I had the good fortune to spend three hours in the car with my son Garrett Saturday. He’s our avant garde jazz saxophonist and composer/arranger. He told me about a Substack he’s reading that’s written by a well-known figure in the alternative music scene. In that conversation, I learned a new term I now love: Time on a curve.
In traditional and commercial music, time signatures follow predictable patterns our ears have been conditioned to understand intuitively. A song may alternate between ¾ time and ½ time, for example. We are accustomed to hearing patterns of sixteenth notes and quarter notes. In certain forms of music composition, there are fairly strict rules about composition. That’s how you know a waltz is a waltz, for example.
Mark Wingfield
But in the alt-music scene, the standard rules don’t apply. As a saxophonist brought up in the jazz tradition, Garrett loves to explore new patterns and structures as he plays. And he loves to play with others who bend time as well. Sometimes the result is frenetic, and what may appear to the listener as chaos actually has structure behind it — just not the traditional structures we’ve been conditioned to hear.
There’s also a cathartic release in bending time as a musician. I told Garrett this reminds me of some advice my therapist once gave me about releasing anxiety: Get in the swimming pool and beat the water with both arms as hard as you can. Or take a pillow off the bed and use both hands to pound on it. This releases adrenaline and cortisol much like a child throwing a temper tantrum.
This made me think of the popularity of Pentecostal worship, where the whole body is engaged in dancing, singing, shouting, jumping, hand raising and more. Pentecostal worship offers a kind of religious catharsis.
Playing music can do the same if it becomes an expression of your innermost self and not a recitation of what someone else wants you to play. Even classical music may be played with precision but not passion. As both a piano student and as a parent of piano students, I’ve sat through recitals and competitions with players who have mastered technique but have no understanding of the pathos of the music.
Tradition
The same can be true of life. There is a way to become successful or “stable” and lose your soul. Go to a “safe” school, get a degree in a “safe” field, find a “safe” partner and take up residence in a “safe” neighborhood. Rinse and repeat. There’s nothing evil about that as long as that’s what you really want and as long as you don’t expect everyone else to conform to your standards.
Think about Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. His entire existence is guided by “tradition.” He has no anxiety as long as everyone sticks with tradition. But his children face anxiety because they no longer can conform to tradition. One man’s source of peace is anxiety-producing to others.
“Most religion is about finding peace through conformity, not about finding peace through creativity.”
The church plays a huge role in this business. Most religion is about finding peace through conformity, not about finding peace through creativity. Even at Christmas, the message is you’ll find peace by believing in the virgin birth and the message of the angels to the shepherds. And if you doubt any of that, you’ll be full of anxiety for sure.
Stop and think about how much Christian evangelism is pushing a peace pill filled with doctrinal conformity. It says unless you believe like I do, you’re always going to be on the wrong path and lacking true peace. If you’ve ever been to a revival meeting or summer camp, you’ve heard this sermon.
But what many of us come to learn by experience later is there are lots of folks who skipped the Christian peace pill and are living nice lives. They aren’t the wrecks we were told we would become if we didn’t believe.
Here’s the big takeaway for today: Conformity is not the way to peace. Authenticity is the way to peace. Yes, there’s a spiritual thread to that but it takes as many different expressions as there are people.
Comparison
When the Bible says we are created “in the image of God,” it does not say we are cookie cutters of God or of each other.
There’s an adage attributed to Theodore Roosevelt — we’re not really sure where it came from — that says, “Comparison is the thief of joy.”
While sometimes we can be motivated by comparing ourselves to others we admire — “I’ll train harder to run the race” — the most common usage is to tell ourselves or someone else how we or they don’t measure up.
“This is why liberals shaming conservatives for going off the rails with support of MAGA insanity is failing.”
This is why liberals shaming conservatives for going off the rails with support of MAGA insanity is failing. No one who has made a disastrous choice wants to be lectured on what a bad choice they made. Negative comparisons fail to motivate.
This is why my mother was ineffective at getting me to practice piano more because comparing me to my best friend Steve — a prodigy — only made me feel shame. It was not motivating.
My own musical journey as a young pianist was that I had innate gifts and could play the music by ear. But then I got with a teacher who lovingly beat that out of me. I learned to play correctly and lost the gift of intuiting the music. You can be darned sure I wasn’t going to make that mistake with my own kids, which is why they are professional musicians today and I am not.
The Spirit’s prompting
Think about the old spiritual that says, “Every time I feel the Spirit moving in my heart I will pray.” We love this beautiful song. But think about what it teaches: The Holy Spirit always produces one standard response in our hearts: Prayer.
What if hearing the Spirit doesn’t lead me to pray? Have I not heard the Spirit? Am I spiritually defective? What if the Spirit leads me to act? What if the Spirit leads me to sing? What if the Spirit leads me to write? What if the Spirit leads me to preach? What if the Spirit leads me to drive someone to the grocery store?
