If I remember correctly, the old runes from Northern Europe weren't only letters in the way we've come to know them. Letters, to us, do little more than denote phonetic sounds. Runes were believed to have healing properties in some way that was both physical and spiritual. A specific rune might be carved out for you when you were suffering from a certain ailment. The rune - a letter, a spoken frequency, and a piece of a word - was a cure in itself.
Sometimes I come to church with a settled mind. Not so today. My thoughts feel chaotic and unsure of their mooring. And as church often has a way of taking my head and setting it back in its proper place, of even occasionally giving rise to a small epiphany, of answering some enormous question that all too often contributes to the chaos, I am here today with solemn expectations.
Solemn somehow means heavy, even somber.
Please, Please, I seem to beg of the mass - give me something, help me somehow. Fix me.
But then the bird called Bach comes swooping into the room, everything about him insisting on a kind of solemn joy. There is no heaviness, no brooding question. The fugue glitters, makes no lasting promises, and is gone. Little if anything of the mass seems to stick today except the music.
And then the mass is ended with Purcell. Even as Dido is dying, Purcell can't seem to be somber, and he is no different here in his "Ayre in C." All light and moving shadows, water gliding to and fro.
Before we started taking ourselves so seriously, European Christians seemed to understand that pleasure and pain were passing - that we were passing through this world - and music and art helped keep the momentum going.
I find today that momentum is all I was looking for.
Some air, room to breathe, for my brain to disencumber itself, rather than forming any more supposedly brilliant thoughts. The mind seems to crave its own disturbance with this constant accumulation of thoughts: images, fantasies, plans, memories. For all of these, the Church has its own rune:
'tis the name that whoso preacheth
speaks like music to the ear:
who in prayer this name beseecheth
sweetest comfort findeth near.
Note: I apologize for the late date on this posting. This was written in response to the mass on August 7, the eighth Sunday after Pentecost. I was slightly delayed through my own distraction, but further delayed by my desire to locate the names of the composers of the pieces that struck me. The piece by Bach was his Prelude and Fugue in F major. Purcell's Ayre in C was also mentioned, and the lyrics printed at the end were translated, in 1861, from a 15th century Latin hymn.
Sometimes I come to church with a settled mind. Not so today. My thoughts feel chaotic and unsure of their mooring. And as church often has a way of taking my head and setting it back in its proper place, of even occasionally giving rise to a small epiphany, of answering some enormous question that all too often contributes to the chaos, I am here today with solemn expectations.
Solemn somehow means heavy, even somber.
Please, Please, I seem to beg of the mass - give me something, help me somehow. Fix me.
But then the bird called Bach comes swooping into the room, everything about him insisting on a kind of solemn joy. There is no heaviness, no brooding question. The fugue glitters, makes no lasting promises, and is gone. Little if anything of the mass seems to stick today except the music.
And then the mass is ended with Purcell. Even as Dido is dying, Purcell can't seem to be somber, and he is no different here in his "Ayre in C." All light and moving shadows, water gliding to and fro.
Before we started taking ourselves so seriously, European Christians seemed to understand that pleasure and pain were passing - that we were passing through this world - and music and art helped keep the momentum going.
I find today that momentum is all I was looking for.
Some air, room to breathe, for my brain to disencumber itself, rather than forming any more supposedly brilliant thoughts. The mind seems to crave its own disturbance with this constant accumulation of thoughts: images, fantasies, plans, memories. For all of these, the Church has its own rune:
'tis the name that whoso preacheth
speaks like music to the ear:
who in prayer this name beseecheth
sweetest comfort findeth near.
Note: I apologize for the late date on this posting. This was written in response to the mass on August 7, the eighth Sunday after Pentecost. I was slightly delayed through my own distraction, but further delayed by my desire to locate the names of the composers of the pieces that struck me. The piece by Bach was his Prelude and Fugue in F major. Purcell's Ayre in C was also mentioned, and the lyrics printed at the end were translated, in 1861, from a 15th century Latin hymn.
Very nice. Bach has more impact on my life than any other composer. I know the exact feeling you describe, needing something from the mass on a given day. Such a strange thing, that these orderly sounds can hit us in the hearts, can order our minds, can move our souls this way.
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