Ponderings of our Spiritual Life Director 2-23-22

Come sing a song with me…

We sang together on our patio on Sunday morning, as a congregation, for the first time in 2 years!

What a beautiful, salvific moment. I definitely cried as I looked around at all your faces and heard all your voices and watched all your bodies move together.

Anthropologists and ethnomusicologists recognize singing as an ancient, early form of communication.

“Music is a powerful medium to connect individual humans via changes in brain chemistry…, leading them to experience a certain exhilaration when the feeling of individuality dissolves into a common Collective Identity”.1 (see below for an interesting article…)

Unity, belonging, and connection are some of the feelings we experience when we sing together. Singing together stimulates the production of oxytocin, also known as “the bonding hormone”. Our stress and anxiety are reduced and as we move closer to a state of well-being, trust begins to grow between us. An opportunity to share our emotions, hearts, and souls opens up for us and community building begins. Singing is powerful. Singing is a bridge in a fragmented world.

So, don’t worry if you think you have a “good” voice or not, because you do! You were meant to sing! The mood boosting hormones that increase in our body when we sing together is a gift from our ancestors, encouraging us to bring more harmony to our lives and to the world.

As a worship team, we will do our best to have worship services outside so that we can come and sing songs together. We hope you will join us!

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/288055782_A_new_interdisciplinary_approach_to_the_study_of_the_origins_of_traditional_polyphony