The Sauntering Pilgrim

How do you make music? Some would say you do it by combining vocal or instrumental sounds, or both, to produce a pleasing form, harmony, and expression of emotion. Each Sunday at Holy Trinity we worship immersed in music that speaks to and for our hearts more deeply than mere words can do. But what if John Cage were our minister of music?

The first time you attend a performance of Cage’s composition “4’33”,” you might be surprised to experience four minutes thirty-three seconds of silence. It’s been called the most notorious act of silence ever offered as music, but it follows a long line of music theory. Debussy wrote that music is not in the notes played but in the spaces between them, and Miles Davis said, “It’s not the notes you play; it’s the notes you don’t play” that turn sound into music.

That’s not only music theory; it’s communication theory. We recognize the content and meaning of silence – the pregnant pause, the stunned silence, the expectant hush. A slight delay in answering a question can reveal uncertainty or hurt, it can provide the timing necessary for a good laugh, or it can provide an opportunity to hear, below the surface, a deeper meaning.

When ancient monks faced each other in their stalls and intoned the psalms, they learned to insert a pause in the middle of a verse. In their echoing chambers, the pause prevented the next line of the psalm from getting entangled with the preceding verse. It also created a meditative space, synchronized the community, and underscored the unity of the monastery breathing and singing together. Maybe it was in a moment of silence that the psalmist heard the whispered “Be still, and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10)!

Maybe it was in a moment of silence that Mary heard the angel’s assurance of God’s presence – “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28) – not in audible words but in pregnant silence. “And now you will conceive in your womb and bear a son,” the angel said, “and you will name him Jesus” (v. 31). Henry Ossawa Tanner’s painting The Annunciation depicts Mary shrinking into a corner as she faces not a recognizable angel but an ill-defined column of light that’s just as likely as darkness to be what divine silence looks like.

How do we receive the annunciation of the new thing God is doing in us today? In what language is the announcement made? What notes carry the heavenly music to the ears of our hearts? Or do the glad tidings come in the spaces between the notes, in the pregnant pauses in the flow of life, in the moments when we step aside from the rush-hour crowd and ask, “Where’s everybody going? Where am I going?”

Commenting on John Cage’s “4’33”,” one reviewer pointed out that the performance is mostly done not by the musicians but by the audience. The audience becomes the performer – as listeners breathe and cough and shuffle programs and shift in their seats. And because the performance is done mostly by the audience, no two performances are ever alike.

And no performance concludes at the end of four minutes thirty-three seconds. When does it end? Because the audience members are as much the performer as the one on stage, the performance continues as they rise from their seats, leave the auditorium, and filter back into their ordinary concerns. Cage’s music reverberates in every moment of silence that follows. So does the Annunciation.

Today we’re wrapping up Advent and our preparations for Christmas. But have we experienced Advent? Have we heard the annunciation of God’s new thing being born in us? Or has it come to us, and been largely missed, in the spaces between the notes of our busy occupations? Merton said, “Nothing has ever been said about God that hasn’t already been said better by the wind in the pine trees.” Have we paused in our routine Christmas preparations long enough to pay attention to the good news carried in the wind in the pine trees?

Before the Christmas season begins, there’s still time. Go out alone, to stand under a tree, or by a stream, or in a quiet corner of your room – not with a book or music or a task list or a companion – and observe the falling of a leaf, hear the lapping of the water, be touched by the song of a chickadee, watch the flight of a crow or the movement of the clouds, step back from the drift of thoughts in that monkey mind of yours. Build a room of silence where you may hear the affirmation: the Lord is with you; you are favored by God and will conceive and bear into the world something brand new. And maybe out of silence we may answer with a yes: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). ▪