But what else can we do? How can we find freedom from this violence? How can we find healing for our nation? Well, if we look at our lesson from Acts, maybe we should be singing?
Look at Paul and Silas, singing their hearts out in their prison cell. Isn’t that a strange reaction to captivity? Their singing gets the attention of the whole prison. The other prisoners listen to their song, and I imagine that some of them join in, as well. All of that mighty singing then ends up in an earthquake—an earthquake that throws the prison doors wide open, like an opera singer shattering a glass with her powerful voice! Paul and Silas sing their way to a freedom that breaks down prison walls. They sing their way to a freedom that is so powerful that they don’t even need to leave the prison in order to experience it. Their freedom songs bring even the Roman jailor to their cause, freeing him, too, from his burdensome role as their oppressor.
What is it about singing, I wonder? Scientific studies have shown that singing together as a choir syncs our breath and our hearts.[1] Not only do we breathe together, our hearts start beating together—fast or slow, depending on the music! Our voices, which can be kind of puny on their own, gain strength from the voices of others. The vibrations of other voices fill our entire bodies. Song truly links individuals together as one. A few years ago, I went down to Sewanee to a college choir reunion. There were over 200 singers there in the school chapel that Sunday morning. Some of you might know that my own singing voice is pretty weak and trembly. But when I joined my little voice with the voices of those alums of all ages, with people who came together for that one service from all across the country, it was like a miracle. My tiny voice came out of my private soul and blended somewhere in the air above me with the voices and the faith and the strength of others, and it came back to my ears with the power of an earthquake. The other singers were somehow in me, and I was in them, and we were all One in God. It was just like Jesus described in today’s Gospel! Alone, we might be weak and trembly, yet together, together in God, we can’t be stopped. Yes, maybe we should be singing!
In the 17th and 18th centuries in France, Protestants did a lot of singing. It was against the law not to follow the Roman Catholicism of the King. People who were caught in secret Protestant worship services or caught with a bible in their homes were thrown into prison until they signed a document saying that they would give up their religious beliefs. The men were sent off to row the king’s ships, or galleys. They were chained six to a bench on rickety wooden ships and commanded to row across the oceans. They ate, slept, and rowed while chained to one another and to these benches, until they died. As for women and children, they spent their lives in a stone prison tower in the middle of a swamp, away from their families, surrounded by strangers. They slept on dirty straw and shivered with malaria and disease.
In order to keep from going crazy in their imprisonment, and in order to stay strong in their faith, these men, women and children sang together. All the time. Without any musical accompaniment, they sang to God using the words of the Psalms, blending the rich harmonies of their different voices. Like Paul and Silas, they sang songs of lament and even of praise to God, day after day, hour after hour. Memorizing the words together. Internalizing the prayers. And it was their singing that sustained them.
The man that I’m studying for my thesis, Elias Neau, sang as he rowed as a galley slave, even after he was beaten and ordered to stop. He kept singing, encouraging others, so much so that the authorities took him off the ship and put him in prison in Marseilles. He kept singing, and other prisoners joined in. So they put him in an isolated tower. He kept singing, and it drove the guards wild. So they moved him again and put him in a subterranean hole, without light, for years at a time. He kept on singing, alone in the dark. Singing his heart out to God. He survived, and eventually was freed. He went back to New York and taught enslaved Africans to sing God’s songs.
In his book, My Grandmother’s Hands—a book that some of us read together last year, the author Resmaa Menakem teaches us the power of humming and rhythm in overcoming trauma.[2] He recalls his black grandmother humming every day as she prepared meals in the kitchen. He explains that African Americans have learned to hum, sing, and play drums to settle their bodies and blunt the effects of racialized trauma. Physiologically, scientists now know that humming and rhythmic singing calms the vagus nerve, the long nerve that runs through our bodies from our brains to our guts and powerfully affects our well-being.
Many of us might remember the role that singing together played in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s. Protestors would sing “freedom songs” in their meetings, on the streets, and in jail cells. Once during the Mississippi Freedom Rides, imprisoned activists in Parchman Penitentiary sang together like Paul and Silas. Annoyed, the guards threatened to take away their mattresses if they didn’t shut up. So the protestors changed the words to their well-known hymns and started singing: "You can take my mattress, you can take my mattress, oh yeah, you can take my mattress … I'll keep my freedom, oh yeah..."[3] The guards’ threats immediately lost their power.
Listen to the words of Bernice Reagon as she explains what happened when the freedom riders sang together:
There were always songs that celebrated those times when we came together even in the midst of danger … we were bonded to each other, not because we went to school together, or were in the same social club… but because we had decided that we would put everything on the line to fight racism in our community…We had to decide to leave the safety of being obedient to segregation to go to a place where we might lose everything we had. [In singing] we found in this new place a fellowship that we could not have imagined before we decided to stand.”[4]
Very different individuals came together and became One in song, One in the love of God, One for sharing the love and freedom of God. One, just like Jesus prayed for us.
Today, we aren’t in prison. We have power to act, to make changes to our lives, to our system. We have Jesus holding us in love with every breath that we take; we have the strength of the Holy Spirit spurring us on. So why do I feel like I’m one of those parents standing outside Robb Elementary in Uvalde? While my children are locked in a classroom with a shooter, frantically calling 911, I’m standing there frozen, watching in horror from the sidelines. As we struggle to find freedom from our paralysis, perhaps we could sing together as we strive? Perhaps the God-given power of song could release whatever holds us back? Perhaps we should hum Christ’s peace into our own broken hearts? Perhaps we should show the world our strength through voices joined together in song out in the community. Let’s start today by joining in the song printed on the handout. We’ll sing the first verse, hum a verse to soothe our souls, and then sing the last verse. This last verse was added in 1950 and turned this hymn into a popular protest song of the 1960’s, made famous by Pete Seeger.
2. HUM a verse and refrain
3. When tyrants tremble, sick with fear,
And hear their death-knell ringing,
When friends rejoice both far and near,
How can I keep from singing?
In prison cell and dungeon vile,
Our thoughts to them go winging;
When friends by shame are undefiled,
How can I keep from singing?[5]
[1] http://ideas.time.com/2013/08/16/singing-changes-your-brain/
[2] Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies (Las Vegas: Central Recovery Press, 2017), 56.
[3] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/reflect/r03_music.html
[4] Ibid.
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Can_I_Keep_from_Singing%3F
