“How Can I Keep From Singing?”
Morgan McLean, Intern Minister
October 17, 2010

Note: The sermon is an oral event. This manuscript may not reflect the exact spoken words. If you want to hear what was actually said, you can listen to sermon visit our website at www.uurockford.org. © Morgan McLean, 2010.

Our lives flow on in endless song! All our lives have been shaped and touched by music.

We learn music and singing at the same time as we learn to talk and explore our voices. It is innate that we sing and feel rhythm. We naturally know how to do it.

If you happened to have clicked that link in the newsletter about today’s sermon, you were introduced to Snowball, a dancing cockatoo. Snowball amazed neuroscientists when he danced – on the beat – to Queen, the Backstreet Boys, and Lady Gaga. What the scientists found remarkable about this bird dancing is that they previously thought only humans could keep a beat.

Now, I know some of you might think you don’t have rhythm, but actually humans and now song birds, are the only creatures that DO have rhythm, and do so naturally. What we humans share with cockatoos is the ability to speak. The scientists think as we use speech, we have to map sound and movement together and that gives us the foundation for keeping a beat.

Unfortunately, as Gale shared in her chalice lighting, unlike cockatoos, humans are often discouraged from fully exploring their natural musical talents. Most of us were socialized to sing quietly, move conservatively, and hesitate on rhythm. But when undo some of that, we can be more open to the endless possibilities of how music can enrich our lives.

Singing is a powerful expression of emotions. Happy, lonely, angry, proud… we can capture those human experiences in song. And I believe we can use song to be more fully in the moment.

I’m assuming I’m not the only person who spontaneously bursts into song every now and then. Or catches themselves humming or whistling a tune for no apparent reason. One tune often that gets me, especially if I see a blue bird out my window, on those kind of do-da-days that filled with plenty of sunshine, a song can’t help but zip out of your mouth…

Zippity doo dah, Zippity aye,
My oh my what a wonderful day
Plenty of sunshine coming my way,
Zippity doo dah, Zippity aye
(music by Allie Wrubel, lyrics by Ray Gilbert)

I’m guessing I’m not the only person who has laughed out loud or even cried a little in a public place after hearing a certain song. That power ballad in the grocery store, or the patriot song in the diner? So why does that happen?

There have been many researchers looking at different parts of the brain and how humans interact with music. I have to say, while I was researching for this sermon, I kept thinking a background in neuroscience would have been helpful. It seems music engages the pre-frontal cortex, if that means anything to you. It’s a different part of the brain than holds vocabulary or short term memory.

Neuroscience is way beyond my expertise, and the funny thing is that since we don’t use most of our brain, it’s not very exact science, so most research is a “best guess.” In the 1990’s, for example, “The Mozart Effect,” was quite popular after a short study showing improved brain functioning in students after they listened to classical music. The research has since been found inconclusive, though there has been other research showing the positive effect of music on memory.

Music therapy is a growing field with special success in helping stroke victims recover use and control of sounds, as well as engaging those with developmental disabilities. It also is used to engage the memory of dementia and Alzheimer’s patients. I saw this first hand with my grandmother. She could not recall the name of objects like “TV” or “matches” and eventually is was unclear if she recognized her family. But she could sing every song or hymn she had ever learned. And she would sing them with gusto! There was something about music that kept her lively. At the nursing home there was a woman who came in weekly to play old favorite songs. My grandmother’s face would light up and she would dance and bounce. Music seemed to be the only place where she was fully engaged with what was happening around her. She was a Scottish immigrant, and one of her favorites was:

My Bonnie lies over the ocean
My Bonnie lies over the sea
My Bonnie lies over the ocean
Oh bring back my Bonnie to me

Bring back, bring back
Bring back my Bonnie to me, to me
Bring back, bring back
Bring back my Bonnie to me
(trad. Scottish)

That song brought my grandmother back to her bonnie Scotland every time she sang it, and now it brings me back to her.

It wasn’t coincidence that “My Bonnie” was my grandmother’s favorite. The pre-frontal cortex, that part of the brain that processes music may also be the part that responds to self-reflection and autobiography. So music and, personal memories and emotions, light up the same part of the brain in a scan. That explains, scientifically, then, the reason a song can transport us to a different time. It explains why we remember the music that shaped our lives. And, why, when we hear those songs we can recall the emotions even from long ago.

And music doesn’t always bring happy memories. We sing in challenging moments. Like, when all your bags are packed, you’re ready to go, you hate to say goodbye to someone you love… you’re “Leaving On a Jet Plane”

So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you wait for me
Hold me like you never let me go
I'm leaving on a jet plane,
I don't know when I'll be back again
Oh babe I hate to go
(John Denver)

When we don’t have the words, or when we’re out of logic and reason, we sing. In the book of Romans in the Christian New Testament Paul talks about a groaning, a resounding music, inside of us that expresses passion and meaning as we hope for a better life. Perhaps that groaning is that innate part of us as humans that uses breath and sound to express ourselves in unique ways. The part that feels rhythm and tones.

Pete Seeger, the famous folk singer, and fellow Unitarian Universalist, knows something special happens when people sing together. He says it “gives people some kind of a holy feeling.” For Seeger there is hope in the future of humanity when people sing together. A recent biographical documentary of Pete Seeger is called “The Power of Song.” It follows his career as a folk singer and activist, and chronicles how Seeger has used song for social change. When I watched the documentary I cried and cried because I was so moved considering how powerful song was in the civil rights and peace movements. Those folk songs captured the anger and the hurt, and the hope. Seeger adapted a Gospel song that became an anthem for the U.S. Civil Rights movement, sung famously by Joan Baez at the Lincoln Monument on a March on Washington:

We shall overcome
We shall overcome
We shall overcome some day
Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome some day

As far as historians and anthropologists can tell, music has been an important part of the human experience since ancient times. Groups sing. They sing in celebration, or in mourning. They sing at life’s transitions and at rites of passage. Music has always been an important way people express themselves and find meaning in their lives. The Psalms in the Old Testament were written to be sung. They were songs of lament and praise to God. The Torah, the first 5 books of the Hebrew Bible, and the Islamic holy book, the Qur’an, are sung in worship. And Buddhist and Christian monks have long chanted prayers and meditations.

Our own Unitarian Universalist hymnal is called Singing the Living Tradition. So Unitarian Universalists sing. The Reverend Mark Bellitini, a former Intern Minister in this church, was chair of the commission that put the hymnal together. He tells about his visit to Arthur Foote, the minister who chaired the efforts of the 1964 hymnal: (From Ross’ “The Premise and The Promise.”)
He told me stories about the people on his committee and how they had gone back to the red book that preceded their blue book, and I was deeply touched to hear the history of this living tradition. I told him which hymns we had kept and showed him sheets of the new hymns we were considering. He looked at them on his lap, and said “young man, I can’t read these any more. Will you sing them for me?” I knelt down next to his wooden-back char and sang the hymns and he wept and I wept. There was a sense of the living tradition at that moment.

A transcendent moment for Mark and Arthur. Connecting them not only to our shared Unitarian Universalist future and past, but to the whole history of humankind, where people come together in song to share life’s journey. The supplement to the hymnal Mark helped put together is called Singing the Journey. That’s what we do. That’s what we’ve done here today.

We have fully embraced this unique function of the human brain and body to recall lyrics and tunes that give meaning our lives. Let us do it every day. Let us sing a little louder in the shower. A little prouder in traffic.

Let us sing more fully when we’re together in worship. It is part of who we are.