In the name of God: the Creator, the Redeemer and the Sustainer

Does anyone know what “overtone singing” is?
I would guess that more of us know of it today than did a month ago.
Thanks to social media, at least 6 million people in the world, including myself, have had a tutorial on overtone singing.

One of the latest videos to go “viral” on the internet is that of an Austrian singer named, Anna Maria Hefele.

Anna Maria is a self-described “voice artist” and “overtone singer.” In her video she describes and demonstrates the technique of “polyphonic overtone singing.”

Simply put, polyphonic overtone singing is a technique in which more than one tone or note issues from a single voice. It is as though one voice can sing two musical parts at once.

In terms of music theory, these two tones consist of what is called, on the one hand, a fundamental tone and, on the other hand, a selected or variable overtone. I am well out of my depth here, and I would direct you to Rachel for a better explanation of what is happening musically here. But the phenomenon points to something other than just music theory.

When I watched the video, I found Anna Maria’s voice to be both disconcerting and beautiful at the same time. It has a haunting, almost mechanical quality to it. There is something unrealistic about it. In fact, when I heard Anna Maria interviewed on CBC radio last week, Carol Off remained rather incredulous as she interviewed the singer. She would only refer to these haunting sounds as “apparently” coming from Anna Maria’s own vocal chords. There is something uncanny, unbelievable and even inhuman about the sound.

As Anna Maria talks you through her technique in the video, even an untrained ear, like my own, can begin to discern the two distinct tones. It doesn’t become less haunting, but it begins to make some kind of sense. Hearing (and seeing) what seems to be two voices issuing from a single person doesn’t become any less uncanny or disconcerting, but at least you begin to understand why it sounds this way.

***

Change Scenes to today: Where we are in our third week of the Season of Creation…

Now, creation, in the biblical story, is not simply the background, or the stage upon which the divine-human drama would unfold. Creation is an active participant and partner in this drama. The bible is full of images of an active, speaking, singing, rejoicing creation —
of donkeys that talk;
of trees that clap their hands;
of skies that declare God’s glory;
of mountains that break out in song.

But, lest creation be type-cast as all sweetness and light,
as a one-dimensional mechanism of praise,
It’s important to note that the bible conceives of creation in much more fulsome terms than these.

For in the bible,
The earth not only produces, but it also lies desolate;
the ground bears witness not only to joy, but to mourning as well.
The earth is a place of splendour and a place of agony.
Creation not only rejoices, but creation also laments.

We didn’t read an Old Testament lesson today. But I would like you to hear some of the words from the prophet Joel, nonetheless.

[Let’s turn to the prophet Joel for a moment.]

Joel, of course, is where one of our Ash Wednesday readings comes from each year, as we enter into the season of Lent. So, as you might imagine, this is not a very happy text.
Indeed, it is a profoundly sad and mournful text.
Joel’s is a prophetic call to lamentation.

“Lament!” — is the prophet’s command the people of Israel in response to the disaster that is coming upon them.
It is a disaster that is at once spiritual, ecological, and political.
- A plague of locusts threatens to devour their entire crop, their entire livelihood;
- and this plague is seen by the prophet as a portent, a sign, of a political invasion to come.
- and all of this points to an underlying spiritual crisis: Where is God in all of this?

What Joel is saying, in short, is that Israel is doomed. There is nothing left to do. There is no further recourse …
other than — to lament.

As though to offer Israel an example of what true lamentation looks like, Joel points them to the fields.

The fields are devastated, [he says,] the ground mourns; for the grain is destroyed, the wine dries up, the oil fails.

It’s quite a remarkable thing for Joel to say that The ground mourns.

You see, whereas the children of Israel need to be instructed to lament.
Creation would seem to be already in the process of mourning.

Creation waits, it would seem, in eager longing for its redemption. And it longs for redemption in a way that Israel itself has not yet learned to do.

It is from creation that Israel must learn to lament.
It is from creation that we too can learn to lament.

***
But what could it possible mean to say that The ground mourns?

Wouldn’t this simply be a matter attributing an emotional disposition to the natural and neutral realities of creation?
Do we do the same thing today?
Does a clear cut hillside just look sadder to us, than a lush rainforest?
Do we superimpose human conceptions of pain when we see the oil sands as somehow injurious or hurtful to the landscape?
And do we sometimes do so in the interest of a political agenda?
No doubt, we do.

