College Choir Reflections: Contemplation

I have repeatedly told people this semester that singing with the College Choir is the ultimate experience to be had at Houghton College. It is an experience that has challenged me on so many levels; and it constantly keeps challenging me, calling me deeper not only in my faith, but also in my identity.

Growing up, I was a mile-a-minute kid when it came to everything. I rushed around everywhere. This was partly a reflection of the fact that I had moved 14 times before reaching the age of 14, and partly just the result of being a little child with way too much energy.

This pattern continued into my high school years. Despite learning in my philosophy classes that the good and virtuous life involves a good deal of contemplation, I didn’t slow down at all. I was on the varsity soccer and golf teams, did tech for the school musicals, acted in the spring plays, refereed soccer, played piano for my church worship team (as well as in youth group), sang in a barbershop chorus, sang in my high school choir, sang in my high school madrigals group. I was, as my friend Tineke wrote in her honors project, a little child roaming around (as the devil prowls) seeking for all kinds of new experiences to devour.

This introduction doesn’t have anything to do with the college choir experience, but it is necessary to understand how being a part of the college choir has profoundly affected and changed me.

But one last thing – every summer, I would go to youth camp. It seemed to become the trend over my last few years there for all my walls and defenses to break down. I would once – or maybe twice – completely break down, sobbing uncontrollably as all the stress and the pain and the hurt and the fears that were within me rushed forth, let loose for the first time, loose from the cage of my constant rushing about and total lack of contemplation and rest.

There are two kinds of fun: the kind where you can go out and do something on your own and have an enjoyable in-the-moment experience; and the kind where you can come together with a group of people and work towards creating something so much more than any of you could ever achieve – or experience – on your own. College choir is this second kind of fun. It is not about the fact that I enjoy singing, and certainly not that I think the rehearsal process is fun. It is that we are coming together as a body to do something so much bigger, so much grander – and I might even dare to say so much more holy.

I spoke at choir retreat about the relationship of the tangibles to the intangibles. Having three times joined the choir in the spring, there are so many tangible stresses that get in my way of giving my all to choir. I’m stressed about learning music. This is often aggravated because I get frustrated in rehearsal with people who I think are not taking the process as seriously as they should. But, as Jesus reminds me, I must worry about myself first: and the ‘intangible’ of my own heart and my own attitude in the process.

It is in contemplation of these things that I learn to let go; in the fact that I am only one cog of the wheel. That’s a scary thing to say, think, or admit in today’s individualistic culture, but it’s something that when I stop to think about, I find inexpressibly beautiful. I can give up my own will, my own ambition, my own anger or frustration and lend my whole being to the building of a greater cause. This is what Christ did for us: and I’m thinking specifically of the Christ-hymn in Philippians 2. He made himself as a servant; something I must do when I give my voice and my attitude and my heart to the choir.

Like many people in the choir, I was captivated all semester long by the idea that my singing may become healing. Yet again, it is the second kind of fun that can lead to this. If we were to go on tour never having put in the hours of rehearsal and practice and effort to mesh and meld as an ensemble, our singing will be a show. And it might not even be a good show – it could just be a spectacle of what happens when many people with the ability to sing sit and sing for themselves and their own enjoyment, with no thought given to the audience – or to their own body.

This is why I view tour as the ultimate experience of choir. Yes, I just alluded to the importance of the rehearsals – and without that, I think it would be irresponsible to go on tour. But it is on tour that I have found my own healing, and witnessed the healing of others. But I think that is because it gives us the opportunity to escape from the lifestyle that I portrayed in my introduction.

Tour is a time when the single place that we spend the most time is on the bus. We spend some time in silence, some time singing, and some time laughing and talking and getting to know each other. And much of that time is given not to chasing after another experience to devour – though you could, if not thinking about the second kind of fun but only the first – but to the buildup of something greater. The meaning of the words of the songs that we sing; the meaning of what it is to sing together; the meaning of what it is to form the truly unique body that we make up; the meaning of surrendering ourselves in the name of something better.

The meaning of offering up our humble and feeble and fallen and broken efforts to a holy God who can make something out of them. Who can bring healing and restoration. Who can, even as we sit in silence and meditate on Him, and giving ourselves to Him, bring healing to us, and make us instruments – jars of clay – through which He lets flow His power, His healing, His life.

That life isn’t about just what we can have in the moment, rushing around and only thinking about ourselves. That life is the abundant life, the full life, the restored life, where we are sewn together into the body of Christ, the love of Jesus in the world. And that is impossible unless we take time to consider the greatest gift that God has given the world: ourselves, as gifts to each other. When we slow down and contemplate and realize that, and let Him work through us, we can have a greater kind of fun that can bless us with joy, and bless others with our singing made healing.

At the very least, I think on and pray for that to happen.

Ameen. Ameen. Ameen.