I can still remember where I was, in 1982, when the sound of Handel’s Messiah, the very beginning of it, flooded through my mind. Comfort ye! I was having difficulty in my graduate program, difficulties that only resolved years later, and what I needed was comfort. Comfort does not mean ease; it contains the root word fort, which means strength.
Here is the performance on YouTube.
I did not need theology. I already had that, reinforced over and over at church. What I needed was something that would cut through the sticky web of theology and pierce my heart. Music did that.
It is easy to tear apart conservative theology and leave its chunks of flesh all over the floor. I have done it often enough in this very blog. But music contains no theology, just pure emotion. Music will make you say that it is all true, all of this religion stuff, simply because the music is so beautiful.
This can be traced back at least to cave man days. The men (or women) who made the magnificent cave paintings in Lascaux and Altamira painted them in the big rooms near the outside, where people would assemble. Down deep in the caves was where people went for spirit quests, and the paintings and etchings there are much simpler. But the cave paintings in the big sanctuary rooms were meant to be experienced by the light of torches, and accompanied by music that would reverberate from the walls, the music of bone flutes and of voices. It was the power of religion. They had myths, but what united the people together into a spirit of unity was the music. The priests used the power of music to manipulate the minds of the tribal members who would then work and fight very hard to make the tribe prevail over its enemies.
When I hear Handel’s Messiah, especially Behold the Lamb of God and Hallelujah, I am as helpless before religion as I would have been thirty thousand years ago, as if skeptical science and philosophy had never evolved.
Keep this in mind this Christmas season.
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