Last weekend, our string quartet played a gig for a church group (celebrating the semi-retirement of a woman who had taught a series that was meaningful for many over a 40 year period. The people were lovely, and this is probably Bakersfield’s most racially integrated church.) Per request, we played mostly hymns. For me, it was a profoundly emotional experience, and I have been thinking a lot about why.
For those who do not know my history, my great-grandfather was a small-town pastor in Montana, and all my biological grandparents were missionaries overseas. Before that, I have German Mennonites on both sides of my family - non-conformers who were kicked out of multiple countries for their pacifism, before finding refuge (and free land) here in the United States.
I was raised singing hymns, and I can still hear my grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents singing them. My mom taught us hundreds of them, and I usually ended up on the alto part. As a child, I was one of two altos in our church choir, so the parts I was playing today are a matter of muscle memory.
And also emotional muscle memory.
These were the times when I felt like I belonged. Belonged in my religion, belonged in my family, belonged to my tribe.
On the one hand, I felt those emotions again - the good ones. The ones I am conditioned to feel.
On the other hand, it was a profoundly sad experience, because I no longer belong.
Because I have always connected to the Divine through music more than anything else, I have experienced music as my connection to religion and to my fellow humans. And, naively, I thought that music itself could do good in human hearts. (Part of me still hopes this is true.)
But to hear those lyrics in my head again, to know those words by heart, to hear them sung by people I thought I knew - it was tough.
To hear the words:
“Jesus paid it all / all to Him I owe” - and know that most of the people I sang that with loudly proclaim that we must expect our young people set out on their lives with crushing student debt, unaffordable housing, and no health care because we can’t let debts be forgiven.
To hear the words:
“Just as I am without one plea” - and know that most of the people I sang that with are loudly anti-immigrant and anti-refugee. After all, what can THOSE PEOPLE, poor and desperate, offer us?
To hear the words:
“Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise / Thou mine inheritance, now and always” - and know that most of the people I sang that with follow after a man whose ill-gotten riches and craving for men’s praise somehow make him admirable to them.
And, given my Swedish heritage, and my family’s lifelong love for “How Great Thou Art,” to hear the words:
“Oh Lord, my God / When I, in awesome wonder / Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made / I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder / Thy power throughout the universe displayed” - and know that most of the people I sang that with believe humans should plunder and destroy creation - because God is going to make us a new one soon enough anyway.
I really, truly….and naively…. thought they meant those words, that those beautiful lyrics meant something to them. Sadly, at a deep level, that supposed awe at an infinite Divine (or universe if you prefer) was just a fake-ass performance, and that what they really wanted was a tiny, helpless god that needed human political power and violence to provide for their needs.
I thought we were united in a love of God and neighbor - but their god turned out to look more like Trump than Jesus, and as for “love your neighbor”? Why do that when you can build a wall and kick your neighbor if she happens to be brown-skinned, poor, or gay?
I miss what I once had. Or what I naively thought I had. I still believe in music, and I still find connection through it - to the Divine, and to my fellow humans of good will. I just wish that my decades of sharing music with so many had been able to break through their tribalism and hate and fear.
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