Sabbath Thoughts: The Moral Power of Music

Green Bottom Wildlife Management Area, WV  ©A. Rutherford

Plato, the great Greek philosopher, gave much attention to the place of music in the moral education of the child:   “Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.”   

“Music,” Plato says, “is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.”  And “Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul.”

In the poem “The Solitary Reaper,” the great English poet William Wordsworth tells a simple tale to express the power of music on the human soul.  The poet is out walking in a rural setting and comes across a young girl swinging her scythe as she reaps a field of grain.  And as she works, she sings.  He doesn’t understand her song, as she is a “Highland lass” no doubt singing in her brogue and her words are unintelligible to him. No matter . . . it is the expressive mood of her song and the emotions that it evokes in him that are of importance to the poet.  Its fluid beauty stirs a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” in him, which Wordsworth has said in another context is the heart of Poetry. . . this same spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings that is at the heart of Music as well, and Art, and Beauty in all its forms for that matter.

THE SOLITARY REAPER

          BEHOLD her, single in the field,

          Yon solitary Highland Lass!

          Reaping and singing by herself;

          Stop here, or gently pass!

          Alone she cuts and binds the grain,

          And sings a melancholy strain;

          O listen! for the Vale profound

          Is overflowing with the sound.

          No Nightingale did ever chaunt

          More welcome notes to weary bands                           

          Of travellers in some shady haunt,

          Among Arabian sands:

          A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard

          In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,

          Breaking the silence of the seas

          Among the farthest Hebrides.

          Will no one tell me what she sings?--

          Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow

          For old, unhappy, far-off things,

          And battles long ago:                                       

          Or is it some more humble lay,

          Familiar matter of to-day?

          Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,

          That has been, and may be again?

          Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang

          As if her song could have no ending;

          I saw her singing at her work,

          And o'er the sickle bending;--

          I listened, motionless and still;

          And, as I mounted up the hill                               

          The music in my heart I bore,

          Long after it was heard no more.

In the first stanza, he invites us to take note of the girl in the simplicity of her surroundings, in tune with her rustic setting, responding to it quite naturally in song.  “O, Listen,” he invites us.  And the way in which he issues the invitation causes us to understand that there is meaning and significance here, a lesson to take note of.   In the second stanza, he compares her singing to that of the nightingale and the cuckoo, as though her music comes as easily to her as their song does to the birds, part of her innate nature and her personal expression.  In the third stanza, he wishes he could understand her words, speculates what might be the content of her song, and yet it is clear that she is communicating with him, human being to human being.  He is deeply affected by her melody “whate’er the theme,” and pauses for a while to drink into his memory what he has seen and heard.  The last two lines are a comment on the power of beautiful memories to soothe and sustain the soul.

  The music in my heart I bore,

          Long after it was heard no more.

The poem is a meditation on Art and the power of Beauty.

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"Education is teaching our children to desire the right things." Plato

"The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful."  (Plato, The Republic)

Psalm 100:2   “Serve the LORD with gladness;
         Come before His presence with singing.”

Psalm 42:8   “ ... In the night His song shall be with me,
My prayer unto the God of my life.”

The Beauty of Memory

The Old Spring House, watercolor ©A. Rutherford

"Pioneers looked for a spring and built their homes near it. It kept their thirst (and that of their animals) satisfied and their food from spoiling. It was the only refrigeration known for years. Usually a house or building was built over the spring out of rock and a tree was planted near the door. A stone trough was built in the spring house. Through it ran cold, slow flowing spring water. Earthenware crocks of milk were placed, neck deep, in the water. It was always cool in the spring house, even in the warmest of days. A gourd dipper hung in the spring house so men coming in from the hot field could stop for a draft of cold water. The dog quenched his thirst from the overflow at the back of the spring house and a flock of ducks noisily investigated the trickling stream for tidbits. Watercress grew in the shallows.   (Taken from The Good Old Days, The Spring House, R.J. McGinnis, F. & W. Publishing Company, Cincinnati, Ohio, page 76 

In painting this scene with an old spring house this weekend, I was set to reflecting on the old spring house on my grandparents’ farm.  What a comforting place it was for me, but also just a bit mysterious with its cool, shadowy corners and the spring that seemed to flow up out of nowhere.  As a very young child that spring seemed magical to me.

