"Mass Movements - Music As Salvation"

Liturgical Materials for Sunday the 21^st of October, 2001

Mark Belletini, Minister First Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbus, Ohio

Opening Words [Next] [back to top]

We are here
to soar on wings of music
as we celebrate life
despite the tough days in the world.
Come, yellow leaves and silver skies,
Come silence and word and image,
Come sorrow and joy, join our worship

(assembly) And may our reason and our passion keep us true to ourselves, true to each other,
and true to those shared visions of what we may together become.

Preface to the Silence [Next] [back to top]
Gloria in Excelsis Hineh Mah Tov Umah Nayim, Shevet Achim Gam Yahad, Om Mane Padme Hum, Allahu Akbar

Form is Emptiness
And Emptiness is Form,
O Saraputra, Spirit of Life
Beautiful sounds in a hundred languages,
come unto me vowels and consonants,
chanted and sung, the mystery of all things
left mysterious in the sheer wonder of sounds,
sing in my heart, in all hearts, in each heart
the mystery no mortal can name,
the why of things,
the reality underneath it all,
the ah in amen and alleluia,
the spaces between the notes,
the nuptial bed of light and shadow,
the spiritual tightrope that demands
our balance and alertness and mindfulness
at all times so that we fall not…
oh Silence that embraces all things,
the living and the dead,
the near and the far,
the very sound of music itself,
come to me, come to me.

Silence

Today the silence is suffused with knowledge of grief near and far. Nearby, the murder of a local social worker Nancy Fitzgivens, who was married to Clovis Dawson, a man whom many in this congregation know; and far away, the continuing mayhem in the Middle East, where violence and accusation continue to reign. The fears, rumors, and mistrust in our days do not make for the most nourishing feast. Therefore let us be glad to remember those in our lives we love, those who love us, those whose lives we have been privileged to know intimately. Blest are the names of these, our sisters and brothers, which we speak aloud or hold in the silent embrace of our hearts.

Naming

Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh. Adonai
Alhamdulilla. Kyrie

O Music that bonds to the human heart,
O Music composed by Love's longing for itself…
embrace now our fears, our joys, our dreams…  

First Reading [Next] [back to top]
is an excerpt from an essay by Ursula K. LeGuin "An die Musik" which is a German phrase meaning, my friend Tom tells me, simply "On Music."

What good is music? None…and that is the point. To the world and its states and armies and Leaders, music says "You are irrelevant." And, arrogant and gentle as a god, to the suffering, it says only "Listen." For being saved is not the point. Music saves nothing. Merciful, uncaring, it denies and breaks down all the shelters, the houses human beings build for themselves, that they may see the sky.

Second Reading [Next] [back to top]
comes from playwright William Styron's poignant 1990 autobiography Darkness Visible

My wife had gone to bed, and I had forced myself to watch the tape of a movie in which a young actress, who had been in a play of mine, was cast in a small part. At one point in the film, which was set in late-nineteenth-century Boston, the characters moved down the hallway of a music conservatory, beyond the walls of which, from unseen musicians, came a contralto voice, a sudden soaring passage from the Brahms Alto Rhapsody.

This sound, which like all music - indeed, like all pleasure - I had been numbly unresponsive to for months, pierced my heart like a dagger, and in a flood of swift recollection I thought of all the joys the house had known: the children who had rushed through its rooms, the festivals, the love and work…

Sermon: Mass Movements - Music As Salvation  [Next] [back to top]

When I sat on the Hymnbook Commission, one of the first things we did, naturally, was to get "the lay of the land." We decided we needed to sing through all the previous hymnbooks of the Unitarians and the Universalists, including local ones, like the Los Angeles congregation's songbook.

As we sang hour after hour, our clear and unbending individual tastes began to surface. Some of us hated the old songs from the Victorian age, some of us loved them. Some of us thrilled to folk-songs by Malvina Reynolds from the Los Angeles songbook, and others thought they were trite. Some of us thought that the last truly great composer was Bach. Others felt that the B-Minor Mass was the most boring piece of music ever written. Some liked jazz, others didn't get it. Some thought that rock music was the future, others that it was a passing fad of the twentieth century. Some of us liked John Cage, others had never heard of John Cage.

