Elevator music

I noticed three odd things when I recently walked into one of our large supermarkets. First, the lights were dimmed. Second, all the chilled displays (dairy products, meats and frozen goods) were either tarped or taped shut. Due to a nearby accident, the store had lost all its power and was running only essential things (like the checkout lanes) on generators. Finally, it was quiet except for "people chatter." There was no background music.

My culture has attuned me to having something “in the background” when I’m in a public place. It’s called “elevator music,” and though not confined to elevators, it’s any type of background music intended to please the subconscious.  Usually it’s an arrangement of some popular song, the genre depending on the location. My local mall’s teen fashion store assaults passersby with hard rock. The sounds coming from the manicure store are soft and comforting.

My husband mixes his own brand of “elevator music.”  He likes to have some sort of sound going all the time. The other night it was simultaneously baseball  on the TV and football on the radio. Other times it’s CDs or videos of old-time Gospel ensembles. He often sings along.

When I recently stepped in one of our local thrift shops, a cowboy tune twanged away with the usual plot of “My horse is lame and my woman is vain, and all the hills look the same.”  Some local hee-haw radio station was doing the honors.  When we’re driving somewhere,  either the radio or CD help the miles go faster.  The other afternoon, my husband tuned in a station that plays classical music.  As a sonorous cello piece filled the vehicle, he said, “That is absolutely beautiful.”  I was staring out the window, fighting tears because it really touched my classical-music-lover’s heart.

It’s been said that music can bring out either the beast or best in us. About forty miles from our home is a large outdoor amphitheater known for attracting pop and rock groups...and drugs and disorderly crowds. No, I’ve never been there. But there’s a pile of books next to our piano that reaches deeper into my heart the older I get. Thanks to years of exposure to Christian music, dozens, maybe hundreds, of hymns and choruses “elevate” my spirit. I only have to scan the index of titles or first lines, and snatches of their melodies send me to the page where I can read or sing the lyrics. Even with the memory losses of aging (we have our share of conversations that go like, “Who’s that lady whose husband is thin and I think the name starts with R”?), those melodic jewels of the faith are firmly fastened in my heart.

The other day, I was sad, very sad, over a difficult situation. Yet God seemed to be prompting me to turn my mourning into rejoicing. As I started about my household chores, I recognized a scripture chorus coming to mind. It’s one that combines three verses from psalms: one about entering His gates with thanksgiving (100:4), a second about rejoicing in the day He has made (118:9), and the third about rejoicing because He has made me glad (16:9). All the way through cleaning scrambled egg off the fry pan to treating clothing stains to mopping the floor, that persistent melody and its scriptural words stayed with in me.

My heart was lifted.  And that’s what I’d call true “elevate-her” music.

Heaven: The Greatest Home Makeover--Day 25

THE MUSIC ROOM
“And I heard a sound from heaven like the roar of rushing waters and like a loud peal of thunder. The sound I heard was like that of harpists playing their harps. And they sang a new song before the throne….” –Revelation 14:2, 3a

“Heavenly music” to my husband means Southern Gospel songs, including “It’s Your First Day in Heaven.” One of my top picks (besides the hymn “Be Thou My Vision”) is Handel’s Messiah. As an amateur violinist, stumbling through my part for that work in worship concerts, I sometimes wonder how it would be to play it perfectly in a heavenly orchestra. Then there’s my son, with a basement music studio where he “jams” with friends playing an array of guitars, electronic keyboards, and drums. He wouldn’t mind picking an electric guitar for heaven’s worship band--with as many amplifiers and sound effect pedals as possible! My daughter, a violinist, would sign up for sacred string quartets. Mitch from my church would wail a soulful praise harmonica.

If the music and instruments we know on earth existed in heaven, its “Music Room” would be enormous beyond understanding. We don’t know just what God plans musically for Heaven, but we know it’s an important part. It’s been significant on earth from the beginning. Widespread tradition claims music was the first language that God spoke to create the universe. Poet Christina Rossetti remarked that Heaven is revealed to earth as the homeland of music. (1)

The Bible says on the day the earth’s foundations were set, “the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy”(Job 38:7). Jubal, the seventh generation from Adam, was called “the father of all who play the harp and flute”(Gen. 4:22). Thousands of years of music later, Solomon’s temple had a staff of 288 priestly musicians just for worship music (1 Chron. 25:7). Imagine that for your church! Truly, God valued music in worship.

The Bible says Heaven’s worship music will be musically exciting and loud. John’s vision included loud thunder peals, roars like rushing waters, trumpets, and harps, along with innumerable believers and angelic beings praising God. “Then I heard every creature in Heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea,” John wrote, “and all that is in him, singing, ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!’”(Rev. 5:13). The last book of the Bible calls this “a new song” (Rev. 14:3). Whatever their lyrics and music lines, Heaven’s songs will never grow old. That’s great news for those who mentally disconnect while singing the same old choruses and hymns at church. In Heaven, too, we’ll finally put to rest those church divisions over whether we should have traditional hymns or contemporary choruses.