In our fast-paced society, what are the memories that will last?  Which of their experiences are shaping our children into men and women of character, sensitivity, and strength?  

Perhaps one way to ensure that our children will indeed have those life-shaping memories is to take the time to remember what kind of our own past experiences contributed to who we are today.   Or look back at your own parents and grandparents.   What were their lives like?    What were the events that contributed to all the characteristics you value in the people they were and the contributions they made to your own life or the communal life?    What kind of music did they listen to?    What books did they read?    What chores were they responsible for that gave them the work ethic that successful adults need?    How did they spend their leisure time?    What was the balance between leisure or productive activity for them?    What adversities did they face or mountains they had to climb that carved those lines of character that you see in their faces?    What did they love, and how did they love?  

What were the simple joys that nurtured them?    I know in my own family, there was not the incessant need to be entertained or amused.    My memories are of warm family times of story-telling or playing games, gathering around a dinner table filled with home-cooked food, helping out with whatever needed done in the house or outside.    There was time to play, but not to be idle.   Time to explore our environs, but not to waste before the TV.   Time to read or be read to, and the books were ones that inspired our imaginations or connected us to the past or nurtured our character.   And music that delighted and entertained us but that didn’t fill us with angst or wrong-thinking or over-sexualize us.

What are our children experiencing that will feed their souls and will not fade away, but remain a comfort and an inspiration throughout their lives?   What are the memories we are making with them that will stand them in good stead when the rough places in their own lives occur?    What will act for them as reminders that they must take their place in the flow of the river of time and serve with honor and courage?

How will the memories of fast food and ready-made meals linger lovingly in their minds?   What will endless hours spent on the internet or lounging in the malls contribute to their strength of character or their resourcefulness?   Or will all the structured sports activities or “enrichment” activities only contribute to their being driven adults with the incessant need to be “on the go”?

Below is a poem by Seamus Heaney, the Irish poet who received among many, many honors the Nobel Prize for Literature.  Although he was born on a farm to working class people, he became a professor at both Oxford and Harvard.

The material of his poetry was the material of his own life.  Speaking of his early life and education, he commented, "I learned that my local County Derry experience, which I had considered archaic and irrelevant to 'the modern world' was to be trusted. They taught me that trust and helped me to articulate it." 

When Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize, the Nobel committee described his poetry as "works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past."

From his lecture upon receiving the Prize: 

When I first encountered the name of the city of Stockholm, I little thought that I would ever visit it, never mind end up being welcomed to it as a guest of the Swedish Academy and the Nobel Foundation.  At the time I am thinking of, such an outcome was not just beyond expectation: it was simply beyond conception.  In the nineteen forties, when I was the eldest child of an ever-growing family in rural Co. Derry, we crowded together in the three rooms of a traditional thatched farmstead and lived a kind of den-life which was more or less emotionally and intellectually proofed against the outside world.  It was an intimate, physical, creaturely existence in which the night sounds of the horse in the stable beyond one bedroom wall mingled with the sounds of adult conversation from the kitchen beyond the other.  We took in everything that was going on, of course - rain in the trees, mice on the ceiling, a steam train rumbling along the railway line one field back from the house - but we took it in as if we were in the doze of hibernation.  Ahistorical, pre-sexual, in suspension between the archaic and the modern, we were as susceptible and impressionable as the drinking water that stood in a bucket in our scullery: every time a passing train made the earth shake, the surface of that water used to ripple delicately, concentrically, and in utter silence.

Click HERE to listen to his poem about exploring the wells of his childhood,  "Personal Helicon," Helicon being a river from Greek mythology.

No, how could he have dreamed as a child of the man he would become, but his early experiences molded his character and gave him the stuff of his later life’s work.

Continuity . . . staying connected to the past, carrying those valuable things of the past into the future . . . remembering what made us wise and strong and and loving and then passing it on.  That’s important!

