The music of “with”

One of my favorite moments in film takes place in “The Shawshank Redemption.” Andy Dufrense, ex-banker and supposed ex-murderer, has been serving time in Shawshank Prison for a crime he, allegedly, did not commit. The warden of Shawshank, a slippery, arrogant, Bible-thumping Herod-the-Great type, has taken notice of Andy’s accounting proclivities, and so stations him in an office where Andy embezzles money for him.

One afternoon, the bleakness and hopelessness of prison life causes Andy to do something irrational and rebellious. As his guard uses the restroom, Andy proceeds to lock the door. Andy then turns with glee to the warden’s beloved vinyl record player (which is the only cool thing about the warden). Andy carefully selects a record, flips on the prison PA system, cranks the volume and sits back to enjoy.

When the Italian opera aria, “Marriage of Figaro,” erupts through the prison speakers, every prisoner stops in their tracks. Morgan Freeman’s character, and Andy’s best prison-mate-friend, Red, encapsulates the sacred quality of the moment well: “I don’t know what that Italian woman was singing about. But what I do know is that it was like a beautiful bird flew into our drab little cage. And for one moment, every last man in Shawshank was free.”

Andy’s prison rebellion comes with its consequences. And so, after a month of solitary confinement, the prison yard gang inquires of Andy, “How was your time?”

“Easiest time I ever did,” remarks Andy. “The music, they can’t take that from you.”

Andy looks across the table at the unknowing blank stares of his prison yard friends. “Haven’t you ever felt that way about music?” And pointing to his heart he says: “It’s in here. It’s hope.”

Andy is right. They can’t take the music away from you. “I’ve still got music left in me,” quips the recently retired widower played by Robert De Nero in the fun-loving movie “The Intern.” There’s just something about music that speaks the language of hope into the prisons of our days. As the psalmist declares, “God drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog. … He put a new song in my mouth” (Psalm 40:2-3).” Where does music come from? According to the psalmist, ancient Israel’s jazz improvisers, it comes from the desolate pit, the miry bog.

There is hurt before the hallelujah. Perhaps the spiritual musical tradition that knows this best is one often neglected by the white church: the spirituals. In “Rise Up, Shepherd!” Luke Powery describes spirituals as “songs sung by weary throats, created in a brutal historical setting of slavery by the enslaved, yet resonating with hope through all the sinister splinters of social sin. They are musical memorabilia of hope in seemingly helpless situations.”

One such spiritual sticks out to me: All dem Mount Zion member, dey have ups and downs. But Cross come or no come, for to hold out to the end. Hold out to the end. Hold out to the end. It’s my ‘termination for to hold out to the end. In the desolate prison of slavery, enslaved voices speak of the possibility of a new tomorrow. Cross come or no come, for to hold out to the end. It’s my ‘termination to hold out to the end. In Shawshank speak, music is something they can’t take from you. It’s in here. It’s hope.

Andy’s Shawshank shenanigans and the voices of the spirituals makes me wonder what new day music makes possible in the prisons of our 21st century world. So chained are we by the liturgical summons of our screens, so walled-in by the endless news cycles churning despair for a dollar and selling chaos for a cent. Globalization and the rise of technological prowess promised to bring us closer together, and yet it would seem we are destined for the solitary confinements of anxiety, depression and loneliness. The choruses of fear and discord play like broken records. Church attendance rapidly declines, 11:00 on Sunday morning is still more segregated than 9-5 Monday-Friday, and God’s wonderfully created world is irrevocably turned to ash. Here too, in our drab little cage, we are caught in the miry bog of political polarization, manic workaholism and rampant individualism. How could we possibly follow in the footsteps of the spiritualist? How could we hold out to the end?

If I am honest, really honest, the choice between hope and despair feels thinner than ever, and especially as a religious leader. How could I presume to utter a word into this void? What song could I dare sing? In this cultural exile I am reminded of the psalmist’s tortured lament, possibly the saddest lyrics in all of Scripture: “By the rivers of Babylon — there we sat down and there we wept. … On the willows there we hung our harps. … How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (Psalm 137:2-4). Is it time to hang our harps and give way to a world without music?  Has the overwhelming chaos of the moment stolen the songs from our lips?

There is no easy answer to these questions. But perhaps this is why the arts exist at all. When we reach the point where speech fails us, the poets, prophets, songwriters and filmmakers teach us the rhythm of song once again.  In particular, I am reminded of one of the final scenes of a beautiful film, “Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl.” In the movie, sarcastic and passionless 17-year-old Gregory Gaines is forced to befriend a classmate, Rachel, who has been diagnosed with leukemia. Much of the film follows Greg, his humorous friend Earl, and Rachel as they spend much of their time outside of school producing short films that parody famous movie titles.

Toward the end of the movie, Greg goes to visit Rachel while she lays on her deathbed. As he sits with her in that stale hospital room, he projects on the pallid wall a movie that he has made for her — a movie of her life for the end of life. Brian Eno’s lyric-less song “Big Ship” plays in the background. The music plays for several minutes as Rachel watches scenes from her friendship with Greg  blossom upon the screen. In that sacred moment, Greg and Rachel occupy what theologians call a “thin place”—an intersection of death and life, hope and despair. In that room there are no words. There is only what Sam Wells describes in his book “Hanging By a Thread” as the most powerful force on earth — “with.” There is with. Greg is with her. Rachel is with him. They are with one another. Even at the inconceivable end of a life taken too soon, the music plays hope’s surprising refrain, “I am with you.”

Perhaps we humans love music so deeply because it expresses just how far, how high, how wide is our desire for with. Music names what we strain and struggle to name, which is that God is forever singing a song toward us. When we reach the place where words escape and rhythm ceases, God still has a song in God’s heart, “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped … and the tongue of the speechless shall sing for joy” (Isaiah 35:5-6). Into our prisons, pits and hospital rooms plays God’s incarnate symphony, the Emmanuel, God with us. Our harps shall not lay dormant in the willows for long, for God will climb into that tree and sing a song that plays in a thousand places, even all the way to the depths of death and hell. This song is Scripture’s grandiose promise of with, “I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘see the home of God is among humans, God will dwell with them; they will be God’s peoples, and God will be with them” (Revelation 21:3).

One day, and may it be soon, God will put a new song in our mouths, cross come or no come, for to hold out to the end. God’s song will fly like a beautiful bird into our drab little cage. And if just for a moment, every last one of us will be free.

JOSHUA MUSSER GRITTER co-pastors First Presbyterian Church in Salisbury, North Carolina, with his wife Lara. They watch movies together with their dog Red.