The other night I was feeling lousy - the reasons aren't important - and I decided to appeal to God for some relief. I resorted to what for me are always healing forms of contemplation: reading an listening to music. I read an essay by the great Georgetown Jesuit James Schall, then went to go hear some music, a divine art. And in those two things I realized why the so-called "frivolous" things we do in life, the singing, dancing, and playing, are more important than our wars, personal dramas and political battles.
Fr. Schall is a Georgetown institution, an expert on classical philosophy and Christian theology. He is the author of over two dozen books. In January ISI will release the paperback version of his work On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs: Teaching, Writing, Playing, Believing, Lecturing, Philosophizing, Singing, Dancing. In the title essay, Schall makes the point that we respond to God best in the freest of our activities: Plato's sacrificing, singing, and dancing. "We do not belittle our race when we acknowledge our real place in the order of things....We seek the prize to which we are called, not the one we create for ourselves."
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According to Schall, all of our political and social concerns on earth are important, but may not always be the same as God's ultimate plan for us. To occasionally let go of the arrogance that tells us that the world begins and ends with the next vote in congress, to let go and go out dancing, is in a way a more profound and important for of prayer than pushing through tax reform. Fr, Schall quotes a Latin phrase - Ludere est contempari. "To play is to contemplate."
This is what is behind the power of popular music, which is often dismissed as being just, you know, pop. The artist I saw after reading Schall is Akua Allrich, a brilliant young jazz singer from Washington, D.C. Allrich has a childlike personality, and I mean that as a compliment - childlike, not childish. She is funny, welcoming, extremely polite and quick to laugh. She is also a fierce, electrifying performer. Her versions of jazz classics "Afro Blue," "Don't Let me Be Misunderstood" and Nina Simone's "Sinnerman" were transporting. Watching her perform, I felt my own sorrows begin to fade.
This is the divine power of popular music - the ability to alchemize suffering into joy. Some people might argue that I am downplaying the political component of some music - after all, Acua Allrich is stepped in the African-American tradition of jazz as not just fun, but as protest. Her program was a celebration of Nina Simone and Miriam Makeba, both black civil rights activists. But while the political content of a lot of music in the African-American tradition has always been important, the music itself, how skillfully it is played, has always been considered as, if not more, important.
Witness the hilarious ruthlessness that black audiences deal with acts on amateur night at the Apollo. When Akua Allrich's winsome and bubbly wonder commingled with the raw power of her delivery of protest songs, there was no contradiction. One was not more important as the other. When Louis Armstrong reached the stars with his horn or Sarah Vaughn hit notes of timeless perfection, it was a civil rights statement that changed politics by transcending politics. It said: look at me. I am free. As I play, in the eyes of God, I am free.
Perhaps music and dance became so crucial in the black community because it was a reminder of Schall's point. So-called "frivolous" things like singing, dancing, and other forms of play remind the participants and the audience that God is above the cruelties and sorrows of the world. In On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs, Schall cites a story told by Plato.
On a walk to a religious shrine in Crete, a soldier and statesman named Klinias talks with someone Plato identifies as the Athenian Stranger. The Athenian Stranger says that man is like a "plaything," and that this is the best thing about us. Klinias, who in the modern world might be a congressman or cable channel host, is confused and put off by this comment. What do you mean man "is not the measure of all things"? Plato's response: "But the fact is that in war there is not and will not be by nature either play, or again, an education that is at any time worthy of our discussion; yet this is what we assert is at least for us, the most serious thing. Each person should spend the greatest and best part of his life in peace. What then is the correct way? One should live out one's days playing at certain games - sacrificing, singing, and dancing." On a hot night in D.C. in the dead end of August, a time when official Washington is empty, the real, ultimate drama of the human soul was revealed.
The real work, the real contemplation, the real joy exploded. Of course, people danced.
Mark Judge is a columnist for RealClearReligion and author, most recently, of A Tremor of Bliss: Sex, Catholicism, and Rock 'n' Roll.
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