Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Reflection: Meanings in Our Music

Rev. Amy Zucker Morgenstern
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Palo Alto, CA

What is it about music that makes it so essential to Sunday morning? For millennia, poets have understood that setting to words to music makes them easier to remember. Anyone who can remember advertising jingles they haven’t heard in 25 years knows what that’s all about.

We often remind ourselves that church is all about getting from Sunday to Monday: taking the ideas and inspirations of this place into the rest of our lives. Music does this with a subtle power. A tune from Sunday morning will still meander in our ears hours or days later, carrying its words with it, making an ongoing meditation.

At UUCPA music is one of our great strengths and loves. Veronika, Henry, and many of the musicians who play and sing here each week carry us up to the peaks of music. Our children have said the choir is one of their favorite aspects of being in the Main Hall services. Many members first entered our doors for a concert, tried out Sunday morning on the recommendation of another music lover, and then got hooked by the warmth of the community and the fit of our seeking, thoughtful approach to belief. Or hey, maybe you’re just staying for the music.

One thing’s sure: one of the most powerful ways we create community is by singing together, our voices enriched by being lifted together. And belief expressed poetically and traveling on the lilting path of melody from our own throats has a heightened power. So today we will spend extra time with the songs in Singing the Living Tradition and its supplement, Singing the Journey: with the tunes and words that make up our congregation’s hymns. This morning’s Worship Associates and I will share a handful of our favorites … we hope you’ll leave here talking about some of yours.

 

Other Hymn Reflections:

We Laugh, We Cry
Spirit of Life
The Fire of Commitment
Raghupati
I’m On My Way
We’ll Build a Land