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Singing our way to transcendence

by Penelope Adams Moon

The following is from Penny Moon’s reflections during the opening worship for this year’s faculty-staff retreat Aug. 25, for which the Scripture reading was Genesis 29:10-19a:

I believe Bethel is a place to experience transcendence (a state of being above and beyond the material), a place where things are not normal or, to use Jacob’s words, a place that is “awesome.” One thing that happens regularly here that fosters a sense of transcendence, at least for me, is the public singing.

When I came to Bethel, I remember standing on the steps of the Administration Building and hearing four-part singing for the very first time. It wasn’t coming from a choir that had prepared to “entertain” an audience – it came from members of the faculty being called to sing and then just…singing. And singing beautifully. It took a good deal of willpower not to let the tears that had welled up in my eyes roll down my cheeks. I remember thinking, “What kind of place is this that people just sing like that? This is crazy!” (Said another way: “This isn’t normal!”)

People often smirk at the cheesiness of Hollywood musicals because the characters just break into song spontaneously to express themselves. But what a weirdly wonderful world we would live in if people did that on a regular basis – as people indeed do, in all sorts of settings, here at Bethel. I think of how much I’ve sung on this campus and I’m not even a “singer.” I’ve sung in the cafeteria, in the Ad Building, in Krehbiel Auditorium, in Mem Hall, in the football stadium, in Bethel College Mennonite Church. We’ve sung together in chapel – that’s obvious – but we’ve also sung in convo, at fall retreat, in faculty meetings. I’ve sung “Happy Birthday” in a number of places. I’ve sung on the Green. And, in a serious lapse of judgment, I’ve even sung “I had a mule, her name was Sal” in class.

Singing, particularly in the workplace, is so freaky. It just isn’t done. In a way, the fact that we routinely sing at Bethel means we are contributing to the creation of an environment that is inherently counter-cultural and unusual. Like Gothic cathedrals which through their acres of stained glass and mosaic floor mazes and soaring heights functioned to remove the pilgrim from the worldly and create space for transcendence, singing at Bethel is a public way of removing ourselves from the daily grind, from the normal, from the rational, from result-based activity. It is a way of transcending the material and stretching toward the spiritual.

One thing that makes singing here so wonderfully transcendent is the fact that singing at Bethel operates on the assumption that we do and should live in community – an oddity in our hyper-mobile society. A lot of singing at Bethel is group singing, four-part singing and – I know this is by no means a new observation – it models community. Everyone brings a specific talent to the group and cooperates to produce a harmonious product.

But more than filling parts, group singing at Bethel requires love, which is, to my mind, a synonym for community. It requires us to live in diversity – to embrace side-by-side those who can really carry a tune and those who lip-synch in chapel. It requires us to make ourselves vulnerable before our peers – to trust that others love us no matter what. There are many of us on this campus who are well aware of our limitations as singers but we sing anyway, assured that this community accepts us for who we are.

Group singing also requires us to make ourselves dependent upon others – a scandalous proposition in our “pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps-and-win-Survivor-by-outconniving-everyone-else” culture. Group singing yokes our own success to our willingness to listen, to compromise, to adjust. How otherworldly that seems in a culture that routinely uses the phrases, “Make no mistake,” lambastes so-called “flip-floppers” and insistently pledges to “stay the course” regardless of the circumstances. It requires us to be followers as often as we are leaders. It requires us to admit that we need others and that we can only survive by recognizing the presence, roles, and needs of others. In coming to this recognition, we are made the Body of Christ – a community rooted in love, aware that mutual dependence is at the core of its existence, and engaged in the process of seeking truth. And that makes Bethel College, using Jacob’s words in Genesis once more, “truly awesome.”

Penny Moon, associate professor of history, has taught at Bethel College since 2002.