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Two Sundays ago I asked Leon Burke if there was anything I could do to help him with the "Music Sunday" Service. Have you ever asked a question and gotten more than you really wanted? I teach music at Jefferson College and every semester I ask my students, "What is music? " They respond by listing the elements, "Music is melody, rhythm, and harmony." They tell me that music is a form of expression and that music is math. Some of them read the textbook and tell me that "Music is organized sound." We have yet to find a definition that not only includes everything that is music, but excludes that which most certainly is not. It seems that music is like pornography; it is one of those things we cannot define, but we know it when we hear it.

Music is my looking glass. By exploring the ways music is used and what makes it music, we come face to face with who we are. Who are we? We are social creatures and music accompanies our celebrations. We are hedonists and music is the Lord of the Dance. As spiritual beings, we are not of this world and music transcends our limitations. Our intellects seek truth and music provides us with an oasis of order. We are mind, body, spirit, and community. Music reflects these.

Mind

In a 1929 Life Magazine interview, Albert Einstein said, "If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician." I find that interesting. If I could not be a musician, my backup plan was to be an engineer. I find that a lot of engineers, scientists, and mathematicians love music.

We are mind and music is math. Pythagoras, inventor of the triangle, believed that everything is mathematics, and numbers are the ultimate reality. He discovered the mathematical ratios between the pitches of the scale. He said that music imitates the mathematical order of the universe. Aristotle, believed the perception of that imitation in the arts by the well-reasoned mind is what brings pleasure. Centuries later, Goethe declared that "Architecture is frozen music." Today we hear the music of Mozart as architecture, melted and flowing through time. In my classes we literally count the measures and number the notes. Mozart gives us order in its purest form. My textbook tells me that music is "organized sound." Musical ecstasy arises from perceiving order amidst chaos. From the numerology of Pythagoras, to the aural architecture of Mozart we find order. When we encounter that order where we previously heard disorder, we find the mind of God.

Body

Igor Stravinsky said, "I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it." Likewise, when asked to explain jazz, Louis Armstrong replied, 'If you can't feel it, I don't know how I can explain it. We are more than mind, we are physical creatures. We eat, drink and make merry and then take vitamins so we won't die tomorrow. We are junkies and music is our drug of choice.

We are addicted to music. We physically crave it just as we physically crave air. We surround ourselves with sound. We hear it in elevators, dentist offices, and over the telephone. From Telemann's "table music" to today's Muzak, it is everywhere. It is as important to the ambience as the wallpaper. Commercials, movies and cartoons add it to their pictures, like vitamins added to our milk. And like vitamins added to our milk, it enriches our lives. It awakens us and puts us to sleep. It slows us down in the grocery store, so we will have more time to shop, and it speeds us up in the restaurant to allow for more customers. It is the pacemaker regulating the pulse of society. From the Epicureans before Plato to today's hedonists, it fills our emptinesses. Silence is the void created when the music stops. Music is indeed the Lord of the Dance. The Dance of the Shiva creates the universe, -- and we create the music.

Spirit

In a village in the Bolivian Andes a Quechuan woman wails ceaselessly before the body of her dead child. A harpist stridently strums an ostinato of dissonant clusters while the golpeador beats a steady pulse on the sound box. Throughout the night mourners join in the wailing. This is the wawa velorio. The cries, the beating, the discordant music all keep the devil away so the soul of the child can escape to heaven. We want music to have that kind of power.

Einstein had said that "A human being is ... limited in time and space." But, we seek to escape the confines of time and space. Music takes us beyond those limits. We are spirit and music feeds the soul. It is a channel to the divine speaking directly from the heart. Music communicates beyond words. It expresses meanings and emotions in their pure form without their concrete content. It is transcendent, transcending thought itself. It speaks in wordless tongues of pure love and beauty. If mere words were possible, poetry would suffice. Yet, combine the power of poetry with the majesty of music and both rise exponentially to form the chants and prayers of shamans and priests who call on this power. Its magic frees our spirits. When this sorcery speaks through our hearts and souls, we find the magic within us.

Community

We are more than mind, body and spirit. Our independent thoughts, feelings, and experiences are not enough. We need one another. We are community.

In Visitor's Corner, we hand out these little red tracts that ask, "What do Unitarian Universalists believe? The last point reads, "We believe in the importance of a religious community. The validation of experience requires the confirmation of peers, who provide a critical platform along with a network of mutual support."

I find it curious that free-thinking UUs seek the "validation of experience" and the "confirmation of peers" within a "religious community." Yet, here we are. Within this community we have developed new traditions and rituals that exist only because we do them and have meaning only because we let them. Beyond our walls we form associations, join unions, and reach out to the larger community, standing with others on common ground to reach further than each of us could alone.

Music builds community. It is a growing repertoire of traditions which give us the meanings we know so well. It is the tear during the hymn or patriotic anthem. It is the laughter of a child's game and the bliss of a mother's lullaby. It is from association that we praise its virtues, just as it is by association that we condemn its vices. These vices and virtues are reflections of who we are. Good and bad we join in a chorus of voices to belong to something greater than each of us individually. Our songs animate this otherwise lifeless society becoming its blood. When we drink in these sounds we become part of that body. Music unites us and we become one with ourselves.

Conclusion

We are mind, body, spirit, and community. Music reflects these. Music provides the truth we seek and the backgrounds we need. It speaks to us, heals us, frees us and unites us. We have found the music and it is within us. We are the music as long as it lasts.