Justin Appel
Dear Friends,
This morning, we get to read Psalm 38 again – can we read it too many times?
As a meditative exercise, I would like to suggest that you read this psalm while listening to a 7-minute work for strings and tubular bell by the Estonian composer, Arvo Pärt.
Why this piece with this psalm? I suppose because the former illuminates the latter in unexpected ways.
For instance, Psalm 38 is all about repentance: turning around, changing one’s mind, returning to God. Sounds like a simple topic, right?
Wrong. Not simple. Come to think of it, I may have over-simplified the theme of the psalm. It’s really about struggling with sin, with mortality, with weakness, and especially with death itself. The psalmist cries out in mortal pain: ‘Lord, you know all my desires.’ There is pathos here, a pain that reveals the deepest meaning of life.
Where does all of this pain lead? Why focus on it so relentlessly? Well, it’s a bit of a mystery to me, but there’s something deeply beautiful about the pain of this life. Perhaps it is because Jesus himself experienced this pain, the full suffering of a world in pain, and allowed himself to be crushed by it.
Pärt’s sublime composition, Cantus in Memorium Benjamin Britten, has two musical elements. Each instrument divides into two parts: one voice descends the notes of an A minor scale, the other iterates the notes of the A minor triad (A, C, E).
Here’s why I think this music sheds light on the psalm: the stumbling, step-wise voice stands for the subjective, the ‘egotistical life of sin and suffering’, while the clear, chordal voice is the ‘objective voice of forgiveness’ – as Pärt himself puts it. So, the music actually embodies both kinds of realities and synthesizes them.
Also, these two ideas unfold at different speeds, leaving a tangle of voices that are difficult for the ear to unravel, a complexity that matches the intricacies of sin, pain, forgiveness and salvation.
Finally, there is a stasis here, an inbuilt silence that enables us both to feel the pathos and its final resolution together. This really is mystical music that plumbs the depths of traditional Christian spirituality.
Now, I encourage you to listen to this music while you read Psalm 38. Open the reading first (here's a link to the psalm) then click on the video below.
Yours in Christ,
Justin