Train up a child in the way he should go,
      And when he is old he will not depart from it.

                                          -Proverbs 22:6 (NKJV)

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The Mission of Art

The Creation of Adam, Michelangelo, 1510

There seems to be a general recognition that something is amiss in modern culture, a dehumanization, a lack of unity or community, a repressed longing for something, anything, that can fill a void that most people cannot name.  The attempts to fill this void take a myriad of forms, from toys to technology, from the incessant need to be entertained to the use of drugs to kill the pain of meaninglessness resulting from lack of a higher purpose.  We shop, we party, we vacation, we increase our speed although the roads we are traveling on are often going nowhere in particular.

Philosopher Jacques Maritain offers this insight on what might lie at the root of our trouble:

          “We do not need a truth to serve us, 

                                            we need a truth that we can serve.”

Many consider that we as a society are poised on the brink of a precipice.  My purpose in this blog is to offer reflections concerning a Truth that we can serve, a Truth that offers a way back from this precipice.  I am not a mover.  I am not a shaker.  I am just an ordinary person who has life experience that seems to validate what I offer in these reflections.  And I am a person who has worked with young people all my life and who has watched time and time again the transformative effect on these young people when they have been introduced to Truth, Beauty, the great moral and spiritual Virtues, and what are generally recognized as the Great Ideas of Western Civilization.  When they have been shown a way to attach their lives to a transcendent purpose, they are then free to soar.  

My first approach in working with young people is to introduce them to forms of Beauty with which they have not yet been acquainted, the golden nuggets of beauty found in great literature, philosophy, art, music, Nature, etc., and then, released from the bonds of their own subjectivity and the tyranny of the culture, they begin to fall in love with Truth, which leads to the desire to attach their lives to Goodness and to some larger, unifying purpose for their lives.

As one student quoted in a good-bye “thank you” note she wrote to me:  “Teaching is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” -W.B. Yeats  

I believe that Beauty lights the fire on the altar of Truth.

However, Beauty as a virtue has been generally dismissed in modern society, especially in the arts, with its antipathy to anything that has standards of measurement, and the requirement to “measure up” to those standards.

Maritain, writing in Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry, argues that the loss of Beauty as a standard is a contributing factor to this dehumanizing, even if most people are unaware of the effects this loss creates.   The solution he offers for many of the ills that plague us as individuals and as a society is a return to the recognition and acknowledgement of the power of Beauty as a unifying force and an avenue of spiritual healing.

According to Maritain, “The dehumanizing process . . . can be overcome.  Art in this connection has an outstanding mission.  It is the most natural power of healing and agent of spiritualization needed by the human community. . . .  Art, as long as it remains art, cannot help being intent on beauty.” 

Therein lies the rub—”as long as it remains art” . . . All the modern “isms” have separated Art “from beauty, and from any transcendental end.  The final end and center, then, can only be man,”  which leaves us no way to get ourselves off our hands, so to speak.

This Beauty can take a myriad of forms, approaches, and modes of expression, enough diversity to satisfy anyone, yet there are common criteria or principles that must be recognized or else, to use an analogy, the powerful and life-giving river loses its banks and becomes a swamp.  The real “rub” for the modern culture is that these principles derive from the true source of the transcendent nature of Beauty, or its Divine source.   As stated by Thomas Aquinas, the "beauty of anything created is nothing else than a similarity of divine beauty participated in by things," . . . "the existence of all things derives from divine beauty."

Dostoevski said, “Beauty is the battlefield where God and the Devil contend with one another for the heart of man.” (The Brothers Karamazov)

the Lady's Slipper Orchid, a wild Beauty found in Nature
photo © Greg Ferrell
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The Banishment of Beauty

The Lady of Shalott, by John William Waterhouse 

  More often than not it's very discouraging to visit our museums of art and our public places where art and sculpture are being displayed, or to go to an art show or gallery exhibition and feel so alienated, or even insulted, by what is being presented for our acceptance as art.  It's evident that one of two things is happening:  either there are no longer contemporary artists who understand and appreciate aesthetic principles and have the skill to create their work using these principles, or there has been a conspiracy to expunge Beauty from the major modern art museums or to exclude art that is based on aesthetic absolutes from the same type of public or private funding programs or media support that the more "progressive" art and the artists who perpetrate it receive.  

