Amazing Grace 1: The Language of Reverence

This post contains Part 1 of a series called “Amazing Grace: The Sounds of Worship,” and an Introduction to the Series.

Series Introduction

Sound is the oldest language of reverence. Long before we had doctrine, scripture, or theology, human beings used vibration to reach toward the unknown. This series explores that ancient connection between sound and the soul — how music can awaken us, steady us, mislead us, and perhaps even reveal something about the nature of Being itself.

Today I will present the first of a 5-part series I’m calling Amazing Grace: The Sounds of Worship.

In Talk 1, we discuss the first music of faith: the chants, calls, and tones that carried awe before religion had words, and listen to some samples of music after religion had words.

In Talk 2, we ask whether something that moves us so deeply can also deceive us. Music can open the heart, but it can also flatter the ego. How do we tell the difference?

In Talk 3, we look at the structures communities have built — plainchant, psalmody, polyphony — to guide the power of sound, balancing emotion with discipline.

In Talk 4, we turn to the musicians themselves. What did Pythagoras, Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, Messiaen, Cage, and Pärt believe sound meant? How did music shape their understanding of the sacred?

Finally, in Talk 5, we step beyond music as worship and consider music as metaphysics: whether the vibration that begins in the human voice has anything to do with the vibration that sustains the universe.

In a way, these talks really ask just one question but in five different keys:

What is the relationship between sound and the soul — and what happens when music becomes our way of listening for the divine?

So let’s begin…

Sound itself is the oldest language of reverence.
Long before there were written scriptures or even named gods, people were already using their vocal cords to reach toward a dimension they could not see but believed was there. Archaeologists have found Ice Age caves where red-ochre paintings cluster only in the chambers that echo. 

Imagine those early artists standing in the flickering torchlight of a cave, their own voices coming back to them, the rock itself answering, revealing the existence of something beyond. Psychologists call it an “auditory mirror.” The echo transforms sound into dialogue, time into a circle. You call, you wait, and then—there it is—your voice returned, subtly changed. That small interval of silence between the call and the reply may have been the first experience of reverence: a pause of expectancy, a space for wonder. 

And the effect is therefore spiritual but not only spiritual—it is physiological. The breathing slows, the chest resonates, the mind quiets. The sound lingers after the voice is gone, and so does the awareness of something larger. Perhaps religion began not with doctrine but with this auditory discovery—a world beyond the world, speaking back. 

The oldest musical instruments ever found are flutes carved from bird bone and mammoth tusks, dated to roughly forty thousand years ago—older than temples, older than agriculture. Rhythm and chant among hunter-gatherers also predate formal worship. Even today, the San trance dances, Inuit throat-singing, and Aboriginal songlines reveal music as a tool of connection long before theology took shape. None of these practices depends on a named deity. They are simply expressions of awe. 

Later, as civilizations formed, sound became structure. The priests of ancient Sumer and Egypt chanted their prayers in exact tones; the Indian Vedas were sung syllable by syllable so the divine vibration would not be lost. In China, the Book of Rites taught that when a ruler’s virtue declined, the music went out of tune: moral and cosmic harmony were one. In Greece, Pythagoras heard the intervals of the cosmos as the “music of the spheres.” Everywhere the message was the same: to make sound rightly was to bring the world back into order. 

Out of these currents grew the chants, hymns, and psalms we still know. Each carries the memory of that ancient impulse: to turn breath into bridge, to make reverence audible. Today we’ll listen for that thread of grace running through them—from the earliest cry that echoed in stone to the hymns we still sing in hope and peace. 

Before we go further, I want to clarify one word we’ll be using throughout this series: “grace.”
When I speak of grace, I mean the unearned alignment between our inner life and a larger order—
whether we name that order God, creation, truth, or simply harmony.
Grace is not just pardon; it is resonance.

And why does this matter now? Because we live in a culture saturated with noise—musical, political, emotional.
If we no longer know how to listen, we may also lose the capacity to recognize grace when it arrives.
These talks are, in part, an invitation back into listening.

