OPENING WORDS

We come this morning from our many experiences

And we come with different needs and expectations.

We put aside our separate selves for a moment

And join together for a common purpose.

We inhale individually

And exhale singing together;

Blending melody with words of praise for the holy.

We experience the holy in the hymns that we sing,

We work together to blend our voices with others

We give and receive sound,

We share a common purpose,

We experience the holy.

-Ila H. Soltzfus, UUMN member

CHALICE READING

Ring the bell that still can ring,

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything,

That’s how the light gets in.   (Leonard Cohen)

I light our chalice in the spirit of peace, and love.

HOMILY

When we laugh,

When we sing,

When we cry,

When we run,

We are one.

Brian Tate’s powerful gospel choir piece inspired our Music Sunday today.  Our need to create art, and in particular to make music, is one thing all human cultures have in common.  We all share the need for self-expression.  Within our own culture music takes on many forms and styles; but no matter the style, music so often illustrates and resonates human emotion, silent truths.  Through music we can even join as one.

Speaking of marvels, I am alive

together with you, when I might have been

alive with anyone under the sun.

The odds against us are endless,

our chances of being alive together

statistically nonexistent;

still we have made it alive in a time

when rationalists in square hats

and hatless Jehova’s Witnesses

agree it is almost over,

alive with our lively children

who –but for endless ifs—

might have missed out on being alive

together with marvels and follies

and longing and lies and wishes

and error and humor and mercy

and journeys and voices and faces

and colors and summers and mornings

and knowledge and tears and chance.

from Alive Together by Lisel Mueller

As we look back on another week of devastating war, trying to grasp how this degree of hatred and violence is still possible in the 21^st century, it seems more imperative than ever to focus on our common ground.  How are we really so different?  What commonalities bind us together?  It would be difficult to fight with such conviction if you realize that your enemy is really just another human being with strengths and weaknesses, just like you.   Leonard Bernstein said, “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”

 People have been making music since the first coconut shells where clapped together in a cave man rock band… Music is so often powerfully healing.  I shall never forget the study that came out a couple of years ago citing how a group of scientists tested a large choral group before and after rehearsal, finding that the saliva of the singers actually developed disease-fighting properties during the two hours they sang that night.  Our choir will tell you how nurturing it can be for them to come here to rehearse, especially after a long, grueling day.

No matter who you are or where you live, you can sing.  No matter how much money you earn or how poor or desperate your situation, you can beat a drum.  No matter whether you are a baby or a grandfather or a preteen, you can write a song.  No matter whether you have a golden voice like Pavarotti or a gravelly one like Bob Dylan, you can always sing. 

I love this quote by Don Alan Hall:

Songs are corridors for memory,

Returning us to truths

Once lost would kill our futures.

              Sometimes I try to imagine what music is being played on an evening’s breeze in Iraq, to try to still the anxiety of a household with young men who have gone off to fight and may never come home.  I wonder what tune a mother in Afghanistan sings to her baby to help her sleep through the violence outside their window.  I wonder what melody a banjo player plucks on the back porch of his home in the Appalachain mountains, knowing his son in the reserves has just been called up.  And there’s always the guy in the trenches with a harmonica or guitar, calming down the nerves of his buddies.  Or these days someone probably has a music-designing program on his or her laptop computer which plays dance-club tracks from the convoy speakers.

Singing is my passion, it’s what I know best.  Sometimes I sing a prayer.  It’s humming, creating resonance, making an attempt to reach my own higher self in harmony with the universe.  Soaking in white light and letting it flow.  Attempting to spread the white light of love and interconnectedness that is always there, if we would just stop for a minute.  Wouldn’t it be cool if the whole war could stop for five minutes so we could all hum gently together.  Just imagine what that resonance would be like.

Yet much of the world seems to have forgotten how alike we really are.  After all, we all sleep, and laugh, and sing, and cry, and bleed, and hope, and love, just like Brian Tate’s lyrics point out.  Maybe our music, if given a chance, could help us remember that we have so much to celebrate in our humanness, in our togetherness, in our commonality.

Paul Robeson said,

I shall take my voice wherever there are those who want to hear the melody of freedom or the words that might inspire hope and courage in the face of despair and fear.  My weapons are peaceful, for it is only by peace that peace can be attained.  The song of freedom must prevail.

Music touches and emanates from the deep parts of us from which we laugh and cry, even if the subject matter is everyday life.   Music can express the light in and around us, the connection to the divine, and expression of the ordinary. 

After the service, I invite you to share with one another the names of songs that changed your life.

May your song touch your neighbor, and her song touch her neighbor too, and on and on like the ripples in a pond.  Let’s focus on our inner light, our inner commonality.  Let’s send love out into the universe with our music.  It can’t hurt.

CLOSING WORDS

Fire of the spirit,

life of the lives of creatures,

spiral of sanctity,

bond of all natures,

glow of charity,

lights of clarity,

taste of sweetness to the fallen,

be with us and hear us.

Composer of all things,

joy in the glory,

strong honor, be with us and hear us.

Reading 493, Prayer

Hildegarde of Bingen (adapted)