by André Rabe
The music was unfolding what was present everywhere. Mystery found a voice. As each note flowed from the revelation of sounds that came before, the connection became so clear: The significance of the present note can never be isolated to a single sound. What moves me in the present sound is all that flowed before. The notes that came before somehow still resonate and impart to this present note its particular meaning. It inherits the beauty of what precedes it.
And yet, the present sound is more than the sum of what came before. It is both summary and source, conclusion and inception, an ending that anticipates a new beginning. It contains both the richness of its history and the promise of what might yet be. The present is pregnant - a testament to its intimate past and a glimpse of an embryonic future that exceeds the past and present combined.
Music envelops the mysteries of time, self, narrative, and meaning. The flow of time is manifest in the movement, the sequence, the change, and the rhythm of notes. As the melody develops, hints of meaning accumulate and a narrative begins to unfold. Experiencing this flow and the questions it evokes, would not be possible without consciousness. We can tease these themes apart and discuss each separately for the sake of simplicity, but in reality, they remain intertwined. There can be no self without time. Neither would there be any narrative without self. Nothing would be known of time without a self to perceive and narrate it.
Music and the Mystery of Time
Rhythm, duration, tempo, transitions, beginnings, and endings are all part of music … and time. Both evoke questions of meaning. Modern life is divided into hours and minutes. Value is often measured by how productive we can be within those hours. When is the next appointment, how long will it take, and will this meeting be a recurring event? When, how long, and frequency partly describe our experience of time. But time is much richer than that. Years, months, days, hours, and seconds are all measurements of movement. One cycle of our planet spinning around the sun is a year. A day is how long it takes for our earth to spin around its axis. The movement is real, but is that all there is to time - a measurement of movement? If we reverse the movement, would time be reversed?
Einstein showed us that time is indeed real but more mysterious than our measurements of cosmic movements. Time is also related to gravity and speed. You may wonder what this has to do with you. The gravity of your life story is very much intertwined with the reality of time. The connection will become clearer, but let’s continue with Einstein’s thoughts about time. He discovered that time is not one thing, but that time passes differently, for instance, in the mountains than in the valleys. A person living at a higher altitude ages quicker because time passes faster! If this person meets up with a friend who lives in the valley after a few years, the one who lives in the valley would have had less time to think, less time to live and would have aged slower. The relativity of time is no longer a theory. Various experiments, including those with atomic clocks, have proven it. 1
You may wonder how can it be that the person on the mountain had more time than the person in the valley if they both spent five years in their respective locations. The answer is simple. Our measurement of five years is not an accurate measurement of time. It is a convenient measurement for it allows us to plan our meetings and schedules, but time itself is more complex. What difference does this make? Why is this significant to the meaning of my existence? After all, the difference that gravity and speed make to the duration of time is minuscule. What is important in this discovery, is not the difference in the duration of time, but the very nature of time. There are as many times as there are points of reality. “Times are legion: a different one for every point in space. There is not one single time; there is a vast multitude of them.” 2 Time is made up of unique movements of relationship, not of a sequence of instances that are the same everywhere. It is therefore not this present moment that constitutes reality but rather this unique configuration of relationships. Consequently, there is no universal present, for there is no universal time. Your time is as unique as you are. Your present is your presence.
We may speak of music in general but it is the unique melodies that capture our hearts. In reality, music does not have a general existence but consists in the real events of songs and melodies. Similarly, time does not have a general absolute existence but is realized in the unique configuration of relationships. We have theorized about time in general for so long that we have come to believe it has an independent existence. That is like theorizing about music without hearing and moving to the melody. Time only becomes real in the life you live, consequently, your time is as unique as the relationships that form you. Narrative creates, preserves, and evokes the meaning of time.
Music and the Mystery of Self
Time is personal. It can move slowly or quickly. Time also has an irreversible direction. Our kids grow up, we get older, and a glass falls and shatters, but we never get younger and a shattered glass never reassembles accidentally. Our experience of time includes a past, a present, and a future.
The present is not bound to an instance measured by a clock. If I am asked what I am presently doing, I might answer that today I am working in my garden. My awareness of the present is therefore situated as a day within this week. I could be aware of this moment within this day; of this day within this week; of this period of my life within its whole span between birth and death. My present, therefore, is as wide and as large as my awareness.
The significance of the present note can never be isolated to a single sound. Neither is the significance of this moment isolated. We locate ourselves not in seconds or instances but within the sequence of a story. Multiple narratives converge in my existence. Time becomes human in our narratives. These narratives include memories of the past and expectations for the future. We remember the past, but we remember it in the present. Similarly, we anticipate the future but we can only do so in the present. Awareness can include memories, present stimuli, and future expectations. In this way, the past is present.
