Our Sound is Our Wound: Contemplative Listening to a Noisy World -- The Archbishop of Canterbury's Lent Book 2010

by Lucy Winkett

This book is a meditation on how we listen for the voice of God within the soundscapes of our lives, and how we find our own voice.

Genres: Nonfiction, Theology, Christianity, Spirituality

160 pages, Paperback

First published December 3, 2009

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lucy Winkett who is a priest in the Church of England evidently has a real love of and feel for music ,drama and the effects these can have in our lives. The book is a reflection on the different ways sound can help and hinder in our journey through life. As a Christian she is obviously seeing that journey as heading towards a full relationship with God but, as with some of the best books on spirituality i have read recently, she does not speak in such a way that would alienate or annoy those who do not share her vision. I am conscious that as a practising catholic I am probably not in the best of positions to gauge that really well as evidently i share her vision but she speaks out of a genuine sympathy or is that empathy, i am never sure, towards people who are searching and she certainly does not patronize but offers concepts and challenges which stretch and widen our way of looking.

She takes 5 main areas; Scripture is the over-riding theme which twists in and out throughout the book and within that she focuses on the agony of lament, of cries for freedom, of the unimaginable music of Resurrection and of the song of the Angels. In each of these chapters she encourages us to see what we mean by those concepts, what sounds and noises, good or ill, might echo around them and then she draws us to reflect on what this opening out of the 'soundtrack of the norm' might do for our own development and our own growth.

As i said, she quite clearly is a woman in love with sound and music especially. Initially I felt she was trying a bit too hard to be ' down with the cool kids' when quoting from the lyrics of innumerable rap artists and sound performers but i do feel, as the book went on, that i was perhaps doing her a disservice. Had I been rabbitting on about the 'scriptural cadences ' of Mike Skinner of 'The Streets' or praising the incisive political choruses of Ms Dynamite, I would have been being a pretentious arse and i think i was too swiftly ramming Winkett down the same rabbit hole. This I feel is unjust.

She comes across as a woman alive to the possibilities of music and sound to transform and change and though i still found some of her analysis perhaps a touch over-egged she did remain consistent in her approach. After all, the woman loves Jazz for crying out loud and sees this as one of the great expressions of the vulnerability of love and of faith. Now i really can't stand jazz but listening to her analysis i was struck by the insight she gave.

We learn in this music of our vulnerability, our woundedness when we expose ourselves to love and its power. Living in love is always a risk, and in its traditions of improvization jazz music expresses this well....taking a risk to create something in the moment that is new and may not work.

This made sense as I read it, even as I imagined my purgatory being forced to listen to someone going off on one baboobling and danoodling away above a trumpet or piano or something.

There were some other lovely insights she gave me; some of them just a better phrasing then i would have found myself though the insight was not new to me:

egResurrection itself seems to be silent; a delicate, unheard moment of grace that, when we finally notice it, we realize has been there all the time. The first sound of Resurrection we hear is a woman's name: 'Mary'.

This i thought was beautiful. The idea that if Easter faith means anything, it is about relationship. As a Christian, my faith is pointless if it does not involve me reaching out in love.

She does an extended reflection on Christ calling Lazarus from the tomb but then points out that the word John uses in the account in his Gospel is not a gentle coaxing but a scream, one that will drag the dead man back into the light. Her referencing it to us is powerfully challenging;

We might also reflect that in this life, when we listen for the voice that calls us into freedom, that calls us out of the tombs we construct for ourselves into the light of day, we learn with shocked recognition that it is not always intuitive for human beings to choose to live in the light.

Again this was not a new insight but it was phrased better than I would manage it but there was one wonderfully transforming image she gave to me.

Christians are used to the passage from the first letter of St Peter in which he calls us living stones. Winkett says that she always used to think of this as each of us being a sturdy breeze-block type brick which would, by being lain next to or on top of other equally sturdy and uniform bricks make up the Temple of God. As i read this i thought, 'Yep, that is my picture too'.

Then she blows that apart by an amazing reflection on stone sculpted figures which are carved so wnderfully that they seem to move and have music playing through them. This, she says, is our vocation. Not to be sturdy bricks building a uniform and perhaps glwering edifice but to be like those stone figures which enhance and beautify, 'pouring out energy......seeming to play and dance even when we are still'. I am not 100% convinced that i have fully absorbed or understood this image but the power of the sculpture is the fact that it attracts and enlivens rather than oppresses or belittles.

At another point she offers an amazing thought, very apt as we enter into Holy Week in a few days time and start reflecting on Christ's last week. She talks about us being called to follow Christ not copy Him, which is an obvious truth but which involves us in having to work out where that following will lead us as individuals but then she takes it one stage further. There is a sense, she says, in which we are called whilst not to copy Him but to be attentive to hear the echo of His voice in our silence and then speak.

