A Love Supreme
Spiritual formation prepares us for a life in which we move away from our fears, compulsions, resentments, and sorrows, to serve with joy and courage in the world, even when this leads us to places we would rather not go. Spiritual formation helps us to see the face of God in the midst of a hardened world and in our own heart. This freedom helps us to use our skills and our very lives to make that face visible to all who live in bondage and fear. As Jesus told his disciples: “So, if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit
A psalm is a musical encounter with God. It is a conversation in song. The book of Psalms is 150 such conversations. There is praise and celebration in the songs of ascent. There is pain and anguish in the psalms of lament. There is blunt anger toward God and toward man, as well as ecstatic joy and gratitude. The phrase “but God” seems to be the hinge on which the door between heaven and earth swings. When the psalmist has emptied his pain before God, his eyes clear and see God. God is waiting in silence and patience. Things are really bad, but God, You are… When the pain drives you to the Father and not away from Him, when it is emptied in His Presence and all of our fragility is fully known by us, God Himself opens our eyes to His Presence. A calling emerges from the gaping wound. God spoke to the psalmists, often in silence, as they presented their heart, soul, and “muchness.” The psalmist would pivot, without reason sometimes, in the midst of their lament. Somewhere, in the wound, they found the genius and Presence of the Creator.
John Coltrane’s “Love Supreme” was released in 1965. The album is a spiritual journey coded musically. The source of its genius is born from the pain he knew prior to his awakening in 1957. He was the touring saxophonist for Miles Davis, but lost that job when his addiction to alcohol and heroin overwhelmed him and his behavior became erratic. The liner notes for the album share his pain and his “but God” moment.
DEAR LISTENER: ALL PRAISE BE TO GOD TO WHOM ALL PRAISE IS DUE. Let us pursue Him in the righteous path. Yes it is true; "seek and ye shall find." Only through Him can we know the most wondrous bequeathal.
During the year 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music. I feel this has been granted through His grace. ALL PRAISE TO GOD.
As time and events moved on, a period of irresolution did prevail. I entered into a phase which was contradictory to the pledge and away from the esteemed path; but thankfully, now and again through the unerring and merciful hand of God, I do perceive and have been duly re-informed of His OMNIPOTENCE, and of our need for, and dependence on Him. At this time I would like to tell you that NO MATTER WHAT ... IT IS WITH GOD. HE IS GRACIOUS AND MERCIFUL. HIS WAY IS IN LOVE, THROUGH WHICH WE ALL ARE. IT IS TRULY – A LOVE SUPREME – .
This album is a humble offering to Him. An attempt to say "THANK YOU GOD" through our work, even as we do in our hearts and with our tongues. May He help and strengthen all men in every good endeavor.
Coltrane’s emptiness led him to discover grace. It is the grace of God that produces generosity and gratitude. Paul writes of this in 2 Corinthians when he challenges them to generosity as a proper understanding of grace.. The grace you receive cannot be forced into a jar. Like manna, you must receive it each day. It was not meant to be hoarded and stashed away. It is an overflowing well of life to others. The grace of God was not meant for you alone. People see you in your crisis. Where will you look? “But God” in His grace, lifts our heads (Psalm 3). The hope we now know is the hope that now springs through us. God is looking to break out into this world. His conduit is our weakness. This is the doorway to heaven: the wounded, but risen Jesus alive in us.
John Coltrane: His Life and Music , by Rutgers University-Newark professor Lewis Porter, describes the section of this album entitled “Acknowledgement”, played in all 12 keys. He describes the intentionality, inferring from the liner notes perhaps, that all of life leads us to God. Every key is used to praise God. Now, some would say that is spirituality, but not Christianity. Surely, not “all roads lead to God.” John Coltrane said yes. Even the psalmist suggests this is so. It does not mean that all roads are the path of His blessing or of Christ. It only means that every path provides opportunity for us to come to the “but God” moment and discover His Presence. Even the road of heroin and alcoholism can lead you to “but God.” His strength lifts even the hung over and weak head.
Blow through me like wind through reed. Listening to this album, those words came to me as a prayer. Make me an instrument. Spirit is ruach in Hebrew. It is breath, wind, and life. It is the breath of the Musician flowing through His instrument that makes the melody of His world. Lord, these wounds on my hands from all I have touched that found pain, these wounds on my feet from the paths I walked strewn with thorns of rebellion, from them I find you. As you were and are, you now blow through me like wind through reed. John Coltrane returned the grace he found by breathing his life into his saxophone. “Love Supreme” is Coltrane’s grace (charis) to us of his experience on a painful road to God. Ours may be simpler. But His grace still looks for instruments.
