PASTOR DAVE’S MUSINGS FROM THE HEARTLAND

November 20, 2022

THE SOUND OF MUSIC

One of the highlights of my tour of Europe in 2010 was riding on our tour bus as we traveled through the hills of Austria on our way to Vienna with the soundtrack of The Sound of Music playing.  I could picture Julie Andrews singing “The hills are alive with the sound of music with songs they have sung for a thousand years.  The hills fill my heart with the sound of music, my heart wants to sing every song it hears.  My heart wants to beat like the wings of the birds that rise from the lake to the trees.  My heart wants to sing like a chime that flies from a church on a breeze. To laugh like a brook when it trips and falls over stones on its way.  To sing through the night like a lark who is learning to pray.”

In the 2022 Indiana University Foundation’s Image there is a short article about “What do Molecules Sound Like?” Walker Smith, a 2022 IU graduate, during his senior year performed “The Sound of Molecules” at a concert for the Jacobs School of Music’s Center for Electronic and Computer Music.  The concert was based on converting the activities of molecules – their rotational, vibrational, and translational motion – into sounds.  Smith discovered different molecules have different sounds.  Some sound like the crackle of a vinyl record, the groove of a synth keyboard, a gong, a cat purring, or  hundreds of bowling balls dropped into a vat of something goopy.

According to Concetta Tomaino “Everything in the world is a vibration of some kind.  Music is an extension of who we are, and that’s why it helps us reach people who seem to be disconnected because of illness or a traumatic brain injury (Rotary, May 2022, p. 31).”  For Tomaino, “the impact of music on the mind and body demonstrates how much of our makeup as human beings is based on rhythm, resonance, and perception of all of which connect us in a fundamental way to who we are (Rotary, May 2022, p. 31).”  The sound of music has the power to be medicine for the mind.

For many years I attended two or three times a year a conference for continuing education called “Great Books.”  It was led by Leonard Sweet and many of the books we discussed were not all that great.  During one of our gatherings Leonard make the observation that the Greek word that is generally translated “spirit” could be translated “energy.”  Following Jesus’ ascension the Holy Spirit came to energize Christians.

In Romans we read “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with signs too deep for words (Romans 8:26).”  Using Sweet’s take, we might translate this passage “Likewise God’s energy resonates with us in our weakness, interceding with vibrations too deep for words.”  In our weakness, God pours His music of love and grace into our lives.

The world is alive with the sound of music.  All creation is connected by rhythms, resonances, and perceptions.  Every molecule in our body has its own particular melody.  God’s Spirit (energy) resonates with these melodies bring peace, joy, love, and hope.