Notes for sermon at Bromyard Folk Festival service: good luck trying to work out how it all got used. Very interactive and went down a storm!
Why is music and music-making together so special
Loads of reasons but NB very striking Saul & David story > power to heal
Good news in a world which is so rubbish now
How does it work.? Four quick thoughts.
(1) Takes us out of ourselves
Distraction; relieving pain, reducing stress [music therapy]
Beverly Meyz story (Exec Editor, Harvard Women’s Health Watch)
The last time I had a mammogram, I got a big surprise — and it was a good one. A string quartet was playing just outside the doors of the breast imaging center, and my thoughts
immediately shifted from “What are they going to find on the mammogram?” to “Is that Schubert, or Beethoven?” By the
time my name was called, I had almost forgotten why I was there.
But more
(2) Paradoxically
Also releases an order deeper within ourselves
Helping speech resurface after a stroke
Helping elderly and dementia sufferers sing and smile
(3) And then
Connects this with an order beyond ourselves
Rhythm Clapping exercise
Harmony Pentatonic scale quiz (black notes)
Skye boat song Amazing Grace
Swing Low sweet chariot Auld Lang Syne
Baa baa black sheep Sing a song of sixpence
There’s a hole in my bucket Stairway to Heaven (Led Z)
(4) Then finally
Connects us with others, so we can bring new order to the world
Pete Seeger of “We shall overcome”, “If I had a hammer”
“This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender”
I want to say that all this doesn’t feel like an accident!
As if cosmos a great machine for reversing entropy
turning chaos into order, truth and beauty, making good
and birthing souls/individuals who can enjoy and effect it
Musicians rule OK! And everyone who builds a better world.
There’s a project worth joining!
And if you want a new place to start
Go back to David and his Psalms
A whole songbook there in our dusty old Bibles
Shot through with how as a somposer and performer
He found new ways of handling his fears and anxieties
Some of us still use at part of our daily meditations
Going to sing my own version of Psalm 139 now
Written as I worked my way through a particularly dark time, wondering
who I was and where I was going.
God bless you on our own journey of healing today and every day
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