But the past is present, not only in memory but also in the very fabric of reality. Wherever we are within this melody, the current note resonates with all the notes that came before. Every moment of existence pulsates into reality and transfers itself to the next impulse. I do not mean this only in an abstract poetic form. On a technical and scientific level, several billion quarks pulsate in and out of existence every second to form the elementary particles of every atom. At the smallest level of reality we do not find substances, but events. Although inaudible, the substance of reality is musical - vibrating, pulsating, rhythmic movements.
Is this strange? We more often describe our world as things, rather than events. Is the chair I sit on a substance or an accumulation of events? Am I a being or a becoming? Plato thought the world was made of substances and that relationships were attributes that did not change the essence of these substances. His ideas still influence much of the modern world’s thinking. But for all the beauty and usefulness of his ideas, they also contained fundamental flaws. We have come to understand that relationships are not optional extras but the very movements that constitute reality. It is the process of becoming that is the very essence of my being. I cannot be without becoming. Verbs describe existence more accurately than nouns.
Music and the Mystery of Meaning
Occasionally, we ponder the brevity of our own existence in the context of cosmic time. Compared to the age of our universe, the times of our lives might seem insignificantly small. But it is in the fleeting appearance of human consciousness that the most significant questions of the meaning of time occur. As a flower blooms and passes away, there is a beauty of awareness invested in human consciousness out of all proportion to its earthly duration. The symphony of the universe only becomes audible in human questioning.
Let’s return to the piano recital. The music was unfolding what was present everywhere. Mystery found a voice…
Not everyone in the audience experienced the unity and richness of the ev
ent. Some were distracted by the environment and hardly paid attention to the music. Others closed their eyes to give their exclusive attention to the music. And others still, were not there at all, preoccupied with other events, lost in their own minds. Each person’s experience of reality will always be unique and subjective, but there are ways of enriching experience. We can each move from being a detached observer to being a co-creator of our reality.
On one level we might listen to the music and be entertained; on another we might see the beauty of the environment and be impressed; on yet another we might feel the breeze and the rays of light and for a moment remember that we are alive. But we have not heard the music until we’ve heard an invitation. We have not fully seen until what we see seduces us.
What makes such moments so enchanting is that they offer us an invitation, a call only heard in the deepest part of us, to participate in creating their meaning. There would be no crescendo, no harmony between the sound, color, and movement if I did not enter into this invitation and co-create its beauty.
Reality is in part constructed by consciousness. Yes, things may exist apart from our awareness, but they do not exist in the same way as they do when we become conscious of them. The music, the movements, the mountains, and the magical evening colors were uniquely brought together to exist in consciousness in a way that they did not exist in isolation. And the sublime beauty of these relationships would not exist without consciousness. Consciousness participates in creating beauty, meaning, and goodness.
The Symphony Anticipates Your Sound
A fully functional inner ear is formed by the time the fetus is four and a half months old, even before the brain is fully formed. The capacity to receive messages is integral to what makes us human. Even if the physical capacity to hear is impaired, a person will adapt to find another way of receiving messages. We can hear the melody of existence even before we know that we are part of it. The sounds are more than noise … they are questions asking us for meaning; they are messages seeking interpretation; they are connections opening paths to communion.
Moving from the womb into this world brings about a new clarity of sound. The muffled noises become more distinct, yet what they mean, and what I mean in the midst of it all, can be overwhelming.
Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
- Psalm 19:2-4 RSV
The author expresses what people have always sensed: that the whole cosmos is telling a story of enormous significance. But why am I given the capacity to appreciate it? Why have I been given consciousness? What does this vast story have to do with my story?
The single musical note finds greater beauty in the sequence of a melody, and so the significance of your existence is amplified by being part of a larger story. In you, the past is summarized. All that came before still resonates and imparts to you a particular meaning. And yet, your existence is more than the sum of what came before. It is both summary and source, conclusion and inception, an ending that anticipates a new beginning. It contains both the richness of its history and the promise of what might yet be.
Our experiences cry out for interpretation. Every event wants to be part of something larger as every note desires to be part of the music - its significance is found within its context. And so, when an event is made part of a narrative it carries the gravity of a history and vibrates with the possibilities of a future. Yet all of this beauty does not reside exclusively in the event itself but in the meaning consciousness (you) gives it.
We give our personal stories value by placing them in the context of a larger story. Throughout human history, stories have been created to give form to what we intuitively sensed. We remember a beginning before our conscious existence and we anticipate a future larger than our physical existence. A remarkable similarity exists between these stories of origin across many diverse cultures that had no contact with one another.
