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of Bowie Home PageA few days ago my wife, Shirley, our daughter, Charissa, and I were in Massachusetts at the Tanglewood Music Festival with our son, Matthew, and his wife, Chrissie. Matthew and Prism Brass were giving a demonstration for a class which was preceded by a lecture by Ed Green. We arrived early, and Ed Green, a very hospitable person, asked us to come and sit on the stage and join the class of about thirteen high schoolers. It felt like it was 140 degrees. They had no air conditioning. I also had a toothache. So I sat there saying, "This better be good."
Ed Green is a composer and teaches musical composition at the Manhattan School of Music. Quoting his mentor, Eli Siegel, Ed Green said, "Beauty is the union of opposites." He was talking about music. There are, said Ed Green, different movements in a composition. You have the first movement, which might have a happy sound. The second movement may be filled with sadness, hostility and conflict, the dark side of life. The second movement is the opposite of the first. Then the third movement is a triumphant union of these two - that transforms both.
There are, correspondingly, three kinds of music. There's a first kind. That's denial music. It is elevator music. You get into an elevator and "La-la-la-la-la" - everything's fine; nothing's wrong with the world." There's a second kind of music that's angry and assaulting, conflictual, dark. We can hear this second kind of music every day. The third kind can be great music. It is music that proclaims in its first part something simply positive and in the second movement acknowledges the dark side. It then brings these two opposites into a union which overcomes and transforms the two previous movements. That's the way it is in our Christian life.
Let me give an example. Here is a woman who was abused terribly as a child. She was so abused that the only way she felt she could survive was by the suppression of all her feelings. She would relate to people, but she would never really "be there". Because she had been so hurt by others she was in a cocoon, giving right answers and somehow able to do her job, but underneath she was withholding her real self. Consequently, she was very lonely. She had few if any real connections with people. Then she began to experience her feelings, which were very strong. Many of her feelings were of anger, outrage. They became overwhelming, and she would say, "I would like to go back to the way I used to be. It was easier not to feel anything than to experience all this rage in me." Then words like the following were said to her: "In the symphony of your life you are now beginning the third movement." The third movement is the integration of these opposites (no feelings on the one hand and strong negative feelings on the other hand), and the transforming of them. I think the Gospel has similar dynamics.
Let me give another example. Here is a person growing up in what I would call "naive happiness". The person feels the world is good. "Life is just wonderful - everyone can be trusted." Then some tragedy crosses this person's life. A death of a loved one or some other catastrophic event. The person then goes into movement two, which is sadness. It is wholly different than movement one. The person may ask, "Will I ever be happy again? How can I ever survive this horrible sorrow that has been thrust upon me? My life will always be sorrow." Then despite these fears the person comes into movement three and experiences transformation and unity.
If you have music that doesn't acknowledge the negative side, you have trivial music. People want Easter, but sometimes they don't want Good Friday. They want just the positive part of faith. Christianity, if it's to have integrity, has to acknowledge the dark side. It has to speak of "cross". It doesn't mean anything to have a resurrection if you don't have a death. How is a living person going to be resurrected? It is meaningless.
We must not reduce Christianity to either movement one, whose naivety doesn't deal with the hard parts of life or get stuck in the second movement, the dark side, but go to the third movement, which transcends both of these, and which is the only movement that is truly joyful and realistic.
In the symphony of your Christian life, where are you? Are you in the first movement? Are you stuck in the second movement? Or are you into the third movement?
The foregoing is based on a sermon given on July 28, 2002 by Pastor Carl Bickel.
© 2002 Carl O. Bickel
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