Spiritual Music

Rhythm is of the body. When we listen to music, the styles with the most rhythm seem the most "earthy" to us. This is a major reason why many worshippers have objected to the use of rhythmic musical styles in worship. Some have claimed that the driving pulse of a rock beat or an R&B groove, for example, is intrisically erotic, and has no place in a Christian setting. Some even object to the very idea of "Christian rock" on the same principle.

I don't agree with anyone's assertion that a body-centered, "earthy" music is inappropriate to Christianity. My personal favorite genres of Christian music are spirituals/gospel/R&B from the African-American tradition. Many of these songs, new and old, are very rhythmic and full of joy. Even the slower ones, like the spirituals "Steal Away," or "Were You There?" have a pulse underneath the melody that pushes the song forward, relentlessly connecting it to this world and our time-bound experience of life's rhythms. Gregorian chant has the opposite effect, its rhythmless nature taking us out of time and the body.
As a comparison, think of any four-note Gregorian variation, and then contrast that to the beautiful groan in "Were You There?" "Oh-oh-oh-oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble."
The chant and the "oh" may share the same number of notes, and they may be equally simple and somewhat non-linguistic, but they are worlds apart in their effect.

There's something about the production of body-centred, rhythmic music as an homage to the Creator that is sublime: an acknowledgement of our humble humanity. "Here's what we have to offer," the spiritual says," this is what we're made of, physical sufferings and pleasures, growth and inevitable decay, confusing desires that we have trouble identifying and channeling. Take this flawed and hurting clay and mold it into something useful and good."

I can admire the more contemplative music of Christian tradition, but it doesn't move me in the same way.
I'm not championing a lot of the contemporary, electric-guitar-driven Christian music out there just because it pretends to have rhythm. The mere presence of drums and cymbals does not impart rhythm; in fact, it often disguises the complete lack of rhythm in the actual melodies set to those bland rock beats. "Abide With Me" has more intrinsic rhythm than some of the repetitive choruses I have heard in band-led services (and that's saying something, to those of you who know "Abide With Me").

There's an old precedent for considering our relationship to God as one that is inevitably physical. One of my favorite poems by John Donne expresses the merging of body and soul in our desire for the divine:

BATTER my heart, three person'd God; for you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee,and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new...

...Yet dearely I love you, and would be loved faine,
But am betroth'd unto your enemie:
Divorce mee,untie, or breake that knot againe;
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish mee.

Novel is a Winner!

I received some very good news today that I have been awaiting with bated breath.

I entered my novel in a competition sponsored by Southwest Writers, a big writers' group based in New Mexico. The competition requires the submission of the first twenty pages of the novel, plus a one-page synopsis. Agents and editors judge the contest, and people enter from all over the country.

The way they run the contest is by first announcing that three finalists have placed in each category, then holding a banquet in September to reveal which of the finalists has received first, second, or third place.
Here's the letter I opened just now:

Congratulations! You are a winner in the Southwest Writers competition. Your contest entry was selected from among hundreds of entries and ranked as either 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place in the category you entered. You will join an impressive list of writers having attained this status. Please share this exciting moment with us on Saturday, September 22, 2007. We will dine at the _______ Hotel at ____________, at 1:00pm.

I am also going to win a small cash prize, but that really doesn't matter to me. There are only a few moments in life when you get to enjoy the feeling of achieving a dream. Writing is a solitary activity, and it means everything to have those hours of work produce something that other people will enjoy, and, I hope, even find uplifting.

The INTJ Narnian

If you have ever taken a Myers-Briggs personality test, you know that it produces a set of four letters for your personality type, based on the following dichotomies:
E for Extrovert or I for Introvert
N for Intuitive or S for Sensing
T for Thinking or F for Feeling
J for Judging or P for Perceiving

My type is INTJ, Introverted Intuitive Thinking Judging, which is one of the four rarer types out of a possible 16 types. Wikipedia estimates that 2.1% of the U.S. population shares the INTJ type. (For comparison, the more common types are 13%, 12%, and 8% of the population.)

I was pleased to discover that two of my fellow INTJs are C.S. Lewis and Gandalf. Laugh if you will at my geekiness. What led me to this discovery was a message board about C.S. Lewis. One of the posts on that message board asked for the Myers-Briggs personality type of each person on the board. Surprisingly, almost 30% of them were INTJs. Thought-provoking. Do we tend to like certain authors because they share our personality type, and thus we slide more easily into their respective mental universes?

I stayed up late last night to finish a 2005 biography of Lewis entitled The Narnian. Alan Jacobs, the biographer, picked an excellent quotation from Lewis to end the book.

The boooks or music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things -- the beauty, the memory of our own past -- are good images of what we desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, and break the heart of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have not yet visited.

Though I share Lewis's passion for books and music, the thought is equally true for any other object of our heart's desire here on earth, even our children. An object or human will always break our hearts if we mistake our dearest object/human for "the thing itself."