Why do we tell these stories? And why do we tell them in the specific ways we do? Do these myths have any basis in reality or are they pure fantasy? How does our understanding of these larger stories influence our experience of the present? To unravel the riddle of our beginning is an adventure like none other.
It is here on the creative edge of chaos, where all the past moments are still resonating, seeking closure, and all the potentialities of the future are drawing and pulling this moment forward, that we have a uniquely creative role to play. Our capacity to interpret the past and envision the future make humans more than passive bystanders to reality, more than spectators to this symphony. We are entangled actors. You exist because you have been invited into this reality - you are welcome in this universe. The symphony anticipates your sound.
Endnotes
1 Taylor, Edwin F.; John Archibald Wheeler (1992). Spacetime Physics: Introduction to Special Relativity (2nd ed.). New York: W.H. Freeman. pp. 84–88. ISBN 978-0-7167-2327-1.
2 Rovelli, Carlo. The Order of Time (p. 16). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Chapter Two
Matrix of Meaning
Do you hear the invitation? Something truly new and beautiful is possible for you. You are more than a spectator to the inevitable rush of time: You have the freedom and capacity to shape reality and give it value. Your story is a unique part of this cosmic symphony.
Some stories travel a predictable path and end up exactly where they planned to go. The further they develop the more rigid they become, protecting and preserving the meaning of their narrative. By the end, they mean exactly what they intended to mean from the very start. This might seem like a good thing, but such stories are also the most boring. They slowly lose the ability to keep anyone’s attention, and eventually, they are forgotten.
Other stories are filled with surprise. At times they seem to fall apart because of unexpected tragedies, and at other times joy is restored in ways that could never have been foreseen. Meaning is transformed … even the beginning gains new significance from the perspective of the end. These stories are alive, engaging and enticing. What is it that keeps us open to astonishment? How can our life stories remain open to possibilities? And how can the meaning of our existence continue to unfold?
Creating Meaning
Grammar is the structure of language and necessary to make language understandable and meaning possible. Grammar does not specify the meaning or impose a design upon the stories that may be told. Rather it creates an environment in which the creative process of meaning-making can take place. Within the boundaries of these rules, you are free to construct concepts and say what has never been said before. The framework gives the possibility of meaning, not meaning itself.
Could it be that God is not an entity creating and controlling the narrative, one who is manipulating events and giving value to everything but, rather, God is the possibility of meaning ? What an extravagant gift of freedom that would be! As grammar is the environment that makes creative storytelling possible, so God is the environment that makes all creativity possible. But just as grammar does not tell any story, so God does not create anything without inviting creatures to co-author their stories and so co-design and co-create themselves. Jesus demonstrates what this creativity looks like when God and a human find freedom in each other. This Christological thought will be developed in Chapter 9.
If I have an active role in creating the value and beauty of my life, it would be very useful to understand how this process works. My life events constantly cry out for interpretation. And each of us develops interpretive frameworks by which we give meaning to these events. As mentioned earlier, these interpretive structures can become rigid - echo chambers - where we only hear what we already know. The richness of life’s symphony is replaced by a monotone voice. Every event confirms what we be
lieve. We no longer hear the invitation; we are no longer seduced by the other. Is there a way of being both logical and imaginative; reasonable and open to the transcendent?
The more certain we become of who and what we are, the fewer opportunities we’ll have to be astonished. For possibility can never be reduced to certainty. If something is possible it is not certain, and if it is certain it is no longer a possibility. We cannot be astonished and certain at the same time, for we do not experience astonishment and certainty in the same way. In that moment of surprise we have to choose: do I want certainty or truth? The beauty of truth is not something we possess, but an invitation into an adventure of the unknown. We are surprised exactly because something outside of our frame of reference is challenging our stability. It is this moment of doubt that opens us up to a faith much richer than what we’ve known so far.
Why I?
- Genesis 25:22
Rebekah is the first biblical character who questions her own existence. Before this question, the story began with barrenness. Despite the freedom we have to construct our own narratives, we often reach a dead end. The meaning of our existence becomes exhausted … barren. Our stories grow old and stale. We become overly protective of what we believe and certain of what to expect. We settle for the security of the familiar and lose touch with the source of creativity and the capacity to invent. The unintended consequence is that life becomes boringly predictable.
Rebekah is barren, but her husband, Isaac, prays for her and something wonderful happens - she conceives. Rebekah’s pregnancy is a profound metaphor for discovering the other within the self. This is a shocking new experience for the stable, centered and self-sufficient person. There is a part of me that is known, and a part that is not as obvious; a part I am conscious of, and a part I am not. Fruitfulness, new life, and new possibilities begin with recognizing that there is more to me than what I have known so far. The framework within which I create meaning needs to expand to allow the other, the unfamiliar and the unknown, to grow.
