On Beauty

Writing prompt week two.

I can still hear Phyllis Tickle’s drawl as she told her story. She had this way of being folksy that some believed camouflaged her brilliance. And she was brilliant. I miss her friendship very much. Once, she told us how she was with a college student talking about the virgin birth. They were in a group of people discussing the validity of such a thing, the impossibility of it all. The student had remained silent throughout the conversation. Afterward, as people were saying their farewells, Phyllis asked the student, “What do you think. Did it happen?”

“I don’t know,” he responded. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

She nodded. He continued.

“All I know is that whether or not it happened doesn’t matter to me. It’s just so beautiful, it has to be true.”

I share that little story to share a story of my own. You see, I was never convinced of God in Christ as a child and a young man. I was an avowed agnostic. I saw no reason to invest in the theological infrastructure of any religious tradition. Sure, I thought, there is a god or divine spark or oversoul, but no one religion can claim it. I was happy in my agnosticism. Then I discovered Byrd.

Ave, ave verum corpus

Natum de Maria Virgine

I was in college myself then. I had been encouraged freshman year by a friend to try out for the college choir. I didn’t know the difference between a tenor and a zither, but she was cute and I was smitten, so I auditioned. Fortunately for me, the choir director, Dr. Erb, was desperate for male voices, basses especially. I’m a bass/baritone sort and even though I could not read a lick of music at the time, he took a gamble on me. I’m forever grateful that he did.

Vere passum immolatum

In cruce pro homine

I don’t know when it was exactly. It may have been sophomore year. But Dr Erb decided that the group would sing William Byrd’s Ave verum corpus. It was such a foreign sound to a boy who had been raised by an Elvis fan. It took me some time to begin to understand it. Melodic line stacked and folded upon melodic line, it captivated me.

Cujus latus perforatum

unda fluxit sanguine

I was struck by its beauty. I was astonished at Byrd’s talent and devotion and how he partnered the text with the music. Byrd, some say, wrote music for small ensembles, clandestine groups of Catholic believers in Reformation England. His music was an act of rebellion, the beauty of it all a protest against the religious persecution of his time. And such beauty. Singing it was sublime.

Esto nobis praeforatum

In mortis examine

Ah! So this is God! I remember standing in the campus chapel singing the piece one Sunday morning and it was as if the skies opened for me and I came to believe. Right there. Right then. I was saved in the choir loft. My intuitions, my agnosticism, had finally found a home in Christianity. Beauty had done me in.

O Dulcis

O Pie.

O Jesu Fili Mariae

Miserere mei

Amen.