Almost every faith in the world begins its deepest speech with song.
Here is the Kyrie Eleison from the Missa de Angelus.
It is the Gregorian chant version of the Kyrie, in which the faithful repeatedly implore, “Lord, have mercy,” embodying humble penitence and the timeless yearning of humanity for divine  compassion. 

[Kyrie – Gregorian]

Where the Western chant feels orderly and reflective, the Orthodox “Kyrie” is ardent and mystical, like a living heartbeat of prayer. 

[Kyrie – Orthodox] 

Jews chant the Shema Yisrael, invoking the archangels Uriel, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael to surround the worshiper with divine protection as they proclaim God’s unity.
It is a prayer of light, guardianship, and peace, sung before sleep or meditation.  

[Shema Yisrael, informal, “Angelic”] 

[Shema Yisrael, formal]

Christians chant or sing the Psalms — ancient Hebrew poems that give voice to the full range of human experience before God, from despair to exultation.
Psalm 23, beginning “The Lord is my shepherd,” is perhaps their most tender expression of trust: serenity in the presence of danger, confidence even in the valley of death.  

[The Lord Is My Shepherd] 

The Adhān is the Islamic call to prayer, a hauntingly beautiful chant that proclaims the greatness of God (Allāhu akbar) and summons the faithful five times a day to remembrance and worship.  

[Adhān] 

Hindus sing bhajans — devotional songs to Krishna, Rama, Shiva — using melody and repetition to open the heart in love and surrender. 

[Bhajan] 

Buddhists chant the Heart Sutra — “form is emptiness, and emptiness is form” — dissolving the boundary between wisdom  and compassion.

[Heart Sutra] 

Religious Daoists chant hymns to align the community with the Dao. It’s kinda hard to tell from this short clip, but they do seek to blend breath, vibration, and silence into a kind of sonic meditation. 

[Daoist Chant]

If religion were only about ideas, words would be enough.
But faith is more than thought; it asks something of the voice and the breath.
Perhaps that is why, across traditions, the point of deepest encounter with the divine — whether we call it grace, awakening, or peace — is often marked by sound. 

A medieval saying based on Augustine tells us that “He who sings prays twice” — once through the words, and once through the music.
The Dao De Jing says, “The great sound is rarely heard.”
Both suggest the same mystery: when truth becomes too large for logic, it vibrates.

Maybe music is not the decoration of worship but the shape worship takes when the soul is awake. Maybe.

Grace, in its root meaning, is charis — a gift freely given.
And so is music.
You can practice technique, but the moment of beauty — the note that raises the hairs on the back of your neck — cannot be earned.
It comes unbidden, unowned, and passes through you.
That is why we speak of “inspired” performances: they carry something larger than the performer. 

In Daoist language, this is wu wei: effortless action.
The musician who has practiced long enough to stop trying becomes a channel.
The fingers move, the breath flows, the sound happens of itself.
That is grace in motion — not pardon, but alignment — the soul carried along by the current of being.

Modern science quietly agrees with what the mystics long intuited.
When we sing or even just listen, heartbeats and breathing tend to synchronize; brain waves align; the vagus nerve, the body’s great peace-bringer, steadies the pulse.
The nervous system hears consonance and says, “All is well.”
So perhaps salvation, in its simplest sense, is the body’s recognition of harmony — the felt experience of being at home in the universe.

Music also teaches us that nothing exists alone.
A single note means little until another answers it.
Even silence must resound in a space between notes.
Every act of hearing is a relationship — between singer and listener, sound and ear, self and world.
Perhaps grace itself is resonance — the divine vibration finding an echo in the human heart.
When we are “out of grace,” maybe we are simply out of tune.

Here is a tune more familiar to you than any I’ve played so far.
Perhaps for that reason, it will resonate even more deeply. 

[Be Thou My Vision] 

Did it resonate?
Were you moved by it?
I was — and not only because the hymn is familiar, but because something in it seems to recognize us before we recognize it.

So what is it that moves us?
Is it the words, the melody, or the way the two find their way together inside us?
That is an interesting question, but it is not the one that keeps me up at night.
The question that does keep me up is this:
Is music necessary for salvation, grace, or spiritual enlightenment?