So it is heartening to me whenever I hear someone speaking up in a public forum and pointing out that the Emperor of Modern Art is not wearing any clothes.  

Scott Burdick, a contemporary traditional artist who himself is a disciple of Beauty, is one of those artists who are beginning to speak out against the monolithic art establishment, and we must take seriously our responsibility to listen and to respond with our support of their endeavors.  We must cheer them on!

Burdick has taken it upon himself to create an exposé of what has been happening in the contemporary art world, in fact,what has been happening for a very long time in the world of museums, art critics, university art departments, the media, and the NEA, etc.  Burdick rightly points out that when you control these things, it is relatively easy to advance your agenda:  

"Their power lies in their total domination of what will be seen and heard by the wider culture.

They do not stifle expression by having someone arrested, but merely by their lack of notice they banish an entire artistic movement to invisible irrelevance, literally written out of the books like the History of Modern Art [the most prevalent textbook in university art history programs.] 

The power to ignore is their weapon and it has been wielded with devastating effect."

What is the agenda of the art establishment?  He argues persuasively that it is the banishment of Beauty.  Modern art is all theory-based, he explains; it's all about isms. It's an anti-aesthetic movement whose rationale is that we have "progressed" beyond the need for aesthetically beautiful art.  Beautiful art is not to be taken seriously because it has nothing to say to the human condition of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.  Beauty is no longer valid.

But Burdick gives us hope when he reminds us that there is "an aesthetic underground that has kept alive the principles of beauty and technical excellence during the past century of artistic madness.”  But they must work “under the public radar, selling their work, pursuing the age-old craft of aesthetic excellence, and essentially ignored by the artistic establishment and critics, invisible to the larger society.”

In his presentation, he takes the viewer through the sad history of the past century in art by alternating between modern "masterpieces" and lovely works of art that have been created concurrently with those modern pieces but essentially have been ignored by the curators and critics.  But it is so heartening to see the wealth of beautiful art that has been being created all along.  However, it is sad that the general public doesn't have the access to these works that they should, or that we cannot take our children to see these beautiful works of art hanging in our public institutions.  It is as if after the Impressionists very little worthwhile beautiful art has been created.  

However Burdick encourages us:

Beauty and Truth have been driven out of the temple.  But despite the most ardent efforts of the art establishment, the flame of beauty has been kept alive by the members of an unofficial aesthetic underground who simply refuse to fall for the nonsensical theories of art that seek to degrade rather than elevate the human spirit.  

The change will come from the ground up, like all revolutions, with the general public demanding control back of the hijacked institutions their tax dollars support.

We all owe a debt of gratitude to those artists who have kept the classical skills of painting and aesthetic expression alive during the dark years of the anti-Beauty movement that has so dominated our century.  Most of them will not see the promised land, but it is their clear vision of the truth that has kept Art from dying out.  In the meantime, let me say, ‘Long live Beauty and Truth.’” 

Click HERE to enjoy Scott Burdick’s program on The Banishment of Beauty.  Yes, it’s an hour long, but it’s divided into four 15-minute segments, and there’s so much to learn about what has been happening right under our noses for the last 100 years.

The bonus is that you will see wonderful examples of beautiful art that you might never have access to otherwise.  I do not know if Mr. Burdick is a man of Faith, but he is certainly engaged on the side of Truth.

As people of Faith, we understand the world spirit that is behind and animating this banishment of Beauty.  Our contribution to this aesthetic underground movement is to stand for Truth, Beauty, and Goodness in our own lives in the choices we make and also to diligently reclaim our heritage for our children so that they are not victims of the culture. 
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A Sense of Wonder

I think often of what kind of young men . . . and older men . . . I want my grandboys to become. In today's culture there's so much to distract their little forming hearts and minds, and so much that would impede the kind of character growth I would love to see in them. Most of what is the "norm" now to me is abnormality and aberration. I look at little boys, teenagers, and young men (young women too) today and what I see that's missing for the most part is a sense of wonder and delight, an appreciation of Beauty in its natural forms and in literature and music, the kind of bravery that is not afraid to go against the tide and act with honor and moral courage even when it's unpopular.

