and driveways to see one primary source. Yet, what are we to do who find ourselves with jobs and housing that puts us in areas where there is little or no public transport? What are we to do, when governments of either major party come and go without addressing the most serious of the problems of pollution? It is another paradox.

We seem to have lost our ability to know when enough is enough; perhaps we never had it. I often feel that while we have the ability to address and correct all these environmental problems, it just does not seem to be in human nature to do the right thing until there is nothing else to do. We will not do what we ought to do, to correct these problems, until we do not have any other choice. It is not a kind evaluation of humanity.

Knowing when to stop. That is the real answer. We as a people of this great western capitalist system need to learn when to stop. Our world, and state governing bodies need to know when to stop. You and I need to know when to stop. As Wendell Berry’s barber had the good sense to know, the real brilliance, or artistry if you will; the real consciousness is in knowing when to stop.

Just how polluted does the air have to be before we say it is time to stop? There is a realm of environmental justice that is also connected to this, for if people are poor and live in polluted places, little will be done, but the better off a community is, the more likely that its citizens will say that something has to be done. But, even in the upscale communities, air is no longer as clean as it once was, and more studies are showing that the rates of asthma in children (as just one by product) has been growing dramatically in the last few decades.

One of problems related to air is that most of us do not know exactly what is in the air we breathe. Ever since I moved to Delaware in 1995, I have heard that we have a lot of undesirable things in the air we breathe. I can’t tell; I seem to breathe as well here as in Massachusetts where I move from, but then in Massachusetts we had a lot of acid rain evidently from air pollution to the west of the state, and of course we had our own pollution in the air. You and I may be breathing in a lot of harmful things and not feel the effects immediately, if ever, while many will, and we may or may not ever learn who suffered and from what. Unlike the Bhopal, India disaster where 800,000 sleeping people breathed in air suffused with poisonous gas from an accidental release at Union Carbide plant in December 1984. That is the extreme case, but from little to the extreme is a wide continuum of healthy to unhealthy air that we are all contributing to the with pollutants from our cars, our sprays, our refrigerants, and on and on.

Concern for our air, though, is not new, not just a problem of modern times. Surprisingly, to me at least, the history of air science, starts with the Ionian philosophers of ancient Greece.

Plato called the ether beyond air the "nurse of generation[s]" from which sprang fire, earth, and water; Aristotle posited a theory of air as "exhalations" rising out of the earth. When trapped underground, he wrote, these exhalations created metals like copper, gold, and iron; released into the atmosphere, they became the very air we breathed. (from Michael Levitin’s review of Gasp)

In his recent book on air, Gasp, by Joe Sherman, et al, points out that the evolution of the planet that created our air, created the circumstances that allowed for life as we know it to arise. We scarcely can appreciate the beauty and mystery of this miracle gas we breathe, indeed must breathe, to survive and thrive. He also points to the major source of air pollution as industrialization, beginning in England in the late 18th century and rising ever since world wide with industry emissions, and especially internal combustion engines of automobiles, trucks, buses, and airplanes.

George Burns, who had a comment for everything, once said as he was getting into his later years: It's hard for me to get used to these changing times. I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty. There will be few around now who can remember when the air was truly clean.

The problems of air pollution that we are dealing with now have come to us courtesy of our industrial age and our ancestors who were, contrary to what you might think, aware of the problem of pollution in the cities even then. One December in 1892, in London the air was so bad, that people were literally dropping in the streets, over one thousand people died in a three day period.

There seems little doubt, that while we have done a great deal to improve some of the industrial pollution in the western world, it continues to increase as industrialization and automobiles spread around the world. The glitch in this moving from west to south or east, is that the air is traveling all around oblivious of our artificial borders.

So, at this point you might ask: Pastor, what does all this air and pollution talk have to do with the spiritual matters I came to Sunday Service for anyway? If you have not heard it before, this is a good time to learn my central religious philosophy, which is this: All of life is spiritual.

All of life is spiritual precisely for the reason that the words spirit and inspiration come from the same root source, to breathe. To breathe is our concrete proof that we are alive. That spirit within each one of us is moot in this reality without the ability to sustain the life which made it arise, or from which it arose. As I have told our teenagers in the Coming of Age program when they test me on this philosophy, you never know the spiritual significance of anything until you either lose it or come near to losing it. We rarely see the spirit that lives and moves in all that is our lives, all the things we take for granted, like the ability to move freely, to have good health, to see the sky, to hear the rain, to smell the sweet green growth of spring, to feel the wind on your face, to take a good deep draught of spiratio, air; that is, until we can no longer. Then the real value of all these things rises up in our souls-our minds-our spirits with keen relevance. Then we know how sweet the air, and water, and green growth can be, and how sweet they are in truth; and then we are humbled by our awareness. Then we become enlightened.

From our enlightenment we then are called to teach, preach, act in whatever ways the spirit calls us, and maybe all three. That is why I say give me air, give me clean air, let me fill my lungs so that I know I am alive; fill your lungs so that you feel your aliveness, and let us call ourselves and our leaders to action. Otherwise, what will be our legacy to the young coming up now? This is one part of our mission as a people of faith: to speak the truth in love, and to act in accordance to that truth.

I heard a speaker say one time that if people really did believe in God as they profess, then the world would be very much nicer than it is. I say that if we really believed in whatever we profess about what is most important, about ultimate reality, then the world would be a much nice, holier place. As Dr. Tomatis said:

[T]his breath of life which breathes in each one of us is what one basically calls freedom. In biology it's called Life, in affectivity it's called Love, in psychology it's called Consciousness, and in theology it's called God. The difficulty is to bring these all together within everyone's understanding

Amen