To consider that question, I turn to Dante’s Divine Comedy — the most luminous musical imagination in Western literature.
It is a poem about the journey of the soul from confusion to illumination; from dissonance to harmony; from being out of tune with God to being tuned again.

In Dante’s Inferno (Hell), sound is the language of chaos — shrieking, gnashing, wailing — the noise of separation from God.
In Purgatorio, sound becomes imperfect but hopeful: chanting, blended voices, hesitant harmonies still weighed down by gravity.
In Paradiso, sound becomes pure radiance — “the music of love,” Dante calls it — souls singing as one with the motion of the spheres.

I like to think of this song as straddling the  line between Purgatorio and Paradiso:

[Abide With Me] 

You might almost think that the distinction between heaven and hell is not moral but musical —
the difference between dissonance that never resolves and harmony that finally does.

From the Daoist view, enlightenment is hearing the world’s tone clearly and no longer striking against it.
From the Christian view, grace is God’s note sustained until our lives vibrate in sympathy.
Either way, the saving act is not a verdict — it is a tuning.

So when sound brings peace — genuine peace — what has happened?
Has biology simply quieted itself,
or has something larger passed through you?
And if it is something larger,
if that peace arrives only when the inner and the outer tones match,
then music does not merely accompany grace; it enacts it — it gives grace audible form.

Of course, peace is only one of music’s gifts.
It can also bring awe, or sorrow, or longing.
Yet beneath those shifting emotions lies something steadier —
a moment of alignment between ourselves and the world around us.
Grace is not the feeling itself;
it is the alignment that allows the feeling to rise without overwhelming us.

I’ll leave it there for now. What is your feeling about the relationship of music and worship? Have you had any experiences that have stuck with you, that still resonate with you? 

Carolyn: It is still a mystery to me when you speak of being of one accord across different faiths. I don’t know how people get there without music—even if it’s just the sound of a waterfall rushing over an edge or a whisper of wind. These are the nuances of life that quicken my heart and the beat of my soul.

I know what makes me “tick” doesn’t always make others tick, but when I can experience it with others and we all “tick” together—that’s grace, joy, peace.

Donald: Thank you for bringing us back to the root of voice, breath, and echo. These are interesting words to consider when we think of music. Most of us don’t think in those terms when we participate in music.

It was fascinating to move from Jewish to Hindu to Middle Eastern traditions—how each faith approaches sound differently. What might sound like noise to one person may sound like harmony to someone else. That’s important to remember as we enter this dialogue.

Some of the authors who wrote the hymns we love had a deep understanding of their spiritual journey and expressed it in hymns. For a long time, hymns were considered the Christian form of music. Before that, perhaps classical music served that role. In many ways the hymns we sing are my faith journey. Doctrine can divide, but hymns seem to bring us together. They’re uncluttered. You pick up the hymnal and say, “This one speaks to my soul.” There’s nothing to debate the way there is with doctrine.

C-J: Deaf people feel music through their flesh, through vibration. I love Gregorian chant, and I also love listening to the Muslim call to prayer, even more than some Christian hymns that get me clapping and raising my hands.

Vibration is atoms and molecules making their way back to spiritual essence. I’ve listened to deaf people using sign language or cochlear implants talk about loving to dance to music. That fascinates me, and it fits beautifully with what has been said today.

Sharon: Today was Music Sabbath at our university church in Malawi, with 500 young people. The connection, the engagement, the soul of it—especially in an African musical context—was extraordinary. The kids came alive. The music touched them in ways no sermon could have. In African culture, music is inseparable from the soul. The church came alive today. It was all day long, and that singing and that connection are essential in our cultural worship.

Carolyn: Is there a difference between the African students and the congregation at large? Does age make a difference in the joy of experiencing music? Older people have memories that young people don’t. How does that play out in African culture?

Sharon: It seems to me that musical joy doesn’t die out in African culture the way it sometimes does in Euro cultures. Elderly Africans are as eager to dance and sing as young people, even if they don’t have the same energy. Today I saw elderly members as energized as the teens—including a White woman in her seventies.

