I am sitting by myself on an old wooden porch in Northwest Indiana. The porch falls out into a brief stretch of sandy forest and beyond that, the vast and desolate shore of Lake Michigan. The sky here, only an hour and a half outside of Chicago, is a blank and empty canvas. Like many people do when left alone in nature, I begin to think. The lake, peeking out of the woods, is an impossible stretch of blue; I try to understand the meaning for it all but am eventually pinned. Frustrated, my eyes wander to the Japanese Kiso acoustic guitar that lies vacantly beside my chair. I pick it up and begin plucking away. Meditating on the sounds echoing into the woods, I retreat far within my soul and am at perfect peace.
I am on Depaul’s Christian group, the Well’s, second retreat; a place where I am supposed to withdraw within myself and re-discover my faith. However, bible misplaced, group prayers aside, I have regressed to something that I understood long before I even knew the word religion: music. Music has and will always be my primary medium of knowing God. But perhaps I am not as alone as I think in this respect.
It is the next day and I am back in the perpetual chaos, noise, and clutter of the city. It is one day before my philosophy midterm and I am reaping the familiar panic of procrastination. I hunch over at my pale wooden desk, the top of which is strewn with a collage of notes and handouts. I look around my empty room for any potential distractions to avoid studying. Two beady eyed goldfish, a window that hovers over the busy quad. I eventually pull myself back to the realms of philosophy.
Plato believed that all we could see was a visible, material realm that hovered somewhere far below the perfect, intelligible realm. Plotinus called this perfect realm the One, or the beautiful, and our soul used intellect as a means to comprehend it. Ancient philosophy is thought by many to provide the structure for many of our modern religious structures. As I struggle to understand these complex themes, my iTunes open up at the random will of my Mac and I am struck with an epiphany. If beauty is the answer, music is the means.
About a week ago, I attended my first interfaith Sadir dinner at Depaul’s student center. A diverse spread of students had gathered together to learn, eat and celebrate a rich religious tradition. Before I can even ponder the order of ceremonies written on the whiteboard I am interrupted by music. A scruffy faced, Yamaka donned man is strumming wildly at his acoustic guitar and singing a nigun.
In Judaism a nigun is a type of wordless music that simply uses abstract sounds as a medium of celebration. And I feel an energy pick up in the room as we all collectively clap and sing and rock our bodies to the rhythm. The air is filled with something magical, we remember, we praise, we rejoice. It matters little that we know not the words for we all know the feeling. And perhaps that very feeling is the reason almost all religious traditions seem to use music in some way shape or form. Perhaps music is the most powerful medium to express faith after all…
But I have had enough of this theological exploration. My head has already begun to hurt in the philosophical projections and religious inquiries. After I finish writing this, I will retreat to my bed, put on my headphones, close my eyes, and lose myself in the distant harmonies of music.
– Zach Boyer
Published in the May 2010 Issue of the Interfaith Review