Uplift - Thoughts from Jon

Harmony - a 9/11 Reflection

I'm reposting the whole thing here until I can figure out how to get Wordpress to do it automatically...

A few days ago I had a chance to do something I hadn’t done in a long time – sing in a choir rehearsal.

It’s strange to think it’s been so long, since choral singing has always been part of my life. I was in choirs during all my years of high school, college and graduate school. But the fact is, there just aren’t many choirs where we lived in Slovakia. So here I was, sitting in my first choir rehearsal in nearly ten years.

Ten years isn’t the only reason it felt strange. This was my first rehearsal with this group, so I was getting used to different singers. And it was a different kind of rehearsal than I’ve experienced before– wearing a mask, separated from my fellow singers by social distancing rules.

It wasn’t the easiest night, to be honest. It was the group’s first rehearsal after several months because of the pandemic, so all of us were a little shaky and uncertain at first. Voices were scratchy, and we got tired quickly. Sometimes we fell apart in a mess of notes and had to pick ourselves up and start over.

Here’s something else that made it challenging: After all those months, we just weren’t used to singing together. Sometimes one voice would rise above others, or one section had to sing louder to be heard. Sometimes, I had to stop and listen closely just to make sure I was singing the right part.

Many directors insist that a choral singer’s most important asset isn’t their voice – it’s their ears. You might have a gorgeous solo voice, but choral singing happens when you put yourself aside, use your ears, and allow yourself to be part of the harmony.

That’s why I love singing in a choir – those moments when I completely lose myself in the voices, making harmony together. I’ve sat under some amazing conductors, singing choral masterpieces with professional choirs. But I get the same chills, whether I’m singing Brahams’ Requiem or a simple arrangement – it’s the togetherness, the state of putting myself and my ego aside to blend with others to make music that’s much, much bigger than me. It’s the harmony of different voices coming together.

Maybe you’ve experienced it yourself when singing in a group, or that chill you get when you listen to groups like Pentatonix or Take 6.

Harmony isn’t just something that happens, it takes work. It means putting aside my feeling that I want someone to hear me, and thinking about what makes us better. It means using my ears as much or more than my voice. I means listening to the person singing a different part – even though it doesn’t match mine – and recognizing that we’re both “right.”

Maybe this is presumptuous, but I think if Jesus had ever experienced choral singing like we know it, he’d have said “blessed are the harmony-makers.”

In a world and a society that so values individual creativity and the “soloist,” choral singing reminds us that beautiful things can happen when we step back, listen to what’s going on around us, and join in the harmony that can only happen when we are willing to work alongside someone singing a different part.

I’ve seen a number of posts these past few days about 9/11. I still vividly remember where I was and what I was doing 20 years ago, as many of you probably can. But even more, I remember how I felt in those days – sadness, fear, anger. The sense that our world had changed, the sense that we were no longer safe. **

But I also remember hanging on to the things that gave me hope in those days. The way the nation came together to “bind our wounds,” the way people jumped in to help wherever they could. To me, it seemed we were “making harmony” together: our voices, our skills, our energies all different, but coming together to make something beautiful.

I hoped that could last, that our nation could find new ways to come together.

Instead, it feels like we’ve drifted further and further apart. So many things divide us – political party lines, abortion and climate change, police and critical race theory, immigrants and walls, masks and vaccines. There are so many things that can polarize us.

I don’t know why we’re so divided these days, but I do know that it’s nothing new. The more I’ve looked at our history as a nation, the more I recognize that we have always been a nation divided by our opinions and our ideas – from our very founding. We’re not more divided now because we have more divisive issues. That’s simply a side effect of democracy.

Our history also shows us that we can overcome these polarities. Like our choir, I think our society has forgotten how to sing together, how to make harmony. How to step back, listen and observe, and allow our voices to blend together into something more beautiful than a single melody. Our voices are tired and scratchy from trying to sing the solo for so long.

I’m not saying we all have to be the same. Harmony doesn’t happen when we all sing the same note. And unity doesn’t happen when we all look alike, think alike and have the same opinions. Rather, it’s found when we express those differences together – and recognize that what’s “right” might be found in all of the voices, not just one.

And just like in the choir, our ears are our most important assets. Most of us have opinions about what’s going on these days. But when’s the last time you listened – really took time to listen – to someone who’s singing a different part?

I encourage all of us (myself included) to find ways to make harmony – to use our voices a little less, and our ears a little more.

I’m going to share some ideas in the next few days, but in the meantime, I want to ask you: What would making harmony look like for you, or what ideas have you heard in other places? Share it in the comments – let’s start a discussion!

A few days ago I had a chance to do something I hadn’t done in a long time – sing in a choir rehearsal. It’s strange to think it’s been so long, since choral singing has always been part of my life. I was in choirs during all my years of high school, college and graduate school. But the fact is, there just aren’t many choirs where we lived in Slovakia....

Harmony – a 9/11 Reflection A few days ago I had a chance to do something I hadn’t done in a long time – sing in a choir rehearsal.  It’s strange to think it’s been so long, since choral singing has always been part of m…