On Christmas Eve, we had an unusual service in my church, in which a sequence of songs alternated with scripture readings replaced much of the liturgy of the word, in unconscious reflection of the Easter Vigil. Having just led a three week adult session on the Psalms, I was particularly attuned to the role of song in this service, and was struck by how naturally it flowed, and I wondered about that.
In the Psalms, we sing praises and laments. Most secular songs, or so it seems without having done a formal analysis, are songs of love and loss, the same themes, intended for one another's ears instead of the ears of the divine. But songs draw us, naturally and powerfully. As Steve Jobs said famously of music more generally, "It's in our DNA."
So the thesis emerged that our speaking voice is an evolutionary development of growling. Our words, our sentences, are mere growls, chewed into shape. Our speaking voice is our animal voice, with which we convey our lesser emotions. Steve Jobs' effort to express the depth of our attachment to music was rightly intended, but wrongly formed: our attachment to song goes deeper into our humanity than our DNA. Our singing voice is God's gift to us, which we return to him in praise and lament, and which we share with one another. A voice that can convey our highest emotions, through which the Spirit itself intercedes, praying with “sighs too deep for words1.” Our human voice.
Peace
1Romans 8:26.
