I love good poetry. Not the vapid stuff of greeting cards, but meaty, thoughtful, challenging poetry that pulls me toward new understandings. As a poet friend wrote in one of her hymns, I want poetry to “capsize my mind”, to have my preconceptions, my current ideas, all my interpretations dumped all over the floor. In their place, then, I have room for new ideas, new appreciations, new comprehensions.
I also love good music. Not the insipid jingles of TV commercials, but well-crafted works whose phrases, sometimes jagged, sometimes filled with longing, other times bursting with joy, pull me in new directions. Perhaps this is why I love church music, because much of it is a marriage of profound poetry with deeply moving music. This unique marriage creates an even stronger pull toward new insights. As a recent journal article put it “It is simply that imagery presented in melody, meter and rhyme commits itself to the memory and imagination more readily than prose ever will”.
In the Passion narrative, which we will hear on Good Friday, Jesus says to Pilate “For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth”. If ever there was a person who capsized the minds of those he encountered, it was Jesus. He was constantly dumping their preconceptions, their ideas, their interpretations all over the floor and presenting them with new ways of thinking, of acting, of living. He challenged them to open their minds and hearts to Truth.
As we enter this Holiest of weeks, I invite you pay attention to the poetry which is sung in hymns and choral music, to listen to the sometimes jagged, sometimes longing, sometimes exuberant melodies and harmonies, and let them “capsize your mind”. I encourage you to sweep away the clutter that has been dumped-out, and create room for new understanding. As we listen to the stories and the liturgical music of Holy Week, may our minds and hearts be opened to Truth and our lives transformed.