The song of all our living

Some new research from Gothenberg University in Sweden reveals that the heartbeats of people singing in unison synchronise. As choir members sing together, drawing breath together as the phrases of the music allow so their hearts beat as one.

According to researcher Dr Bjorn Vickhoff, this phenomenon helps build a sense of community among the singers. Each is aware of the others, conscious of the contribution each voice makes to the texture of the song. Singing together, says Vickhoff ‘makes people more sensitive and open to each other.’  His project is called ‘The Body’s Musical Score.’

This is the theory behind singing in church – as in hymns and songs we focus on God, our singing builds a sense of togetherness in worship. In fact, it doesn’t always work like that. Someone doesn’t like the style of the music. Someone else has issues with the words. Others are too worried and preoccupied to join in, and others still are so self-conscious that they can’t release themselves into the current of the music. Someone else (like me) just doesn’t ‘get’ singing in church.

But the Swedish researchers have given us a powerful metaphor. Each of us sings a song in all of our living. The song expresses our values and beliefs, the things which drive us and give meaning to our lives. It is heard in our words, seen in our relationships, choices and priorities. And it synchronises our souls with others who sing the same song.

The composer Jesus, whom as Christians we follow seeks to teach the world a new song, a new way of being. The song of Jesus is focussed on God. Love is its key signature, its themes justice, peace, forgiveness, salvation, goodness. It’s a song which brings healing to both singer and listener, an inclusive song which invites others to join in, whoever they are. It’s a song which does not crush the individuality of each singer, but rather celebrates their uniqueness. Even when we feel we sing this song alone in fact we are standing with many other singers.

It is an intensely practical song, a song sung in the centre and on the margins, bringing hope to the marginalised, a song expressed in practical care and costly empathy.

It is a song which sustains those who no longer feel like singing because of the crushing disharmony of pain, who for days have not glimpsed the choirmaster’s directing hand, but who suddenly realise that beneath their anguish the song is singing them.

Pretty much everyone agrees that our communities and nation would be an infinitely better if we were to sing together a robust song of wise goodness. It is a feature of our sad madness as human beings that we can see the glory of the great song, and yet cannot bring ourselves to sing it in every facet of our lives at least for very long.

Instead, our lives’ music-making is fragmented and discordant. Snatches of the great song alternate with phrases from other songs of self-centredness, deceit, hatred and hopeless despair.

The approach taken by the Swedish research is that shared singing leads to a synchronising of our hearts. When it comes to the song Jesus teaches however, bitter experience suggests that we can only sing the song once our hearts have been synchronised with the heart of God. We need the Father to imprint on our hearts his musical score, for only then will the heart of God regulate the rhythm of all our living.

But isn’t the vision of the whole world singing the same song an impossible dream? What each of us is called to do is to leave the big picture to God. We are called to sing the song ourselves, however feebly and falteringly, allowing the rhythm of God’s heartbeat to influence our days and decisions and conversations, and not to give up when we fail.

We’re called to join together with others who sing the great song, whoever they are, wherever we find them, working to make a difference, to bring light and hope into dark places in our community. In this way, the song is heard.

And we’re called to encourage those who don’t believe - and those who are too bitter and uncertain, and damaged by the past to release themselves into the current of God – to listen open-heartedly for the song which longs to express itself through them.

Jesus alerted people to the possibility of refusing to sing his great liberating song, and instead allowing dark music to imprison them.  If we make that choice we will not, he warned, be there when the impossible dream is fulfilled, when all will sing the great song, when every heartbeat will synchronise to the dancing pulse of God’s love.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 18th July 2013)