From Liturgical Singer
August 17, 2006
HARMONY
Holding the Truth of Meaningful Differences
If “you’re ready to find the love of your life” or maybe just watching too much TV, chances are you’ve heard of eHarmony.com, “the fastest growing relationship site on the web.” Confident of the company’s “scientifically proven” matching system, the spokesperson buoyantly entreats: “Let us help you find the joy of true compatibility.” They got the compatibility part right, at least partially. Harmony does mean bringing into agreement. But it seems to suggest that compatibility, not to mention marital bliss and life-long harmony, is simply a matter of finding someone who has the same interests, values, intellect, beliefs, or sense of humor. “Ah!” pines the imaginary looker-for-love, the hunter–of-harmony, “to find a man (or woman) who is exactly like me! Eureka!” One problem— the eHarmony folks got the compatibility part partially wrong as well, and therefore risk mistaking the deeper meaning and the greater challenge of experiencing a life of genuine harmony.
Looked at from a biblical and spiritual perspective, harmony involves not so much the finding and bringing together of what is similar as it involves the joining of what is dissimilar through a conscious act of sympathy for the other. After all, it is the shocking image of the wolf lying down with the lamb, the lion with the fatling, and the infant child playing near the asp that most poignantly symbolizes the radical nature of the peaceable kingdom that will be the final realization of the reign of God.
True harmony, individual, social, or cosmic, means making compatible what appears incompatible not by finding in the incongruities a lowest common denominator but rather by holding them in a graced and creative tension. This is what we mean when we say Catholicism is a both-and not an either-or way of life. Let’s consider a few contrarieties that need to be held together in graceful tension.
BELOVED AND SINNER All Christian theology is lived out between two fundamental truths: first, we are made little less than God and crowned with glory and honor (Ps. 8:5) and second, we “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3: 23). We are the image of God and dust of the earth, peculiar treasures and earthen vessels, the beloved of God and blind fools, saints and sinners both.
These truths are not mutually exclusive. We are beloved sinners and the sinful beloved, although our belovedness is a prior and truer truth than our sinfulness. Before there was original sin there was original splendor. Unlike our sinfulness, which is expressed most tangibly in what we do or fail to do, our belovedness has nothing to do with what we do. It is a reality established before we think, do, or say anything. Our belovedness is our spiritual DNA. It cannot be changed. Our sinfulness, however real, is actually a contradiction not a confirmation of our core identity, and thus does not trump or negate our belovedness which resides in the extravagant love of God. Yet too often the Church is responsible for persons developing “a sense of sacral unworthiness” rather than belovedness. While acknowledging our sinfulness, wholesome worship reminds us of our innate preciousness, and turns us gratefully and joyfully toward God in whose superfluous love all contradictions are reconciled.
BE STILL AND STILL MOVING Prior to modern psychology, Pascal made his famous diagnosis that most of the evils of life arise from a person’s inability to sit still in a room. The contemporary expression of this is seen in people who have full schedules but empty lives. Often it is disguised boredom or fear that fuels our restlessness, busyness, and freneticism. Stillness helps us see either how hallowed or how hollow our lives are. In addition, it provides the impetus and the means for change. No real growth in life or soulful liturgy happens without intentional and prayerful stillness.
Benedictine spirituality, with its vows of stability and conversatio morum (commitment to community and to ongoing conversion respectively), does a good job of upholding the vital relationship between stillness and spiritual growth, between contemplation and conversion. This relationship is summed up in the evocative words of T.S. Eliot, “Be still and still moving.” Spiritually speaking, stillness is the deep prayer that is the condition for any substantive transformation. Physically, being still is the embodiment of a person’s willingness or desire “just to be” and conveys one’s radical trust in God. The desire of God for us, as recorded by the psalmist, is “be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10). The growth or movement that prayerful stillness engenders is always greater intimacy with God which necessarily fosters healthy care for oneself and compassion for others.
HUMOR AND PAIN In Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the narrator describes one of the most laudable characteristics of R.P. McMurphy, the story’s protagonist and Christ-figure: “He won’t let the pain blot out the humor no more’n he’ll let the humor blot out the pain.” Integrity, depth, and harmony not to mention wonder and compassion are found in our ability to faithfully honor the agony and the ecstasy, the pathos and the laughter. Whether in liturgy or life, honoring the pain insures that we will not mistake entertainment or amusement for genuine celebration. Honoring the humor prevents us from becoming spiritual prigs and reminds us that suffering is not the last word.
A wonderful example of this are the L’Arche communities made up of assistants who live together with men and women who suffer from mild and severe mental and physical disabilities. It is helpful to note and hopeful to consider how these communities where anguish is such a legitimate and recurrent reality are also places of such natural, unapologetic, and barefaced enjoyment where the beauty of life and one another are compassionately and continually celebrated.
Whether in theology, worship, or life, harmony is the result of gracefully holding together the truth of meaningful differences, never allowing one side of the equation to blot out the unique truth the other has to teach and offer.
DANIEL J. MILLER, Ph.D.