I look at the little face in this photo, so impatient with his Gannie's kiss because he's got more important things to do than stand still for a moment and be held by arms that love him, and I smile and think, "Oh, I hope you always have the sense that you can get on with your life and become who you were meant to be because your Gannie and the people who love you have got your back covered. . . . and that a sense of security gives you the confidence to be brave and to swim against the tide and become the person God created you to be. I want you to know what Joy is, and Wonder, and Delight, and Humility, and Honor.  I want you to be able to see true Beauty and value it . . . I want you to have a Poet's Soul."

I want you to be like the little boy in this poem below, written by my friend Chris, with you in mind, someone whose imagination is alight with goodness and sensitivity. . . someone who can see through the "real" world into the really real world . . . someone who is not earthbound. What a brave little heart the boy in this poem has . . . you just know what kind of man he will become, unless "life" gets in his way. And so today I pray for my grandones' protection and my daughter's courage too and her strength to be the kind of Mom who has raised the "little brave man" of the poem.

Read it aloud . . . you'll love the "music" in it.

Jeremiah and the Gnome 

The little boy that knew the gnome
That made the brambled wood his home
sat and wondered if he’d like
to visit, talk and read a book

And so he gathered up his things
granddad's medals, bits of strings
his favourite book, a polished stone
and wandered down along the brook

And in a whisper called his name
and after such a time, he came
and sat beside him oh so still
and gave his things a look

~~~~

They sat, ne’er talked for quite a time
watched the water tumble by
where speckled fishes sought the deep
and shared an apple in the light

That glinted softly in the brook
Read a well worn favourite book,
of castles, pirates, dragons, swords
princes black and princes white

With string and sticks and bits of bark,
They made a sturdy little ark
And floated it into the brook,
And watched it sail beyond their sight

~~~~~

Lying back they watched the sky
As lazy, wispy clouds ran by
Then made a makeshift pair of swords,
and battled in the wood

And hearing creatures rustling near,
imaged them as dragons, fear
shrank away as courage grew,
and back to back they bravely stood.

With souls so pure they bravely fought,
and gave the monsters all they’d got
knowing that their cause was just
and darkness would not conquer good.

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And none have been as brave as they,
Down by the brook that summer day,
None had been so strong and bold
And none’d been so brave-hearted

And all the while the river ran
until his mother called him home
And where the river flowed so clear
Each said farewell and parted

The boy turned for his mother's call,
The gnome was there, then not at all
And silence fell across the wood,
And off for home he started

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Arriving home to mother’s smile
She said “I’ve missed you all the while”
He told her of his tiny friend
And all their brave adventures there.

He told of ships lost out to sea,
Of serpents yellow-eyed and green
He told of knights both bad and bold
Of dragons, knaves and maidens fair.

“I’m happy you’ve had such a day,
It’s such a joy to see you play
But do be watchful in the wood
You must be careful playing there.”

~~~~

Don’t be silly mom”, he said
As he settled in his bed,
“When boats are lost in blowing gales
When schemers evil, are betraying

While sparks fly off of crashing swords,
And monsters lurk in murky fjords
While dark knights do their evil deeds
There’s dragons needing slaying.

While maidens run from thin eyed knaves
And gryphons watch from darkened caves,
And pirates steal a kingdom's gold,
There is no time for playing.”

 © Chris Earle, 2009

This poem isn't special because it has my grandson's name in the title. This poem isn't special merely because it is excellent technically. This poem is special because it has a "soul" showing through, a poet's soul, and because it says something significant about an important truth that's in danger of being lost, and it says it with a sense of delight and even fun. It says it with the same imagination and musicality that the poem is reminding us not to lose. It reminds me of poems and stories like The Velveteen Rabbit that work on two levels . . . a good "story" and a great lesson for those who will read it on a deeper level.

This poem is quite wonderful ! . . . and wonder-filled too . . .
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