All of these differences…strong differences…in musical taste surprised us. We had come to our first meeting figuring that our real debates would be about words…you know, the kinds of theological words we thought we could fairly use. We imagined we would debate words like God and Jesus. We never thought we would have to argue whether jazz, rock, Shaker hymns or Ethiopian Chants were viable alter-natives for modern worship.

So we decided to each talk about our own personal history with music, and why we developed the tastes that we did. This conversation proved fruitful, actually, and it helped smooth out our work immensely. Understanding has a way of making you get out of the way of your own wisdom.

For example, I mentioned how music was never much part of my earliest years. Oh I learned Ring Around the Rosy and Happy Birthday to You as a child like most of us did, but my parents owned only a rudimentary record player that could take 78's. And the only 78's we had were scratchy things filled with awful Italian pop music, like Pupalina. We never listened to music on the radio, either, only to shows like Gunsmoke.

At age 9, I did begin to hear songs on the radios of my friends…One Eyed One Horned Flying Purple People Eater comes to mind… unfortunately. I also heard Elvis, Little Richard and the early Beach Boys. My most overwhelming introduction to music began when my parents sent me to a parochial grade school. At Guardian Angels in Detroit, we attended services every morning before classes. We all learned to sing at least 25 different musical masses, in a variety of styles, chant, modern, romantic, and when I was older, even some jazz. I knew all the parts, the Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei and still know all the Latin and Greek words from memory, even though the translations of these words no longer serve my religious yearnings anymore.

My introduction to so-called classical music dates from my eleventh year. My grandfather Umberto took me to the Metropolitan Opera. We saw Madama Butterfly by Puccini. Now, I don't know whether it was because it was my first piece of live theatre, or because of the tear-jerking plot, but I knew immediately I was hooked. My grandfather was pleased. "This is your music!" he said, commenting on its Italian origins. "Learn to love it." I told him I already did. And he beamed.

Three years after I had told that story to the Hymnbook Commission, Fred, a friend and member of that commission, called me up at midnight one night. I picked up the phone expecting some pastoral emergency, and I hear Fred's voice saying, "Damn you anyway, Belletini!"

"What?!" I said, totally surprised at this greeting. "I didn't do anything."

"Yeah, but I just came back from the Met. I just saw Puccini's opera Turandot for the first time. The aria Nessun Dorma in that opera is the single most beautiful piece of music I have ever heard in my life. And damn you anyway, I remember that your grandfather said it belongs to you, not to me."

I laughed at Fred's joke of course. But what makes it a joke is how wrong the sentiment is. Naturally, since it was my beloved grandfather who took me to the opera, it makes sense I personally might gravitate toward such music because of my heart's attachment to him alone.

But the music does not belong to me. Opera, like all music, belongs to everyone, no matter what their background. It doesn't even make any difference whether you automatically like it or not. You could be repulsed by it on first hearing. You could learn to like it…or jazz, or rock music, including Marilyn Manson, or Rap music by Snoop Doggy Dog. (Or Simon and Garfunkle if you already like Marilyn and Rap, but just don't get 1968 American folk songs.) As a human being opening yourself to the breadth of musical expression, I assure you that the spiritual growth we affirm in our Unitarian Universalist principles would be evident in your life.

The music of the oud in Morrocco, that's yours too. And the music of the bagpipe in Scotland, or the harmonic singing over the driving rhythm down at Ephesians Church of God in Christ, or the lyrical Anglican rock- mass by Galt McDermont, the guy who wrote Hair. All music is our music, together.

You see, there is no culture we know of in the whole world that does not express itself in some form of music. It comes in all shapes and sizes of course. The music in most Muslim cultures consists largely of sung solos. With some Polynesian cultures, it may be largely choral. Or it may be largely rhythmic, largely lyrical or largely instrumental, depending on the culture we are studying. But there is always music. And, as Louis Armstrong once said, no matter where or when you find yourself in the history of music "It's ALL folk music, because it's all done by the folks. Never heard a horse sing yet." (Yes, I know there are whale songs and sparrow concerti, but I think you know what he is getting at.)

