Seeing is Believing

A long, long, time ago (I don’t even remember when), I blogged about some friends of mine, singers/songwriters from Idaho. Brad Thompsen and Steve Brown, who together are known as Border Crossing. At the time I blogged about one of their songs, "The Other Way Around".

It’s long been one of my favorites of theirs. A very powerful lyric sung very simply with slow acoustic guitar accompaniment.

Anyway, today as I taught my gospel essentials class, we were talking about faith and belief. And that, combined with an article about a famous atheist deciding there actually is a God from A Soft Answer, had me thinking a lot about belief and faith and knowledge.

One of the things that struck me was the reason that Anthony Flew (the atheist) gave for accepting that a supreme organizing power exists was that there was too much order and detail in the world, essentially, for there not to be. And that reminded me of the verse that says something to the effect that all things testify that there is a God. I wish I could remember the reference. I did a search for it, but got too many results to plow through at this time of night.

So, back to the song. The song is all about how those that believe, begin to see, rather than those that see, begin to believe.

I hope they don’t mind me reprinting the lyrics here:

The Other Way Around
Steve Brown/Brad Thompson

There are more trees in Georgia
Than I care to count
You can look forever
And never figure out
Which way the sun comes out
Or where it’s going to rise
But I’ve seen Georgia sunsets
That’d make you cry

There’s a girl in California
Who loves to watch the beach
To feel the wind in her hair
And the sand beneath her feet
She smiles at the sun
Smells the salty air
But her eyes have never seen
What she knows is there

Chorus
But Sometimes seeing is believing
Sights we’ve already found
Sometimes seeing is believing
Sometimes it’s the other way around

There’s a little boy I’ve heard of
Back in Tennesee
Who has the gift to find beauty
In everything he sees
Man says, I’ll give you fifty dollars
If you can show me God
He says, I’ll give you back a million, sir
If you can show me where he’s not

Chorus


So, I played the CD to end my Sunday School class, and it really put a nice cap on the whole message of how important faith is. And how easy it is to trust your faith, and how you don’t need to see everything to believe it.

Thanks, Brad and Steve!

MRKH
Mark Hansen
http://markhansenmusic.com

OK, just so that you know that I’m not a total musical Scrooge, we just had our ward Christmas party, and a local high school madrigal choir came out to perform. It was wonderful.

They did a few traditional ones, and a few new ones. But they were a lot of fun and innovative, too. They did an arrangement of the “William Tell Overture”, better known as the “Theme From the Lone Ranger”, but they sang the notes with “ding” and “Dong” and things like that. Then they pulled out kazoos for part of it.

My boys just had a great time watching it, and Jacob was laughing out loud through much of the performance.

So, there’s still some cool Christmas music being made out there…

MRKH
Mark Hansen
http://markhansenmusic.com

Harmony and Unison

The other day at choir practice, our director was trying to decide if she would prefer a certain hymn in our Christmas program to be sung in parts or in unison. In a sort of offhanded way, she asked, “I wonder if the heavenly choirs will be sung in parts or in unison?”

I responded to the effect that I didn’t dare open that particular can of philosophical worms in a choir practice…

So I’ll blog about it instead.

I mean, there’s all kinds of levels here. On the musical side of it, there’s plenty of fodder for both sides. Parts bring lush and rich harmonies, counterpoint, and fullness to a piece. There’s a depth to it that you simply don’t get with one single melody line.

But there’s a power to unity, too. For example, when I was in high school, as a cellist in our orchestra, we played a piece, an arrangement of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”. I don’t even remember who did the arrangement. After the exposition, it went into so polyphonic explorations, typical of a good development section, but the recap was absolutely amazing. The entire orchestra, including the winds, all played the entire thing. Loud, slow, and in unison. Maybe it was the contrast that made it feel so big and powerful.

Another example. Many years ago, when I was still living in Indiana, my friends and I took a roadtrip to see Yes in concert in Champaign, Illinois. It was a great show, but one part stuck with me as a monumental moment in my life’s ongoing musical experience. That was Chris Squire’s bass solo. Now, typical bass solos are a time when the bassist really gets to show off his chops. Hands are dizzy and notes fly like snowflakes in a blizzard. And Chris Squire was certainly no slouch. He could match fury with the best of them.

But he comes out, and with a single light on him from above, plays “Amazing Grace”. He plays it easily, slowly, and I might add, very loud and low. The house shook. No flashy embellishments. Nothing but the song.

And it was INCREDIBLE.

But then look how often a pop singer sings without accompaniment, or how often true unison orchestral performances happen. Look at great inspired works like “The Messiah”, which expertly flips from monophony to homophony and polyphony at the drop of a baton.

So, the big philosophical question that is the extension of all this is: Does God want us lockstepping together or does he want us individually adding to the whole?

Personally, I feel that if He wanted us lockstepped, He would have backed Lucifer’s plan in the first place. I like the thought of many different voices combining together harmoniously to add to the whole. But it seems that there are a lot of us Mormons who don’t take to kindly to differences. To our credit, there are a lot of us who do, too.

And I also admit that, in music, there are times when a single melody can communicate very strongly.

Just a thought… or two…

MRKH
Mark Hansen
http://markhansenmusic.com