Sacred Sounds
In our world, some sounds are sacred. Voices, notes, tones that set our hearts to leaping, that call us to self-abandonment.
The recess bell. When it rings, the school shakes from inside. Then the door nearly flies off its hinges and erupts with children. They run this way and that, nearly losing it, kicking balls, playing chase, climbing the jungle gym, running to meet their friends in the shade of tall trees—all of them in love with life.
The dinner call. Years ago, my mom opens the back door and calls out, “Dinner,” and my brother and I grab the soccer balls and scramble through the door and kick off our shoes still tied and run our hands through an obligatory ten seconds of water and soap and then take our seats, where glasses poured with cold milk and plates filled with food await us—and we are suddenly aware of our hunger.
The referee's whistle. When its sharp ring pierces the waiting air of the playing field, the players lose their worries and then lose their breath—and before long, a fortunate few among them who are in that blessed place known as “the zone” will lose themselves completely.
The ring tone. When its familiar melody anonymously announces a caller, the young soul awakens from the tedium of the everyday and fumbles for the phone in anticipation, hoping against hope that the name on the screen will match the name of their love—and when they see the name, the day is suddenly filled with new life and possibility and adventure.
The recess bell, the dinner call, the whistle, the ring tone—just a few sacred sounds among many. They all cry practically the same invitation: “Arise!” They raise us up to new life. They call us out of ourselves.
The Greatest Song Ever: Love (or “God”)
The Song of Solomon (or by its Hebrew title, “The Song of Songs,” which really means “The Greatest Song Ever”) is a scandalous song. Not once does it mention God by name. (“The Greatest Song Ever” doesn't even mention God!) Instead it sings shamelessly about human love. How it ever made it into the Bible is a mystery. To this day, scholars debate the reasons that the ancient rabbis included this earthy love poem in their scriptures.
Of course, ever since its inclusion, rabbis and priests both have done their best to censor this love song by making it into a metaphor. This song is really about God and Israel, they say, or about Christ and the church. Certainly the song can be read that way. But I wonder if it’s not even stronger when we read it simply as it is. Perhaps it need not sing God’s name when everything it sings is intimately a part of God. Didn't John say, centuries later, “God is love”? The entire song, then, is about God. Perhaps naming God – stating the obvious – robs the song of its allusive power. Perhaps just as explaining a joke ruins the punchline, stopping to theologize the experience of love kills the mood. Rather than name God, the Greatest Song Ever simply looks God in the eye and says, “You are beautiful.”
More than Romance
But is love only a matter of romance? Certainly romance is the focus of the Song of Solomon. The entire book is a back-and-forth dialogue between two lovers. In the catalogue of ancient love songs, the Song of Solomon is unique in this, in giving both participants an equal voice.
I wonder, though, whether romance is the central meaning of the song or just the vehicle for expressing the wonders of a love that is even bigger than romance. What strikes me about the song is that the two lovers are not just enamored with each other but with the world. In the six verses that we read today, all five senses are engaged. Sight – the flowers appearing on the earth. Taste – the fig tree putting forth its figs. Smell – the vines giving forth fragrance. Sound – the voice of turtledove singing in the land. Touch – the rain over and gone, fresh air awaiting the lovers outdoors.
I'm reminded of a poem by Juan Ramon Jimenez, in which love is described not as a collapsing into the other person but as an opening up to all the world:
I unpetalled you, like a rose,
to see your soul,
and I didn’t see it.
But everything around
—horizons of lands and of seas—,
everything, out to the infinite,
was filled with a fragrance,
enormous and alive.
Today’s scripture begins with an incomplete sentence, a sort of surprised exclamation: “The voice of my beloved!” the woman proclaims. Moments later, she shares with us what her beloved says: “Arise, my love…and come away.”
Isn't this the call of love, whether the love is romance or a playground friendship or a parent-child bond or teammates sacrificing for each other? Isn't love a call that excites us and raises us up and entices us to abandon ourselves and to go away into the world, into the infinite, which is filled with a fragrance, enormous and alive? Isn’t it part of what is heard in that sacred recess bell or ring tone or referee's whistle?
Three Beautiful Places Where We Are Called
And don’t we all hear this call? Maybe for us it’s no longer as obvious or immediate as a particular sound that sets our hearts to leaping, that throws us into self-abandonment, like a bell or a whistle or a ring tone. Maybe we hear the call in the lower, subtler registers of a particular place or a certain situation.
In the Greek, the word for beauty, kalon, appears to have come from the word for call, kaleo. In other words, the ancients believed that beauty is what calls us. If we reflect for a moment on where we are drawn most deeply to in this world, on what sets our hearts to leaping and leads us into self-abandonment, I imagine that we might find ourselves thinking about matters of deep beauty and joy.
Of course, it is easy to miss the call of beauty. Caught up in our own plans and programs, our thinking in terms of business and this-for-that and what’s most effective, we sometimes miss the beauty right before our eyes—a sunset, a child’s smile, a gratuitous gesture of compassion.
Here, I find some help from the church. There are three places where people at church seem most alive to me, most joy-filled, most connected. Tables. Small groups. And time shared with the needful. I suspect that in these places can be heard the same cry we hear in our scripture: “Arise…and come away” into the wide and wonderful world.
Tables, small groups, and the needful. Here is where the church encounters its calling, a deep beauty and joy. I am not talking about the superficial kind of excitement that we might compare to a romantic crush or obsession, which is an excitement more often than not selfish in its nature. I am talking about a deep and abiding joy that draws us out of ourselves, a breathless sense that we have happened upon the most precious thing in the world, what matters most. This is the beauty of the bed-ridden holding a hand and praying tearfully with someone who cares, knowing that they are not alone. It’s the beauty of multiple voices becoming one, whether in the sharing of honest experience or the singing of songs that express what no lesson or lecture ever could. It’s the beauty of difference, even disagreement, gathering around the same table in peace and love.
Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places
And is it any surprise? These three places are where Christ promises us he will be. The table, where he says “Remember me” and “I will meet you again here” (Luke 22:16-18); small groups “where two or three are gathered” (Matt 18:20); and the needful, for “as you did it to one of the least of these…you did it to me” (Matt 25:40).
Jesuit priest and poet Gerald Manley Hopkins once wrote that “Christ plays in ten thousand places, lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his.” Perhaps this is another way of saying that these three Christ-haunted places are everywhere, that there is no limit to the ways that we hear the call of the beautiful, “Arise, my love…and come away.”
I wonder where you hear the call of beauty. Where Christ calls to you, “Arise…and come away!” Having grown up in a religious environment, I sometimes have trouble hearing the call myself. Instead I hear all of the oughts and shoulds – pious expectations instead of God's unique call to my heart. I fear that following them is fruitless in the end if I'm being false to the person God has called me to be. My suspicion is that while the actual call of beauty and joy may seem to be quite trivial – maybe it's “just” toward your back garden or the dog staring up at you – it contains within it a pathway into all the world, which if followed faithfully leads us into the abundant love and life of God's kingdom.
…And if you're still wondering where you hear the call of Christ, which is the call of beauty, and you need a clue to point you in the right direction, I would wager it's not too far from a table, or a small, honest gathering, or a person or creature in need.
Prayer
Beautiful Christ,
Whose call to us
Raises us to new life
And draws us into the world:
As bells and whistles
Rouse the hearts and bodies
Of children,
So may your voice
Excite and entice us
To take the risk of faith—
To rise and go away
On your risky adventure of love. Amen.
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