Music of the Spirit

            One of the things I most like about the semester ending is the fact we are getting near the end of the various books I use.  For example, in one class I have students read Kathleen Norris’ great book, The Cloister Walk.  The book originally appeared in 1996.  I am not sure when I bought it and read it.  I first became aware of Norris’ work with her book, Dakota.  That book is about landscape and a look at place and space.  I came to appreciate a few things about Norris.

            I learned that her educational background was poetry.  She is a published poet.  Even of more interest to me was the fact Norris had spent two lengthy periods in a Benedictine monastery.  Like me, Norris is a Benedictine oblate, which basically means she is a “lay Benedictine.”  That commits us to living as nearly as we can the monastic life.  Both Norris and I are married; I have kids.  Of course, that means we cannot be monks in the traditional sense of the word.  But we can make a spiritual commitment to follow that way insofar as we can.

            A few years ago, I invited Norris to my campus to do the lectures which my endowed chair sponsors.  She was wonderful during her two days with us.  She is creative and funny in her own way.  Norris is about the same age I am, so it was fun to watch how she sees the world and describes it in ways that I never would.  She has a kind of poet’s perspective and that fascinates me.

            As the semester unfolded, I was always glad again to be near the end of The Cloister Walk.  That book details Norris’ experience in her months-long stay at St. John’s Abby in Minnesota.  One of my favorite selection of the book is one she entitles, “The Gregorian Brain.”  If I were in my narrow Quaker world, I would have no clue what that title communicates.  However, because of my many times in a Benedictine monastery, I have a familiarity with Gregorian chant.  And I add, I value very highly every chance I get to participate in worship which employs Gregorian chant.  There is something centering and inspiring in that music.

            Norris opens her little chapter with this amazing sentence.  “Recent neurological research has shown that in religious rituals from around the world, poetry is generally chanted with a pulse of between two and four seconds, a pulse that the researchers now believe to correspond to an internal system in the human brain.”  I hope that research is true; I want to believe it.  That certainly is the effect Gregorian chant has on me.  Her description of the effect on our brain by Gregorian chant pushes me to think about music of the Spirit.

            Norris quotes a monk who claims, “the ritual chanting of sacred texts contributes in a unique way to a profound, largely subliminal, absorption and engagement having many more dimensions than mere rational understanding.”  Norris adds her own commentary, which I find resonates with my own experience.  She says about the monks who chant, “the communal reciting, chanting, singing of the psalms brings a unique sense of wholeness and order to their day, and even establishes the rhythm of their lives.”  That’s it.  That is the effect Gregorian chant has on me.

            Whenever I enter a monastery, I can feel my body relax and my breathing slow down.  In Quaker language, I sense my whole being begin to center.  This Quaker centering is our way to talking about how soul sense the Spirit and both seek to find their place together.  When I am centered, I don’t lose my own sense of identity.  I remain me.  But I also sense I am with---and even in---a Presence bigger than I am.  This is my feeble way of talking about wholeness.  I experience myself in to part of a much larger world and that I have a secure place in that bigger Whole. 

            When we find ourselves in that centered place, we don’t have to worry about things.  Of course, it does not mean all our problems and troubles disappear.  No, I still will have problems in life.  But life does not have to be determined nor dominated by problems.  While problems will be inevitable for all of us, we do not have to understand life as mere problem-solving.  There can be a different kind of rhythm to our lives.

            This different kind of rhythm is precisely what I feel and experience when I participate in the life of the monastery.  A significant determiner of that rhythm is the Gregorian chant into which we all are invited to participate.  Gregorian chant invites us into the center of soul and Spirit.  We will feel it as individuals and we will experience the communal effect of being in it with others---and I would suggest with the Other.  As Norris notes, “it also fosters an appreciation for community.”

            I choose one last quotation from Norris to describe my profound appreciation for the music of the Spirit.  She says “It is a music in harmony with the body, and with the universe itself.”  I can almost laugh as a Quaker when I type those last words.  As a Quaker, I highly value silence and its own centering effect on my life.  But I have learned to value equally highly the Gregorian chant of the monks.  That music of the Spirit takes me just as surely to that same centered place.  And in that chant I am blessed by a spiritual community that goes to that place with me.