Brain biologists have their theories about music, of course about why it is so powerful, and as universal as the need for food, water and sleep. Some of them root music in the baby's heartbeats, or in their breathing. Some even suggest birdsong imitation… those kinds of things. But all the theorists are first to admit that these things are very theoretical and that we really don't have any idea if, how, and why we might be hard-wired in the brain to experience musical pleasure.

Spiritual writers like Maghanita Laski (pronounced Waski) did primary research on the topic of music and religion. Laski came to the conclusion that the pleasure we take from great music is so close to what the great saints and mystics say about their communion with the divine that it might as well be the same thing.

That may be true, but still, you and I know that religious terms are often rather tricky. People define them in such different ways. For example, Ursula Le Guin, the great science fiction author, tells us that "music saves nothing." I guess she must have some very different understanding of the world "save" than I do. She seems to think it must have something to do with some miracle. To me, the word save means to heal, to make whole. And this is exactly the meaning I get from her reading On Music. "To break down, all the shelters that human beings make for themselves so they can see the sky," is a beautiful description of what salvation means to me, no matter how she defines it. Whenever I catch a glimpse of The Whole instead of locking myself up in my own little life, whenever I gaze at the infinite sky of reality instead of the low ceiling built of my own hesitations and fears, I begin to be saved.

Music saves in this life, not the next. The famous Pulitzer winning writer William Styron was once so deeply depressed he actually wanted to die. In his autobiography, he tells of the terrible night while he was thinking of hastening his own death along. On the television tape he was watching, he happened to hear the Brahms' Alto Rhapsody soaring beautifully. The aching tenderness of this music got him to think beyond his very deep depression to the many experiences of joy and love and connection he had in his life. The soaring music helped him to see the glorious, glorious sky over-arching everything for a moment instead of the dreary little shed he had made for himself. He began to realize his life was more than his own, that he was part of a family and community of love as well as a man bent double by personal sorrow. The glory of the music so saved him, so offered him a glimpse of wholeness, that he went in for psychiatric treatment the next day, was lifted out of his depression and went on to write his magnificent autobiography.

Music saved me once too. Ministers don't often share such things from the pulpit, but I am not sure why. After all, we're as human, as ordinary, as the next person.

Now please, I need to say something before I tell my story. As a parish minister I am very well aware that not all depression is situational, like mine was, and that sometimes medication is essential. I want you to remember that Mr. Styron went for medical treatment after the music had done its miracle.

In my last year of seminary, I fell in love for the first time in my life. It was "the full catastrophe," with long sighs, badly written sonnets and lovesickness. It didn't last, unfortunately, for a variety of very good reasons. But the end of the relationship taught me about depression for the very first time, and that the word "heart-break" is the most apt metaphor in the English language.

I also knew at this time, 24 years ago, that most Unitarian Universalists were not as experienced as they are now, and that no minister who claimed a member of the same gender as their spouse had ever been called to serve one of our churches. I was myself to be turned down by seven churches on this factor alone, clearly stated. Oh yes, things have certainly changed for our movement.

(Please remember what I just told you next time you see a newcomer at church. Welcoming people is not just for the few, its for everyone, and its urgent. You might even begin to save a life.)

But back then, my break up placed me in an impossible quandary. I wanted to serve congregations as a minister with all my heart. And, I knew that I wanted to have deep love in my life. Back then, it seemed like I could only have the one or the other. I had to make a choice. And what kind of stupid choice is that, I wondered, the choice between two essential things?

Pondering this impossibility, I grew tremendously depressed. I had never felt so down in my life. The whole world appeared gray to me, even on sunny days. I could barely get out of bed. I felt nothing positive, and I found myself unable to grieve or cry. My blood felt like some slow molasses in my veins. I began to feel that I was depression.

Worse, I began to feel that I did not want to live if this choice of love or livelihood was all I could expect of life. And that thought scared me.

