Thia asked me once, my second year at EMU, why I loved singing hymns. I was still trying to figure that out, really; I knew that I loved the hymn sing on the first Monday of every month up in Martin Chapel, but I was still trying to explain to myself why I had fallen head-over-heels in love with the blue hymnal, the process of gathering, the standing in circles.
It came to me all at once as I was sitting there on the top bunk in my dim little room on the first floor of Maplewood.
Because of the singing in parts.
It's not that there's anything wrong with praise songs, I said, my voice settling into certainty. But there's something missing in them. They make it feel like you can be a Christian on your own.
When I sing a hymn, I can't help but remember the way I need others. I am an alto, and not a very strong one - if I sing a hymn alone, I am missing the melody, and even if I gather with a bunch of sopranos, it still won't be quite right. When I sing in a circle where every part has people who know the next note, though ... it is the most beautiful thing. It is shivery-beautiful, a feeling like a sun in your chest, something huge and bright and burning. It is an embodied remembrance that I am part of something larger than my self; it is an embodied remembrance that the church is one body with many parts.
And, maybe even more than this, singing hymns reminds me that spirituality is something learned. I got better at holding my pitch against the others, the more I practiced. There are a few songs - not many, but a few - that I can sing the alto line to on my own, holding against the melody even if there are no other altos standing near me.
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My conscious understanding of being part of this thing called "church" is only something like a decade old, and in that time I have been a close witness to more than one rending of a body that is supposed to be the example of unity. This has not been easy or pleasant. It has been made less easy and less pleasant by the belief that unity means no dissension, no difference in praxis or belief.
The hymn stands up against this oversimplification. The songs in minor keys, the ones with aching, unresolved bits, are beautiful. And the dissonance is not trivial, mean-spirited, or due to a mis-reading of the text. The dissonance has a purpose, which is to make the song interesting and - miracle & mystery - to make it beautiful.
Yes, even so. To make it beautiful.
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But then two, three, even four tones- from "Learning to Sing in Parts," by Jean Janzen
at once, my father sorting and joining
their varied voice into a rich and layered
flow. How to hold against the other pitches?
This is the world’s secret, he confides,
to enter and be close, yet separate.
mm, yes, beautiful.
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