In our Sufi and Dances of Universal Peace communities we certainly believe in and practice singing and moving together as a core spiritual connection.
This was published in a recent blog post from Fr Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations, and does a wonderful job of illustrating the value and beauty of this practice.
Singing Together
Faith-rooted organizers Alexia Salvatierra and Peter Heltzel have participated in many movements for social transformation. They recommend singing together as a simple but profound practice that has sustained many movements of the past and can nourish our efforts of love and justice today:
We all have a song to sing, and for the movement for justice to grow and be successful, everyone needs to sing their song. Music came to life in the protests and picket lines, uniting activists in one common spirit. Learning the music of the movement is thus an important way of sustaining the struggle, as music encapsulates a creative and prophetic spirituality. . .
The church is, in a way, a repository of these spiritual songs that feed our soul. Every week when we go to church we bring the pains and promises, hurts and hopes of the week into the service, but there is something about singing that goes to the heart of the matter and to the depths of the soul. The physical act of singing together, with its healing vibrations through our body, actually comforts our bodies. And the texts we sing are amplified in our hearts and minds by the melodies the composers have offered us. It is no wonder that singing played such a profound role in the civil rights movement; it offers physical, mental and spiritual comfort in a communal setting, sustaining the weary and encouraging the worn.
We invite you to sing a familiar song out loud today; it may be spiritual in nature, comforting or enlivening. If possible, sing with companions and sense the energy that flows between and around your voices. Here is a short video from the Smithsonian of civil rights mass meeting participants in Danville, Virginia, 1963, singing “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.”
Alexia Salvatierra and Peter Heltzel, Faith-Rooted Organizing: Mobilizing the Church in Service to the World (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014), 177.
