Gathering Words
I’d like you to find your heartbeat. Find it through your pulse on your neck or your wrist, find it by placing your hand on your chest. Recognize that your heart is a gong which rings throughout the universe. Think of this as we proceed through our time together.
Food for Thought: The Purpose of Hymns
I’d like to ask you a question: What is the purpose of singing in church? It appears to be pretty important since we do it three times in an hour. Why? Have you ever wondered? It’s okay if you haven’t. Wonder now. Why do we sing together? What purpose does it serve? And why do we sing mostly old hymns instead of mostly new ones?
In 2013, a university in Sweden did a study that helps answer a few of these questions. They found, without exception, that when a group of people sing in unison two things happen. One, their heart rates immediately slow down. This is due to the physical act of singing itself. It requires a rhythmic deep breathing with slow exhalations. Just the act of that alone we already know to have a positive effect on our hearts, and therefore, our stress rate.
But the second thing that happens is even more interesting. Almost immediately after beginning to sing, all the singers’ heart rates align. They measured it. Attached a whole choir to a heart rate monitor. After the group begins to sing, the lines first squiggle around randomly and then, boom. They slot into place. Guided by the tempo of the music, they create their own new unified heart rate. A heart rate that is in even greater synchrony with each other than the music itself, suggesting that everyone’s hearts are using the tempo to nudge themselves toward each other. If the tempo of the music was the only reason for the change in heart rate, the hearts would have aligned more closely with the music, but instead they align with each other. That means our hearts actually hear each other. Can find each other. Can alter their rhythm to act in sympathy with each other. (Source: NPR. Health Shots, July 2013)
The invitation in this ritual is not to waste it. Don’t waste a second of it. Even if the music is not your cup of tea, sing it.
The reason we sing mostly old tunes is because our unity is struck more quickly and easily when the song is familiar. So it’s good to mix the old with the new, but mostly old. Like my sister learned in Girl Scouts: Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.
Allow yourself to sing. Allow yourself to let go. Allow yourself to make a mistake. It won’t hurt anyone if you sing a wrong note. As we sing our first hymn, notice how your breathing is directed by the phrases, notice the words. Use them like a prayer that has become even more powerful because we are praying it in this unique way, together.
Meditation
What you would say to the heart next to you? Think about it. In your mind’s eye locate the heart of the person nearest you and in your imagination talk to it. Encourage it. Find something important to say to it that you might not have the courage or impulse to say with words, and with your heart alone, say them...
Sunday Message: Allow Yourself to Sing
Saturday is National Make a Difference Day. It’s a day meant for community service. For serving your neighbor. But making a difference is accomplished by more than just community service. That is the way that the day’s founders have chosen to frame it. And it has been the largest national day of community service for over twenty years. Their efforts have definitely made a difference in people’s lives, in people’s homes, the nonprofits which serve them, the communities in which they live. A difference has most definitely been made.
But there are other ways to make a difference we don’t think about. And they are much smaller than creating a national holiday and an annual nationwide service event organizing thousands of volunteers and projects. They are in the daily interactions we have with other people. Don’t scoff at it just because it feels too simple or because you imagine it would be ineffective. Never underestimate something as simple as a smile directed toward a stranger. It’s the same as leaving thousands of pennies on the sidewalk because you’re waiting for a twenty.
When we look back on the people who have changed our lives, or helped us define our sense of self, the origins of those changes are usually just moments, and usually very brief. Sometimes they’re given by people we’ve known for years or someone we happened to be in line behind at the grocery store. A single compliment or just the right word of encouragement given at just the right time.
I could name five, probably more, incredibly brief moments of my life that continue impact me in positive ways to this day. Thoughts that sit with me still that I turn to for comfort when I doubt myself. For the most part those people who gave me those brief moments of encouragement likely have no idea the decades of positive impact they have made on my life.
