From our May 1st edition
"You are about to hear a piece of music," said a presenter on BBC Radio 3 this week, "written by a composer who became a priest. However, he hardly wrote any spiritual music."
I couldn’t believe my ears! From the supposedly higher-brow end of British broadcasting the most amazingly sweeping generalisation – and one that doesn’t make any sense at all.
Let me climb down off this high horse I’m sitting on for a moment and try to say the same kind of thing in a different context. Let’s imagine someone was born in France from a long line of French antecedents. They have French as their first language, but they live in Brora or Bettyhill just now – does that mean they are no longer really French?
Are they only French when they’re in France and speaking the language? That would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it? Our French man or woman carries their French-ness wherever they are. It doesn’t ever go away no matter where they are or what they’re doing.
Is it not the same with people of faith? Even when they are not using the faith words, or holy words; even when they’re not doing holy things, they are still people of faith, are they not? Good, bad or mediocre but a person’s spiritual side can’t just go back in its box when it’s not being used, instead it underpins everything that person’s about.
So when I’m driving my car, it is still a spiritual act. And there’s nothing like a thought like that to stop you raging at how slow the person in front is!
When I am attempting to hit a daft wee white ball into a not very big hole via gorse bushes, bunkers and rough and losing not just balls but the game, I am still a spiritual person.
When I’m doing the washing, walking the dogs, cleaning out the fridge I don’t shrug off the faith I hold onto, it is always there and as much a part of me as the air I breathe and (hopefully) influencing for the better the things I do – although sadly not always enough.
Our Celtic forbears have a lot to teach us in this regard. For them there was no separation between ordinary and holy or between holy and worldly. Everything was one. So the medieval collection of Gaelic prayers and blessings brought together by the exciseman and folklorist Alexander Carmichael, carries within it prayers and blessings for the highs and lows in life as you might expect: for the births, marriages and deaths, but it also contains prayers for things like smooring the fire or brushing your hair, very ordinary, everyday, mundane things.
So to go back to my Radio 3 composer who is responsible for setting me off this rant, whether or not he created music for spiritual settings is of absolutely no consequence. As a person of faith all the music he wrote would have been spiritual to a degree because he would have recognised it as a gift from God to be both used and enjoyed.
And, I suspect, to be used and enjoyed to God’s glory.
High horse dismounted and back in its stable – Susan Brown.
