TL/DR: I arose with a Biblical bug up my butt. It’s a biographical thing. I blame…my college professors, Ugaritic love poetry…and some other people, places, and things.
We’re all mostly boring to ourselves, but it’s often interesting to other people to hear about how someone develops a part of their lives that’s important to them. I particularly appreciated how your faith has been / continues to be built in part by aesthetic beauty and by hearing/making music. As You Know, musicologists talk a lot about how church music was intended at least partly as a pedagogical /evangelical device, just like all the art that conveyed Biblical scenes, comix-style, to the mostly-illiterate viewers who could not have read the actual book if their lives depended on it. But because music is less literal in its depictions, fewer musicologists have been able to make a case for how music does that work, So that’s a good hat to pull out of a rabbit, and an interesting hat too.
This is the challenge. What excites me is…hard to write about. There’s just too much cognitive static…too much shiny shit. Spiritual memoir? My opinions on contemporary religious issues? I’m just another opinionated white dude. Who cares what I think? I don’t. LOL
The things that are hard to write about are usually the most worth writing about. If it were easy, everyone would write about them. This is also what makes them interesting to read, q.e.d.
This was very moving for me. I started singing in an Episcopal choir at age 13. Zi sang for years in concert choirs, never giving up until I was about 78 (that happens for sopranos with good sense, and I hate alto). The Messiah by Handel, is so overdone and yet, I know no better way of understanding the texts tied to the Christian understanding of Jesus as the Messiah. When Handel wrote it, he went to an Anglican bishop (possibly Irish, I don’t remember). That Bishop gave him the essential texts that we now know through hearing this music. There is no better teaching than to sing that particular piece of music — overdone as it is. I’ve also performed Bach’s St. Matthew Passion; the B minor Mass, and so many other major works that used scripture as a foundation for the music. Some of the composers were atheists, yet the music still rings with that Divine spirit.
I can’t help but remember that the Druids had no written history. Their history and culture were contained in song. Bards were a lower rank of Druid. Also, the music that you and I have sung somehow enhances the spiritual meaning that is sometimes overlooked in the plain text. Blessings on your head for writing and publishing this.
This was a wonderful ride. More, please.
Really? Interesting. This was one of the harder pieces I’ve felt the need to write. Why? It’s boring. LOL I’m trying to change my attitude about that.
We’re all mostly boring to ourselves, but it’s often interesting to other people to hear about how someone develops a part of their lives that’s important to them. I particularly appreciated how your faith has been / continues to be built in part by aesthetic beauty and by hearing/making music. As You Know, musicologists talk a lot about how church music was intended at least partly as a pedagogical /evangelical device, just like all the art that conveyed Biblical scenes, comix-style, to the mostly-illiterate viewers who could not have read the actual book if their lives depended on it. But because music is less literal in its depictions, fewer musicologists have been able to make a case for how music does that work, So that’s a good hat to pull out of a rabbit, and an interesting hat too.
This is the challenge. What excites me is…hard to write about. There’s just too much cognitive static…too much shiny shit. Spiritual memoir? My opinions on contemporary religious issues? I’m just another opinionated white dude. Who cares what I think? I don’t. LOL
The things that are hard to write about are usually the most worth writing about. If it were easy, everyone would write about them. This is also what makes them interesting to read, q.e.d.
Thank you for this varied approach to reading scripture, wrestling, singing, and noticing. Loved it.
Hans, thank you for this comment and the encouragement!
You’ve saved liturgy for me today, when I was feeling pessimistic about it.
That means a lot. Thanks. I’d love to chat sometime about the liturgy. I’m a big nerd about ritual theory and such.
Me too! Any time.
This was very moving for me. I started singing in an Episcopal choir at age 13. Zi sang for years in concert choirs, never giving up until I was about 78 (that happens for sopranos with good sense, and I hate alto). The Messiah by Handel, is so overdone and yet, I know no better way of understanding the texts tied to the Christian understanding of Jesus as the Messiah. When Handel wrote it, he went to an Anglican bishop (possibly Irish, I don’t remember). That Bishop gave him the essential texts that we now know through hearing this music. There is no better teaching than to sing that particular piece of music — overdone as it is. I’ve also performed Bach’s St. Matthew Passion; the B minor Mass, and so many other major works that used scripture as a foundation for the music. Some of the composers were atheists, yet the music still rings with that Divine spirit.
I can’t help but remember that the Druids had no written history. Their history and culture were contained in song. Bards were a lower rank of Druid. Also, the music that you and I have sung somehow enhances the spiritual meaning that is sometimes overlooked in the plain text. Blessings on your head for writing and publishing this.