This article is an excerpt from the Spring 2024 Parish News
Climate. Middle East. Mental Health. Political division. Ukraine. Racial violence. Housing. Haiti. Inflation. Immigration. Income inequality.
The list of crises that face our world, our nation, our community, and our selves is not a short one. We have access to non-stop information, day and night, with more headlines in our pockets than we could have read in a newspaper on any given day just merely twenty years ago. Our minds are tugged left and right by our heads and our hearts, both of which care a great deal about the crises that never seem to end.
To drown it all out: that is the first, and most convenient reaction to the chaos that is our world. “Stop worrying about things you can’t change,” or quotes like it, can be found in our Facebook feeds, sewn onto throw pillows, in fortune cookies, or on the lips of well-meaning friends offering a crumb of comfort.
In truth, that is what most of us do with most of the crises that are just too big and scary for us to comprehend. After all, who has the brainpower to think about all of these things that—let’s face it—are truly beyond our individual control. But...
What if there was another way? What if another model emerged, one that allowed individuals, or a group of people, to process not only the big and scary things impacting the world around us, but even the seemingly bigger-and-scarier things impacting the world in our homes, in our families, in ourselves?
As a student at Westminster Choir College, I met with my entire department of Sacred Music students each Monday night for “Sacred Music Lab.” This zero-credit course was a requirement for all eight semesters of our degree, and we were tasked with planning liturgy, discussing worship, selecting music and scripture and art and then—when we had used every last creative and insightful bone in our bodies—we would create a worship bulletin and hold the service.
Sometimes, we invited other students from campus to worship with us. Other times, we kept it all to ourselves. The most memorable of these closed-door services included a time for “sharing of joys and concerns.” If you’ve been a member of any church for any period of time, you’ve likely experienced this yourself. A leader, whether clergy or a lay person, invites the group to share items that would then be scribbled down onto a piece of paper and incorporated into a prayer.
This is not the “new way forward,” as alluded to previously. In itself, this is not a novel concept in any way. Neither is the aspect of those services which made the communal sharing as impactful as it was, which was that, when we had finished, we sang.
All sorts of Sunday morning liturgies include a “Pastoral Prayer,” “Elder’s Prayer,” or “Prayers of the People” (see: 270 Woodbridge Avenue for the most accessible example; each Sunday at approximately 10:20 AM). Most of these liturgies follow this moment with song. What we did in Sacred Music Lab was not unique. What was novel, however, was the way we framed this experience in our minds.
For students at Westminster, we understood that music offered a way to process things that are too big for our hearts and minds alone. Privileged access to the Divine, a window into God’s Love, music—especially in the context of worship with our peers by our side—allowed us to process the joys and concerns, the crises, the things we could or couldn’t change in a way that nothing else could.
My prayer for our community is not that we upend our liturgy, is not that we rid ourselves of the cell phones that plague us with endless frightening headlines (although there may be some merit to that proposition), and it is not that we all join a choir and have personal musical revolutions (although I could make a strong argument for that, too).
My prayer for our church is that we look a little bit deeper. The music we sing, the people around us, the Holy Mysteries of worship: they offer more than meets the eye. These essential things can breathe New Life into this broken, messy, and ugly world.
Take time.
Notice: look, listen, think.
