June 29, 2014:

Ponderings of a Pilgrim Pastor

“The Music Of The Spheres”

A hymn that many of us have known and loved since childhood is “This Is My Father’s World”.  Like so many familiar hymns, it contains words and phrases which we know from memory but may never have fully understood.  Remember how the first verse begins?

“This is my Father’s world; and to my listening ears,

All nature sings, and round me rings, the music of the spheres.”

I suppose that most of us who sing those wonderful and familiar words have assumed that they were simply beautiful poetry.  I suppose that when Maltbie Babcock, the American Presbyterian minister who wrote this hymn in the late eighteen hundreds, that was what it meant to him — just a lovely figure of speech.

But there was a time when these words were taken to be literally true.  In the later Middle Ages and Renaissance, there was a belief that the universe was organized according to musical principles.  The stars and planets all move through space in time to music — divine music, the music of the spheres.  Though we here on earth were too far away to hear this heavenly music, it was believed to be absolutely glorious.  After death, in heaven — up there!— we would add our own talents to the heavenly orchestra and choir.  I suppose this is the reason why an earlier generation determined that after death we would all be part of an angelic chorus!

While spending eternity in a heavenly glee club may not be something you and I would look forward to, there is still something profoundly meaningful to me about this ancient myth.  The suggestion that the universe is organized and guided by musical principles suggests that for all the seeming discord and chaos in our world, there is ultimately guiding purpose and meaning.

I don’t know how it may be for you, but it seems more and more these days I need that kind of assurance.  I need the confidence that there is an inner harmony to life, to my life, to the life of the world, to the life of the universe.  As difficult as it may be with all the cacophony that surrounds us, I need to listen for the music of the spheres — that faint but lovely melody telling me this is God’s holy world, that my Father/Mother God still reigns over the universe.

Love,
Dave