One Bible teacher noted that some who claim to have had visions of Heaven while “dead” (they were later revived) described its music as entirely different from earthly music. They said it was “like comparing a toddler’s banging on a toy xylophone with a symphony orchestra.” (2)

Could some of earth’s inspired worship music be a part of Heaven’s worship? We don’t know, but we do know that some great Christian music has bridged diverse cultures. The late J. Oswald Sanders, a well-loved Bible teacher, told of traveling three days through China’s mountains by horseback to a primitive village where a conference drew a thousand people. To his surprise, the program included a performance of “The Hallelujah Chorus” (from Handel’s Messiah) sung in Chinese along with other praise songs. (3)

Even more profound, has Heaven’s music, hidden in our hearts, become expressed through earthly songs? Years after spearing five missionaries attempting a friendly contact, Waodoni Indians of Ecuador, now Christians, recalled hearing strange music in the treetops as the missionaries died. One Waodoni woman said she heard the same “strange music” when she listened to her missionary-friend’s record of Christian choir music. Decades later, a still-living warrior from the time of the murders heard a recording of a music arrangement based on the hymn “Every Tribe, Every Nation.” In his native tongue, he declared, “manami ihindabopa” [“just as I heard it”]—meaning it matched the tree-top angel choir he heard that fateful day. (4)

As you anticipate the Music Room, recall these lines from the hymn “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”: “Streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise./Teach me some melodious sonnet,/Sung by flaming tongues above.” In your spirit, clear your throat, wet your reed, warm up your horn, tune that stringed instrument. Get ready for the matchless Heavenly praise concert that will release unfettered joy in worship.

Prayer: Dear God, even if my “joyful noise” of praise to you on earth left a lot to be desired, I can’t wait to do it the right way in Heaven! Amen.

(1) J. Oswald Sanders, Heaven: Better by Far (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Discovery House Publishers, 1993), p. 106.
(2) Peter Kreeft, “What Will Heaven Be Like?”, Christianity Today, http://ctlibrary.com/print.html?id=7409, accessed June 27, 2006.
(3) Sanders, pp. 106, 7
(4) Stephen Saint, “Angels, Yes, I Think It Was Angels,” January 30, 2002, from http://www.itecusa.org/itec_024.htm, accessed July 3, 2008.

Program notes

One of the banes of growing older is knowing more words but being unable to retrieve them from memory. As a writer I’m constantly pulling out my copy of Rodale’s The Synonym Finder or quickly clicking to the thesaurus feature in my word processing program. A few times I’ve visited this high-tech web thesaurus: http://www.visuwords.com/.

When you’re trying to describe music, the problem deepens. How do you portray rhythm and sound? Take Beethoven’s Sonata in D for Violin, a personal favorite (and one far beyond my personal playing abilities). The eight-note motif opening the piece stirs a longing in me that I just can’t put in words. It reminds me of something lost, just found. The pink promise of a sunrise. A shy smile.

I thought of that last week when my daughter, Inga, a violin teacher, made a quick trip across the state so we could both go to a recital in Leavenworth featuring world-class violinist Midori. Arriving early to get good seats, we had plenty of time to study the program notes.

Writers of such explanatory notes are no lazy lot. They unabashedly pour on the superlatives to express the effects of notes and rhythms. When I pointed out some clever phrases, my daughter remarked, “That’s what you do in program notes.”

Midori’s program consisted entirely of music composed during her lifetime of 37 years. Meaning: very modern. But even in the collision of sounds and rhythms that were outside my comfort zone (remember, I’m a Beethoven babe), the program writer heightened my anticipation with a verbal roadmap.

Yes, one piece lived up to the description of “excruciating heat.” Hearing another, I could understand the writer choosing words like glitter, surrealism, agitation, and pseudo-romanticism. Another piece was characterized as having “languid nonchalance.”

When I move from music to the mysteries of God, my word problem returns. How do you describe God? I think I understand why the apostle Paul, after carefully working through the theology of God’s grace, burst into a hymn of wonder about God: “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” (Romans 11:33).

In other words, Paul just couldn’t find the words. God is bigger than our vocabularies. Or, as an old hymn-writer put it, even if the sky were a parchment, and the oceans an inkwell, we’d never quit writing about the love of God.

Dare I say the Bible is like program notes? While the Bible doesn’t flaunt fifty-cent adjectives, it does use story, precept, praise and many other genres to reveal His nature and ways. And most of all, to lead us to wonder and worship.