Music of Life

The nature and power of music is grand, awesome and ultimately a mystery.

Dr. Oliver Sacks writes about people with "musical misalignments" that affect their professional and daily lives, like the composer of atonal music who has with "corny" and "tonal" musical hallucinations playing over and over in his brain,  what the Germans call earworm.

"Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain" (Oliver Sacks)

New York Times reviewer,Michiko Kakutani writes that Dr Sacks is able
to convey both the fathomless mysteries of the human brain and the equally profound mysteries of music: an art that is “completely abstract and profoundly emotional,” devoid of the power to “represent anything particular or external,” but endowed with the capacity to express powerful, inchoate moods and feelings.

Could it be that Life itself is a musical adventure as  Gagdad Bob writes in Songs in the Key of Jesus
each of us represents an unrepeatable melodic line that wends itself through the four great chords constituting the song of existence.

Believing that everything that exists can be explained in material terms is materialism and
Materialism is a philosophy by the tone-deaf and for the tin-eared.

He quotes his own book, "One Cosmos Under God: The Unification of Matter, Life, Mind & Spirit" to say
if you really want to know reality in its fullness, "it is no longer adequate to be just a materialistic banjo-picker sitting barefoot on a little bridge of dogma; rather, one must have at least a nodding acquaintance with a few other instruments in order to play the cosmic suite. The universe is like a holographic, multidimensional musical score that must be read, understood, and performed. Like the score of a symphony, it can support diverse interpretations, but surely one of them cannot be 'music does not exist.'"

No one understands the power of music better than Pope Benedict.
The Pope is considering a dramatic overhaul in order to force a return to sacred music.

The Second Vatican Council declared
The musical tradition of the universal Church is a treasure of inestimable value, greater even that that of any other art.The main reason for this pre-eminence is that, as sacred song united to the words, it forms a necessary or integral part of the solemn liturgy ... the Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy; therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services."

Young people who have never heard Gregorian chant are amazed to learn that it is the official music of the Catholic Church.  Australian Tony Vaughn says
The interest in Chant over the last four or five years has been amazing. Young people want to know more about this incredibly beautiful and spiritual music, and where they can experience and learn it.

At Mont Saint Michel, the beauty of the traditional liturgy is Making Pilgrims out of Tourists
for the tourists who visit, Father De Froberville explained that "the age of anti-clericalism seems to be over. .... those younger than 60 are open to Christianity in a way not seen for a long time. They think it's cool.
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It is the richness of our liturgy that keeps them interested.

Wasn't it Albert Einstein who said

Everything is determined by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust - we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.