Religious Education Update: December 16, 2007

The Power of Music

Jon Carroll, columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote this past week about his experience at a choral concert. After explaining that he is not a “San Francisco Bach Choir kind of guy” and non-religious as well, he describes the moment when the church is darkened and the choir enters by candlelight singing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”. Jon says, “I lost it. Tears were streaming down my cheeks. I was surprised by my tears and uncertain how to turn them off. At one point, I was crying like someone who has just lost a relative.”

Music has that kind of power. It can touch the emotions and the souls of the devout and the non-devout, the Christian, the Jew, the Pagan and the Unitarian Universalist. Jon describes his feeling of “wonder that we flawed humans can produce such transcendent sounds.”

Music produced by a group of people also builds connections between the performers themselves and the audience. I was very fortunate to attend a Chanticleer concert on Friday with KC and Matt Greaney and their extended family. The choir produced transcendent music, filling the vast spaces of Petaluma’s St. Vincent Church with their nonamplified voices. The men in the choir were completely in tune with each other musically and in their movements and the appearance of joy and radiance on their faces. The sense of connectedness between the singers was palpable. Afterwards, a member of the choir spoke of the connection between choir and audience in Petaluma as being “like family.”

In today’s service, we are blessed to have the opportunity to create our own music. We will fill the hall with our sounds, as one community celebrating the solstice, our shared humanity and our sacred time together.

Marlene AbelDirector of Religious Education