I attended a meeting last night of the music department at a church I sometimes help out at during big holidays. They have an annual (well, only two years so far) cookout at the director’s home. He asked several questions which piqued my theological antennae. First, what was your mountain top moment for the year? Your best memory of our music? Lastly, what do you think the our Brand represents? What does it say?
For me and several other singers who spoke up, the liturgies surrounding Easter were the highlights. It was mostly the same music that’s done from year to year, but something about it this year felt more engaged spiritually. Some people commented that the intentionality of the directors towards making spiritually connected music made its way over into the music we were all making together. Someone said that her experience felt less performative and more ministerial. This led to several people commenting that they feel more like ministers when they perform, trying to bring the congregation in to be part of the experience and trying to extend their intentions outward as well. Singing as ministry is founded in the scriptures, “Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts.” (Eph 5:19) Whether performative or ministerial, I thought about word bubbles, meaning spheres, and semantics.
Word bubbles came to mind when I was trying to articulate the dynamics of communication to my husband after we left. Whenever you say something to someone, their ability to understand you depends on a host of things like their ability to comprehend the words you are saying. Think of whatever you are trying to communicate as a bubble with a variety of meanings attached to it, floating around. The person receiving it has to choose one of those meanings based on their life history, how they’ve heard this phrase before, how they’ve heard you refer to it before, etc. See, they come with their own bubble around themselves with a variety of interpretations of what you’re saying. Only when these two bubbles intersect or overlap can actual communication happen.
My husband and I were watching old episodes of the Ed Sullivan Show over the weekend, which was such a treat. That was the definition of a variety show: A guy from Japan spinning a top on the edge of a fan, Leontyne Price singing Vissi D’arte, a dance group doing a tap number from Paint Your Wagon, Frankie Valli unironically singing about walking like a man, and of course, Topo Gigio. We were talking about Leontyne and how old she would’ve been during the performance, which was from 1965, when I asked, “How late did this show run?” Mike thought for a second, and replied, “No later than 7pm, usually.” I was asking what year the show ended its run, but Mike heard what time the show typically ended. Now we’ve been together since 2009, so our meaning spheres are usually very closely aligned. Sometimes we not only finish each other’s sentences, but we hear a phrase, connect it to the lyrics of some opera or Broadway show, and instantly start singing a tune at the same time. But in this instance, our context clues hilariously failed our attempt at communication.
Communicating in church through music comes with its own set of dynamics, as we all have our own received theologies, our own ways of interpreting musical expressions, and our own ways of receiving inspiration. As a cantor or a soloist, you have to invite the congregation inside your own meaning bubble in order to convey your meaning. This is easy to say, but nearly impossible to accomplish, which is where my pneumatology comes in. I believe that the Holy Spirit resides in the interstitial space between our meaning bubbles, bringing new meaning to old bubbles and old meaning to new bubbles. I believe that when the Holy Spirit is present, we can achieve levels of communication we never thought possible. Because as the body of Christ, we all have one thing in common: the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. This Spirit connects our hearts and our minds both internally and externally. The Holy Spirit is also highly active during artistic endeavors like music or theatre, giving us new insights we never before imagined. As the agent of connection, the Holy Spirit sparks communication between meaning spheres we can’t quite manage to get to overlap.
This does not absolve humanity from the responsibility of attempting to bring our contexts together, or trying to understand the way someone else is thinking before communicating. In fact, ignoring each other’s contexts is a guaranteed way to never communicate. This is why we must strive at understanding one another, and why social media has been so corrosive to our national dialogue. We hear what we want and assume everyone hears us exactly as we intend. If we get negative feedback, BLOCK. This is easy to do online, but much more difficult to do in person. We must all tap into the Holy Spirit, “In whom we live and move and have our being,” (Acts 17:28) as a way to forge new dialogues, ones that may be difficult and uncomfortable but ones that bring us all to new understandings.
Music is a fantastic way to begin the process, as it begins communication without words. Finding that combination of musical communication and liturgical communication can only be done by seeking out and allowing space for the Holy Spirit to act. We cannot force communication to happen, any more than we can force someone else to understand us. By allowing room for the Holy Spirit to work, we can see God’s kindom manifest on earth.
Embodied Theology 