But I think scripture teaches us that there is a deeper significance to the lament of creation.

For, what if the ground really did mourn, as the prophet suggests?
What if creation really did lament?

What if we learned to hear the lament of creation?
What would such a lament even sound like?

***

Let me pose a possibility.

Lament … contains scarcely more than a sensuous breath; and even where there is only a rustling of plants, there is always a lament.

even where there is only a rustling of plants, there is always a lament

These evocative words are not mine. They were penned in 1916 by a German Jewish writer named Walter Benjamin. He wrote them as he gazed upon the utter destruction being wrought on Europe by the first world war — the devastation of its landscape, its culture, its very existence.

Where Benjamin perceived no political will in Europe to stop the senseless destruction of the war, he wondered whether one could hear
another subtler, quieter protest being raised.
- Perhaps, he thought, creation itself was lamenting the destruction.
- Perhaps one could hear that protest being whispered by nature, even beneath the din of explosions.
If we were willing to listen carefully, he thought, then we might begin to hear
the pain of creation.
It’s quiet agony.

Let me read you his words again.

Lament …contains scarcely more than a sensuous breath; and even where there is only a rustling of plants, there is always a lament.

Again, I ask, what if Creation really did lament?
What if creation lamented even when we did not perceive its sadness;
even when we were not listening?

Perhaps the lament of creation is expressed
- even as the browning autumn leaves swoop and sputter, then crackle on the ground;
- as the dry winter snow gives way with a murmur beneath our heavy feet.
- as the wind whirls and wisps its way through spring branches,
- even as our legs brush against the tall summer grass.
Perhaps behind the everyday, innocuous sounds of nature there is quiet weeping.

Perhaps creation really does mourn —
even when we are not listening.

The lament of creation is constant and it is quiet.
It’s voice is still and small, but it speaks.

For, creation mourns, not with crying and wailing, but with a whisper —
with scarcely more than “a sensuous breath.”
Creation mourns, we might say, with “sighs too deep for words.”

***
I am not just playing fast and loose with the scriptures by invoking the words of St Paul here: Indeed, today’s epistle offers us a reflection on the mournful disposition of creation, which is every bit as evocative as Benjamin’s description.

We know [Paul says] that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now

And like the prophet Joel, Paul connects the agony of creation directly to human experience. It is not just nature who groans, who mourns, who laments,

but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, [we] groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

Joel and Paul agree: creation, in its silent but expressive agony has something to teach us.
But we need the eyes to see — or, perhaps more importantly, the ears to hear.
It is good for us to know the splendour of creation.
To experience its abundance,
to know its joy
and to share in its praise.
In nature we can know and experience the gratuitous provision of God for creation.
We can be renewed by the witness of constant new birth around us.
We can be awed by the majesty of the natural world.
We can and should respond with gratitude in light of such glory.

But creation does not speak in only one voice. 
It sings, as it were, like an overtone singer, with two tones at once.

Beneath the earth movers and bull dozers
Beneath the monotonous hum of traffic
and the endless movement of commerce
Creation whispers its quiet protest

Behind the glorious image of splendour and beauty
below all those “things bright and beautiful”
Creation does not cease to sing its dirge, its lament.

***
To become attentive to creation’s dirge.
To listen for both the fundamental of splendour and the overtone of lament
We must train our ears.

For in order for a “sigh,” a “sensuous breath,” or a “groan” to be meaningful, we must learn the language of lament.
We must learn not just to comprehend it,
but to let it resound in us — as a prayer.
This is the unique insight that the epistle to the Romans brings to our discernment of nature’s lament:
That the lament of nature can become the prayer of the heart.

The groaning of creation is the language of the Spirit.
And, as Paul tells us, it is the Spirit who helps us to pray.

For, it is the Spirit who hovered over creation in its formless state,
it is the Spirit who awakens earth creatures like ourselves to awareness and praise.
It is the spirit who laments in and through creation
It is the same Spirit who laments in and through us, with sighs too deep for words.

So, let us pray in the Spirit
in the two voices of creation:
the fundamental of splendour
and the overtone of lament

May the loud beauty
and the silent agony of creation resound in our throats together
and may this harmony become our spiritual act of worship.

Let us follow Jesus into the wilderness to pray,
accompanied not just by the glory of the angels,
but by the grunts and groans of nature’s wordless beasts.

Amen.