Donald: There is a conversation to be had about appropriateness. One of my closest friends—a cancer survivor—used music in place of photography when illness limited him. He would invite people over and share music on superb equipment. That makes me wonder: is listening as meaningful as participating? Can both matter?

Carolyn: To me, listening and participating are almost inseparable. There’s an energy in music—a need to listen, to participate, to be part of it. Is there a right kind of music and a wrong kind of music for glorifying God? Is there a right or wrong way to participate?

David: The rest of this series will deal exactly with those questions. Music does different things to us. You’ve heard a wide historical and geographical range today. Why do they sound so different? And why, in our Western tradition, do we not sing Gregorian chant anymore? It’s beautiful music. It seems odd to me that we’ve largely left it behind.

Is it simply the shift from simplicity to complexity? Is it the shape of our buildings, our traditions? Adventist churches are very plain compared to Catholic cathedrals—perhaps the music reflects that.

C-J: I think it depends on where you are in your spiritual walk. People gravitate toward what they’re comfortable with. Some would be overwhelmed by a cathedral; others thrive in that environment. The Daoists worship outdoors—gardens, fields—always about becoming one with nature. We don’t want clutter; we want clarity. That influences the music we’re drawn to.

Carolyn: I love beauty wherever I find it—in any church. But I look for tone quality that is pleasant to my ear and lyrics that draw me closer to God. That’s why I struggle with some new genres. I try, I really do, but it’s hard. I once heard monks do a Christmas album—the blend was exquisite. That’s what I remember from hearing the Voice of Prophecy quartet live years ago—the blend. Not shouting in different directions, not guitars competing. Confession is good for the soul.

David: Music is just one form of beauty. Most of what I say about music applies equally to visual art, architecture, sculpture—any art.

Donald: Remember when I talked about “compositional keys” in visual art? We’re drawn to things visually because that’s who we are. Sound is similar. We should probably distinguish between lyrics and music, too. Noise provokes a negative reaction; sound connected to beauty is different.

C-J: Anything we perceive through the senses has two purposes: to reveal something in us we didn’t know, and to help us evolve in ways we can then share with others. When someone cries at a sound, image, or smell, it enlarges them. That’s the beauty of the senses.

Carolyn: Hearing the Jewish cantor today reminded me of a time when I worked closely with one. When tone and text come together—it’s a sermon.

C-J: Isn’t that how the Holy Spirit works? Regardless of culture or belief system, the Spirit meets us through what we cannot define or control.

Reinhard: I think music is a gift from God. I grew up in church, and music was always part of worship—sometimes even without a sermon. Music elevates us spiritually. Even in the Bible we see singing in times of joy and hardship—Paul and Silas singing in prison, the disciples singing after the Last Supper. Singing brings us close to God. When we face hard times, the songs we hum to ourselves strengthen us.

Donald: There’s an interesting connection here between music and AI. Sometimes I go to a hymn for words I don’t know how to express myself. The hymn gives language to my experience. And AI does something similar: if I write a paragraph and ask it to make it more compassionate or more clear, it can do it. Hymns do that too—they articulate what I want to say.

Carolyn: I agree. But I’ve had to accept that in many churches, what music is “appropriate” becomes controversial. Many believe Satan counterfeits good music with bad music.

Donald: We can talk about quality without calling some sounds “evil.” But yes, there is tension. In our church, for example, the organist leaves the platform whenever contemporary music is played. Maybe he thinks it’s inappropriate; maybe he simply can’t embrace it.

Carolyn: Some authors have written books about this—good music vs. counterfeit. But I also think there is room for both styles.

David: Today was just to set the scene for these debates. They’re important. Much of the rest of the series will be about these questions.

We all recognize that music can bring joy, awe, sadness, or longing. But it also brings moments of alignment—of grace—when inner and outer tones match. Grace is not the feeling itself; it is the alignment that lets the feeling arise without overwhelming us. Next week we’ll look at how music can both elevate us and deceive us—how the very same melody can open us to grace or close us inside ourselves. Beauty can lift the soul, but it can also intoxicate. The question is how to tell the difference.

Maybe grace is what remains when the last vibration ends and we find that we’re still resonating. 

[Bow bells]