One day, while walking to have coffee with a friend concerned about my obvious depression, I saw an album display in the window of Tower Records in Berkeley. I saw the phrase Glagolithic Mass on a lovely cover painting on one of the albums. The word Glagolithic was an odd word, whose meaning I did not know. As a lover of strange words, I allowed myself that simple distraction, and went in to the store. I ended up buying the album…it was on sale for three dollars, a student's price. I did not know anything about the composer Janacek, but, as I said, the various forms of the sung mass were my earliest acquaintance with music, so I thought I might find it, at the very least, some small relief from the gray of my depression. Glagolithic, I found out, was an old name for the Czech language; this mass was sung in that language, not Latin or even English.

I listened to it through. It was lovely, but I felt nothing. But I listened to it again, this time concentrating on the Slava, the Gloria. Then I played the Slava again, and then again. I became obsessed with the fact that I could feel while I listened to that Amen Amen at the end of the music. I could feel hope, strength, even anger, and some sort of conviction that life didn't have to be either/or, but could be both, and I began to feel sheer affirmation rising up in me! My dear concerned roommate at the time was ready to throw me out the window…"If you play that music one more time, just one more time…" he would say, only half-kidding. But I continued to play the music every day. A few weeks later, my depression began to lift. Oh, my situation hadn't changed. I didn't have a clue how I was going to cross the impossible rapids I had to cross. I just knew I had to do it. I knew that I owed it to all the people before and after me who were in my same boat. I had to try, even if I failed. As my depression slowly yielded to a strange but very stubborn confidence, I became suddenly aware of the sky, the beautiful blue wholeness above me that embraces every life, not just my own. My personal problem all of a sudden became a human problem, the universal problem of inclusiveness and welcome. I knew I had to go forward even if I did not know how it would work. And, with the Janacek Gloria beating in my heart, drumming with my breath, singing with the birds of morning, I somehow did go forward. And the rest, as they say, is history.

By the end of my time on the Hymnbook Commission, we had each and all changed drastically in our tastes. We found that each of us had moved from where we had started, and stretched …far. We had each come to like almost all music, come to like all forms and styles and beats and harmonies. Jazz, folk, modern, classical, rock, pop, world beat, romantic, minimalist, ambient, chamber, choral, operatic, country, even difficult electronic music. We found a great liberation for our spirits in such freedom, and an opportunity for endless healing, endless wholeness, and endless salvation, in our present lives. To this day, not a day goes by without music in my life. In fact, more than poetry, more than my drawing, good music expresses the core of why I am religious at all, why I stand in the pulpit week after week, and why I love the gift of life with deeper devotion each and every day. Music moves me, be it a mass or a song by Aretha Franklin or the chirp of the sparrow. And what is life if it is not movement, and being moved?

Gloria:  [Next] [back to top]
(read over the Michael Tilson Thomas recording of the Slava of the Glagolithic Mass.)

Glory in the chirping of sparrows on a cool October morning.
Glory in the Ninth Symphony of Mahler,
or a mass by Janacek or a jazz mass by Clarence Rivers.
Glory in a whole nightclub ending an evening of songs by singing Hey Jude in unison.
Glory in Madonna chanting a haunting song of the stranger with a fierce minor melody.
Glory in the minds of those who resist violent solutions by singing hymns of solidarity.
Glory in the eyes of a baby watching her father's lips shaping a lullaby.
Glory in friends of long standing listening to Gershwin's Summertime together.
Glory in the memory of a tune whose words you no longer remember.
Glory in grandparents smiling at their grandchildren singing Ring Around the Rosy.
Glory in those who stroke the hands of the dying while Amazing Grace plays in the background.
Glory on high, glory below.
The sky and the earth are filled with such glory.
And we are all part of it. Amen. Amen.

Blessing: [back to top]

Let the Music that saves and heals play in your heart night and day.
Be at peace with each other and be at piece with the world around you,
and be at peace with yourself and never forget that you and I did not begin the song, nor shall we complete it…
so let us sing our part as best we can now.
Amen. Amen. Amen.

[back to top]

First UU Church Home | Church Newsletters | First UU Staff | Sermons | Elected Officers
Email Mark | Email the Church Office | Email the Webmaster

Last update: 02/02/2003