It’s good news here because planting seeds is a work-smarter-not-harder concept. Just ask Johnny Appleseed. We don’t have to arm wrestle change into anybody, or the world. Our job is not to cultivate an entire field to the point of harvest. It’s only to plant one seed. Assume that if you’ve planted it on fertile ground, and with lots of manure to assist it, all shall be well. And, let’s face it, there’s plenty of manure here to go around. Give it permission through your action to become an excellent garden.
I think part of the reason we’re hesitant to get involved as a changemaker is because we see the task as being too big, too daunting. We are only one person. What difference can one person make? And even when we believe that yes, one person can make a difference, for we see examples of it nearly every day, we don’t think we’d be that person.
I invite you to take the pressure off of yourself a bit. There are already visionaries out there doing the big work. Of course they could use more, but not everyone has to operate on that level in order to help nudge our world toward a more loving future. We can best support the visionaries by remembering that our own small actions can and do have huge effects.
For this I’ll let you in on a little secret: No matter how badly someone feels about themselves, their inner light is listening. Beneath the heavy cloak of this human vessel, who we really are is paying very close attention for anything which resonates with it. Light always knows light when it sees it. Trust that process. Believe it to be at play.
But we get confused. We over-think things. We doubt our power to affect change. We definitely doubt that it can be done easily, so we tend not to bother at all. We get self-conscious, uncomfortable. We stand at the soil waiting for the seed to sprout. We get impatient. We conclude ourselves to be a failure, foolish for staring at the dirt for so long. We retreat.
We don’t know where to begin. What action to take first. But to remind you of a thought given earlier in this service, we know there is power in song. We know that there is a force in music. And music is easier. So when in doubt, when you think you have nothing at your immediate disposal to do, sing. Hum. Whistle. Ring a bell. You know the secret now. It’s like vibrational air freshener. We now know that when we sing together our heart beats align. We can conclude there is a gift in this. A gift we give other people around us. And even when we don’t sing, we know our hearts can hear each other. In the literal sense.
If your heart is chatting with the heart of a person walking down the sidewalk passing you in the opposite direction, what does it say? Probably whatever you happen to be thinking and feeling at the moment. What do you find yourself thinking and feeling as you pass people on the street? Are you judging them on their clothes? Their bodies? Their smell? Their hair? Their strange reaction when you say hello to them? Whatever it is, that is what you’re sending them. And a part of them, if not multiple parts, are hearing you.
So, if your heart is a transmitter which is always in communication with its surroundings, what are you doing with that fact?
Science has proven our hearts are listening to each other. What would you have them say? Making a difference can be as easy as thinking or wishing well for someone whom you may never even speak to. You heart will literally be projecting that idea to another heart, which is also listening for it.
Amid global fears of water and food shortages, increased visibility of bigotry, racism and hatred, enhanced awareness of sexual assault, and of course, a hostile political landscape, there is good news which falls to the sidebars because bad news travels better than good. But the truth is, extreme poverty has fallen from 35% in 1987 to only 11% in 2013. Hunger is falling, child labor is on the decline. In fact, child labor has fallen 40% just since 2000. The cost of food has fallen. Life expectancy has risen, child mortality is down. Teen births in the US are down by half in only the past ten years alone. In 1955, 45% of Americans smoked. This year it’s only 16%. Homicide rates have fallen dramatically, violent crime in the US is going down, the global supply of nuclear weapons has rapidly reduced, more people in the world live in a democracy than ever before, more people are going to school for longer, literacy is up, access to the internet has increased, solar energy is getting cheaper. People are even getting taller. (Source: Vox, October 18, 2018)
A difference has been made in this world because people are finding their song and singing it. They are recognizing their light and sharing it. They are seeing the light in other people and helping them to reveal it.
Sing your song. Find your voice. Make a joyful noise. You are not alone in your desire to improve, even save, this world for a new age. The wind is at our backs, never doubt it. Don’t believe all the news you hear. They have an agenda, no matter what side of the aisle they’re on. But I have one too. I want you to feel better. I want you to recognize that the good in this world is definitely expanding. Wake up. “Get woke,” as they say. You’ll see that the heart in us all beats to the rhythm of this earth and all those who walk upon it.
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