The Great Choir of Life

Embracing God's Challenge to Learn to Sing in Harmony

Twice a year when I was in elementary school, the whole school would assemble in the gym for a winter concert and a spring concert performed by the band, orchestra and chorus students. I remember impatiently sitting through the band and orchestra songs, my teacher’s aid Mrs. Zahn admonishing me for fidgeting. But when the chorus finally walked onto the stage, I was focused, alert and excited. I absolutely loved listening to the chorus. It seemed as though they were having a big joyous party onstage, and I wanted to join the party too. The band and orchestra were open to students starting in third grade, but by some unfair twist of fate, the chorus was only open to fifth graders. When at long last fifth grade arrived, and I attended the first choir rehearsal, it was everything I dreamed of. We sang some fun songs, but at the time, I had never heard of the concepts of harmony and different voice parts. We all sang in unison and I just took it for granted. But a couple weeks later when Mrs. Bart introduced songs that had different parts, I was upset at first, especially when, in an effort to expose me to new challenges, she assigned me to the alto section. The melody was more fun, and more dominant such that it was difficult to stay focused on my lower notes. But I got used to it, and before long came to love it such that when we would occasionally go back to singing a song in unison, I came to appreciate the value of the more complex songs. This harmonizing, I came to realize, adds a spectacular, texture and color to a song. By the time I had my chance to join the party onstage and perhaps thrill a kindergartner sitting in the audience, every song in our set had at least two voice parts, and it occurred to me that when I was in the audience listening to the chorus all those years, I had been hearing harmony all along. It just blended together so beautifully, like eating a delicious slice of cake for which I never stopped to consider its individual ingredients until I was involved in making the cake.

And when I got to middle school and joined a community choir that collaborated with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, life got even more interesting. The conductor often had to remind the orchestra to play softer so that the choir could be heard, and we had to learn to annunciate consonants more intentionally because they are difficult to hear over instruments, no matter how mindfully the orchestra plays. And we had to learn to watch the conductor. If our tempo didn’t match the orchestra, the piece would go off the rails really quick! But the fruit yielded once we worked through these challenges was even more thrilling, like upgrading from a sheet cake, to a layered cake.

I believe God also wants a world that doesn’t sing in unison, but a choir of challenging yet ultimately beautiful harmony. That is why he commanded the first humans to scatter, fill the earth and create diverse languages and cultures. Those first humans too liked singing in unison: they refused to scatter and plotted to build that tower to the heavens to make their name great (Genesis 11:6-9). But God knew that uniformity only leads to evil, so he intervened, confused their languages and scattered them. Thousands of years later, with the internet and modern transportation, the world has in a way been brought back together again. Yet God still desires that we embrace diversity, and we still insist on uniformity which leads to all kinds of evil. We will tolerate diversity to the extent that black and brown people can be exploited for cheap labor, but when they ask that their humanity be recognized, that they be fully accepted into the choir, we stereotype all undocumented immigrants as criminals, or blame DEI (Diversity equity and inclusion) initiatives any time something goes wrong, or imply that because of DEI goals, standards have been lowered, a coded but blatant nod back to pseudoscience that believed that white people were superior to all other races in intelligence. So-called Christian politicians will give lip-service to the biblical concept that all humans are created in God’s image and thus worthy of respect, yet relentlessly push to cut funding to programs like Medicaid, and public schools which the poor, and people with disabilities depend upon. Conservative pastors and so-called Christian politicians spew vitriol calling the LGBTQ lifestyle an abomination, and blaming this class of consenting adults who pose no threat to others, for the degradation of our culture, when numerous high-profile scandals would suggest they have overlooked the planks in their own eyes while fixating on the specks of sawdust in the eyes of others. We view people of other faiths, especially Islam, with suspicion and seek to marginalize them in our culture, when I believe God often uses people of other faiths, even people of no faith at all, to put us to shame by actually living out Jesus’s teachings—caring for creation, proclaiming the intrinsic dignity of every human life—while too many of us supposed Christians are preoccupied with getting the Ten Commandments posted in every classroom, while many of the children in these classrooms come to school hungry.

In 1 Corinthians 13:11, Paul says, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” At the root of Christian Nationalism, I fear, is a giant, metaphorical childish temper tantrum. This ideology yearns for life to be simple. It never was of course. The notion that at one time it was, is mostly a figment of the nostalgic imagination, and partly the intentional decisions that kept minorities subservient, women at home, people with disabilities hidden and LGBTQ people closeted, all so that these people wouldn’t complicate the song that white men wanted to sing.

In My Body is Not a Prayer Request, a memoir about ableism in the church, Amy Kenny said something that struck me as relevant to all of our society’s tension surrounding diversity: “We expect there to be variety when it comes to trees, flowers, and animals, just not humans. There are sixty thousand types of trees, three thousand varieties of tulips, and four hundred kinds of sharks. No one claims fringed tulips are better or worse than cup-shaped tulips. They are both beautiful in their distinctiveness” (Page 17). If God cares for the sparrows and the lilies of the field, and yet says that we are more valuable than they, surely it isn’t a stretch to believe that as much as he enjoyed forming creation, with such diverse plant and animal life, he enjoyed creating our human diversity even more, and longs for us to cherish it too.

Singing in harmony isn’t always easy. Some choir rehearsals are downright tedious and frustrating, as the rhythm of one section causes confusion in other sections, a metaphor for how the interests of one group can conflict with the interests of another. Because my adult voice is suited for high notes, I usually get to sing the melody, yet occasionally, the director will ask the sopranos—sometimes even me specifically—to tone it down because the altos cannot be heard, a light-hearted but fitting analogy for the uncomfortable truth that white people who have made themselves dominant for hundreds of years may need to be quiet so that the needs of marginalized people can be heard. Occasionally, I am even asked to sing a lower part. But when the song comes together, I realize all the hard work, the give and take was worth it, as I feel God’s presence every concert when at least one song comes together so beautifully I could cry. I shudder to think what I would have missed had I dropped out of choir the first time I was confronted with a challenge, just as it breaks my heart to think about all the beauty and joy our society is forfeiting due to the ideology of Christian Nationalism and its refusal to even try singing in harmony with people different from them.

That Reminds Me of a Song: That first rehearsal in the fifth grade chorus, we sang All God’s Critters. We never performed it, and I think this was the only rehearsal we ever sang it. I don’t remember if Mrs. Bart was using it to teach us a music concept or if she just wanted a fun song to see how we sounded together. When you are a child, you are not conscious of adult motives like a song or activity’s educational value. But you remember how the song made you feel, and I remember having a blast singing it. I didn’t have the foresight to record this first rehearsal either, and I didn’t like the children’s choir renditions available on YouTube. But this version by Peter Paul and Mary is so cute and fun, a perfect fit for my nostalgic memory of singing it in fifth grade. I especially love the last verse: “Everybody here is a part of the plan / We all get to play in the great critter band / From the eagle in the sky to the whale in the sea / It’s one great symphony.” When you are a child, you aren’t fully conscious of a song’s message either, but now as an adult I realize I was reminded of this song because it is a perfect, fun metaphor to introduce children, at least subconsciously, to the truth that diversity is what makes this world rich and beautiful.