There is a cost to speaking with this accent, as it will associate us, as St Peter's did on the night of Jesus' arrest, with the one crucified by frightened and violent men.

I loved the power of this image for some reason. The idea that just as we catch the echo of God in our thoughts perhaps we can pass that on by the way we speak. Winkett focuses in the above quote on the negative implications but she stresses more the unheralded strength that we can share without even realizing it.

Her final thoughts are around the whole gift of silence or peace and calm that the Churches can and perhaps should offer. However, she says, we often don't mean silence, we mean the right kind of noise.......the reality is that we often replicate rather than challenge life in a noisy world

This inability of the Churches to offer silence to a world crying out for it is a wound, she says, which is not in itself a disaster but perhaps one we need to look towards. She points out the fact that Christ sometimes stayed silent, said very little unless it was neccessary. Goodness, i thought, how wonderful the Church's ministry might be if it would sometimes remain silent on issues with which it has little knoweldge or has opinions which serve to alienate because they are thrust down unprepared or disinterested throats. Might it not be a better service offered to sit quietly and wait in humble welcome, prepared and willing to speak certainly, to share its thoughts adn opinions when asked but first of all, very willing to listen. And to listen not just to rap artists, jazz musicians etc etc but to hear the cries, anger, isolation and sadness of so many people who hear from the Churches only criticism, correction and even sometimes, God forgive us, condemnation.


N.B. Crass lowering of the tone alert.
PS Returning to 'right on' Lucy mode to finish. She offers an interesting take on the whole rap artist grabbing his groin in that really annoying way (I speak as a man a few decades on from the target audience obviously)

Women,it seems, have the power to humiliate; the men's fear of being belittled revealed by their permanent clutching of their crotch throughout the song.

Now I feel I will be able to steel myself to watch those appalling videos at the gym because i will just keep telling myself....'they are frightened of losing their willies, they are frightened of losing their willies' and i will smile. Thank you Lucy.

[Nina Tweddle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my second attempt to read this book. it is interesting, but not entirely successful. It needs time to read in small chunks and then contemplate upon.

However there is much that is worthwhile and I think I'll read it again in a year or two.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a beautiful, heartfelt account of a theology of sound through lived experience. It's also critically astute and research led. I'm still processing but I highly recommend.

[Sasha Wolf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Contains possibly my favourite passage in any book ever:

"People who listen for this song of resurrection have also felt the seismic rhythms of grief. They have heard the earthquake of Matthew’s Gospel rumble beneath their feet and have known that the stone which they very carefully placed across the path in front of them is no barrier for a Saviour who shouts salvation through the rock. But, we protest, that’s my stone: the stone is there to protect me, to shade me, so that I can sit up against it. I need it to be there. It’s heavy and looks totally immoveable and gives us a measure of security.

The sound of resurrection is for us the same as it was for Mary Magdalene and for Lazarus and for Tabitha. It is our name yelled, whispered, implored by a God who with unimaginable compassion and not a little anger searches and pleads for us to emerge into the light of such love we have never even thought of. Resurrection is of the dead. It is also of the living, and the risk we take, like Abraham and Sarah, like David, Mary, Martha and countless others, is to speak in reply, and for our reply to be yes."

[Charlotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book very inspiring and thought provoking. The first two chapters, in particular, were of interest to me (The Sound of Scripture, The Sound of Lament) as Winkett draws on her extensive knowledge of church music to explore the value of this in litugy, but also where it can overpower and detract from the meaning. She, like I, has a love of Choral Evensong, but that does not mean that she elevates it above all else.
"...broadcasting Choral Evensong ha[s] done for church music what Barbie had done for women."
She also gave me a new perspective on dissonance - that in this uncertain and often cruel world, it is not appropriate for all music to resolve nicely.
While sound is a good thing when used to communicate, inspire and elevate, it can also alienate and damage, and this is what I think Winkett means by sound being a wound. We can create sound, but we must also learn to listen and be silent in order to best serve our society and our planet.

[Jennie C-knight · Rating 5 out of 5]

A superb and deeply relevant reflective look at noise and silence, giving a fresh perspective on very familiar scriptural texts. Greatly needed in our deafeningly loud western world, where people even wear their headphones to go for a walk in the country.

How we miss all the subtleties of real life as we immerse ourselves, drowning, in a vat of sound! The church of England has some superb writers. They should be given a wider platform to develop their influence.

[Lyndon · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lovely mediation on the gifts and scars that we receive as the church through the sounds of a wounded world. Our hope resides in the prayer, "Thy song be sung, on earth as it is in heaven" (p. 121).

[Vicky]

I started reading this for a study group but then missed all of the meetings, so didn't get past about chapter 2. Since I did pay for the Kindle version, I might come back later, but so many books to read right now :)

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book....