Renovare.org presents an except from Dr Howard Thurman. Dr Thurman was born to a slave. Despite poverty and segregation, he became educated and a powerful teacher. He travelled to India where he met Mahatma Gandhi. He returned to the US to contemplate what he learned and reconcile his experiences with his faith. From this he wrote Jesus and the Disinherited, a book that Martin Luther King, Jr reportedly carried with him everywhere he went. His writings gave the purpose and means of confronting the evils of segregation. The excerpt elaborates on what it means to be an instrument responsive to the Spirit of God. Confronted with a the choice of yielding or resisting the voice of the Spirit, what song will play through us? In our daily psalms of ascent and/or lament, the song that blows through us is chaos or healing. We are nothing , but God…
In the Foreword to his book The Inward Journey, Dr. Howard Thurman writes:
There are not many windows in these meditations; they are as the title indicates, an Inward Journey. It may be that if there were more illustrations, the meaning could be more quickly grasped. The choice here is deliberate. It is my hope that they will make reading and rereading rewarding and sustaining. The purpose remains ever the same: to focus the mind and heart upon God as the Eternal Source and Goal of Life. To find Him as Companion and Presence is “to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly” with Him.
“Lord, make me an instrument of Thy Peace.” These words, taken from the prayer of St. Francis, speak to one of the most insistent conditions of the human spirit. It is not easy to be an instrument of peace because we understand so little about the anatomy of hostility and its particular kind of etiquette. Again and again we use our words to protect ourselves, to “put others in their place,” to humiliate and to wound; sometimes, quite unconsciously. Have you ever been caught in the backwash of your words which hit their mark, resulting in an injury which was not part of your intent? All of this because you were too preoccupied with your own interests, your own concerns to take into account the other person? At such a moment your good word may easily become an instrument of violence.
Ask yourself, “Have I ever indulged in gossip which gave me an opportunity to say something uncharitable about someone else? Of course, if I had not heard the gossip and passed it on, then there would have been no chance for me to express my quiet hostility and, at the same time, be relieved of the responsibility for it. When I participate in the shared rumors and the gossip around me by passing them on or by refraining from stopping them with what I know to be the facts and the truth, I let my attitude and my influence become instruments of violence in my hands.”
“Lord, make me an instrument of Thy Peace.” Teach me how to order my days that with sure touch I may say the right word at the right time and in the right way—lest I betray the spirit of peace. Let me not be deceived by my own insecurity and weakness which would make me hurt another as I try desperately to help myself. Keep watch with me, O my Father, over the days of my life, that with abiding enthusiasm I may be in such possession of myself that each day I may offer to Thee the full, unhampered use of me in all my parts as “an instrument of Thy Peace.” Amen.
The Inward Journey: Meditations on the Spiritual Quest by Howard Thurman (Harper Row, 1961), p.104 as cited on Reovare.org.
Instruments require tuning and preparation in order to make the sound intended by the musician. Dr Howard Thurman was a pioneer in American Christian practices of spiritual formation. I taught our class of high school juniors at church recently. I asked them how they know what God is saying or doing? After all, both Jesus and Satan quoted scripture. Paul used the same scripture to persecute and kill Christians as He did to spread the good news of Christ. So, how do we know the voice of God? I did not have a good answer then. I have an answer now. It is the spiritual disciplines.
Silence, solitude, prayer, fasting, giving, serving, and gratitude are habits that tune us to His voice. These practices train us to be sensitive to the voice of Jesus. A body responsive to His breath, His Spirit, observe the door swing open between heaven and earth. Jesus knew scripture, but spent time in solitude and silence and prayer. He fasted (He did say “this kind comes out only by prayer and fasting”, yet He also said that thing about His disciples not fasting while the bridegroom is with them). Jesus gave of Himself and served the hurt and hungry. Jesus gave thanks to God regularly. It is by these practices that we develop discernment. In Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life, Henri Nouwen wrote “Discernment is a life of listening to a deeper sound and marching to a different beat, a life in which we become ‘all ears’." There are rhythms of discipleship. Jesus demonstrated this rhythm. As disciples, He tunes us as His instruments by these rhythms.
The Psalms are meeting points with God. As a source of meditation and contemplation, they change us by giving a glimpse of times when God was invited to enter the space of sorrow or joy. They are prayers. I spent over a year praying the Psalms and experienced the Spirit tuning my heart, soul, and mind in the process. I sensed nothing at first. All discipline is gradual. It was not an analytical approach. Praying the Psalms requires a posture of bowing, a receptive posture. It is word and it is selah. It is the union of silence and noise. French composer Claude Debussy said, “Music is the space between the notes.” These spaces allow space for resonance and rhythm. Without this space music is cacophony. The Musician sets the rhythm of the song He is playing. The silence informs that which is heard. Psalms are a kneeling low in order to look up.
John Coltrane did not just study his way to a revelatory Presence of God. His brokenness led to solitude then gratitude. His life was noise, then silence, then hearing the Musician. This is the pattern of Psalms and it infuses depth into John Coltrane’s “Psalm.” Our bodies learn to surrender and the Holy Spirit- the teacher of promise in John 16, the one who informs and prays in our spirit in Romans 8- prepares us to be fertile soil for His word, for His Spirit. We become His instruments playing His song. Look up the videos and read from the words of Dr Thurman Howard and Henri Nouwen; you will learn of their advocation of the essential nature of silence and the habits of spiritual formation. God’s Love Supreme, His grace to us, becomes a grace to those around us when, through these practices of turning our bodies over to God, our weakness is touched by His Spirit and we say “but God.”
