As I reviewed our comments and thoughts over the last two weeks, I’ve tried to bridge the conversation between music and beauty. A few takeaways stood out. Beauty can point toward God, but it does not define God’s presence. Music often feels immediately accessible, whereas the visual arts frequently require learning and sustained attention; they’re…

This morning I want to do something a little differently from what we’ve done before. Rather than introducing an entirely new topic, I want to continue the conversation we began last week. What I plan to present today is a reflection on grandeur and simplicity—how God speaks through both. Before doing that, however, I want…

Don: We’ve been looking at grace, and one of the things that has struck us is that grace is often a highly sensory experience. If you look at the biblical experiences that involve grace, you almost always see a distinctive sensory element. David has taken us through that in terms of vibration and sound, and…

Introduction (Kiran) Over the past five weeks, we’ve been listening to a rich and stimulating conversation led by David, who traced a profound path through the Western musical imagination, starting from Greek roots and Christian chant, through Bach and Beethoven, to Wagner, Messiaen, Cage, and Pärt. Along the way, David kept returning to a searching…

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1) John’s statement sounds metaphorical—“God is like a Word because Creation began with a divine pronouncement.” But in a more nuanced, more accurate interpretation, the Word is not an announcement about creation: It is the very act…

Last week we explored how music can be designed—architected—either to lift—or to deceive—the spirit of its audience. We saw (or rather, we heard) how the same notes can open the heart toward grace or inflate the ego toward itself, depending on the motivations of the composer, the performer, and the listener. This, then, led me…