I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of being told how I ought to respond to the prompting of the Spirit.
The last few weeks, my therapist has been pushing me a bit on matters of spirituality — to the point I got annoyed. Finally, this week I asked him what was going on and said I was concerned he was suddenly trying to convert me to some kind of spiritual therapy I didn’t want (that would have been very unlike him, by the way). He assured me that was not his intent at all.
“I’m sick and tired of being told how I ought to respond to the prompting of the Spirit.”
What I’ve found, he said, is a knot. “Like when a massage therapist is working on your back and finds a knot of tension; the therapist has to keep pressing on that knot to release it. That’s what I’m trying to do. You have a knot when we talk about spirituality.”
Indeed I do.
That tension comes, perhaps, from not conforming to the standard time signatures of conventional Christianity. To quote one brand of religious experience, I need to be “set free.”
I’m not suggesting adults need to go around throwing temper tantrums like preschoolers or that all Christians ought to become charismatic. But I am saying many of us need to learn to dance to a different beat when we’ve been taught there’s only one rhythm.
Anxiety
There are multiple sources of anxiety in our lives, but one of the most common is the fear of not being good enough, not measuring up, not living up to expectations. And younger generations are living with these traits earlier and more strongly because of the influence of social media. I have had this confirmed in conversations over and over.
One younger friend who grew up in a rough situation told me he had no business with a smartphone at age 12. As a poor kid with abusive parents, he saw the social media posts by his classmates and assumed they all had “normal” lives and he was the untalented Harry Potter living in the closet under the staircase. The comparison nearly killed him — literally. He became suicidal later.
One teacher I know recently said he has students not showing up for class simply because their anxiety has kept them from leaving home that day.
“Researchers have documented a rise in anxiety in recent years.”
Researchers have documented a rise in anxiety in recent years. In explaining this trend, Petros Levounis, president of the American Psychiatric Association said: “Living in a world of constant news of global and local turmoil, some anxiety is natural and expected. But what stands out here is that Americans are reporting more anxious feelings than in past years. This increase may be due to the unprecedented exposure that we have to everything that happens in the world around us, or to an increased awareness and reporting of anxiety.”
Yet the vast majority of adults living with anxiety never seek professional help.
Christmas peace
What does all this have to do with Advent and Christmas? So glad you asked.
Within the traditional Christian liturgy, this second week of Advent focuses on peace. Last week was hope; next week will be joy; and the fourth week will be love.
If you’ve been around church at all, you know we love to talk about peace. We sing about it all the time with gusto: “I’ve got peace like a river” and “When peace like a river attendeth my soul.” Christmastime adds to this lexicon with scenes of a silent night and hovering angels: “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.”
Maybe peace is elusive to us because this is another ideal we’ve been handed down in prescribed patterns and we become anxious when we can’t fit the pattern. When our lives do not match the patterns we carry that define “peace,” we find ourselves riddled with anxiety.
“When our lives do not match the patterns we carry that define ‘peace,’ we find ourselves riddled with anxiety.”
Here’s the medical definition of anxiety: “A mental condition characterized by excessive apprehensiveness about real or perceived threats, typically leading to avoidance behaviors and often to physical symptoms such as increased heart rate and muscle tension.”
You can see why anxiety might run high at Christmastime. So many real and perceived threats — from family dynamics to gift expectations to unrealistic nostalgia. Anxiety is the upside down of this season of alleged peace.
Here’s a fun fact to know in case you’re ever playing Bible Jeopardy. Among all four Gospels of the New Testament, only Luke uses the word “peace” in connection to the story of Christ’s birth.
The word appears first in Luke 1:79, where Zechariah prophesies about the birth of Jesus, that he will “guide our feet into the way of peace.”
Then in Luke 2:14 we hear the message of the angelic host to the shepherds: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”
And in Luke 2:29, the old man Simeon sees Jesus and prays: “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”
In a Bible full of anxious people, these are the only three references to “peace” in connection to the Nativity. Jesus had a whole lot more to say about peace as an adult, and his message always was spoken to calm anxious hearts.
Jesus tells his disciples he did not come to bring peace on earth, but a sword. The things that make for peace “are hidden from your eyes,” he told the religious leaders.
Most often, the word “peace” is used as a greeting and a blessing: “Peace be with you.”
The primary Greek word for “peace” in the New Testament is eirēnē (εἰρήνη), meaning wholeness, completeness, tranquility, reconciliation. This is derived from Hebrew shalom, signifying a state of well-being, harmony and right relationships.
After his resurrection, Jesus repeatedly greeted his anxious disciples with a salutation of peace: “Peace be with you.” Earlier, when he faced arrest and certain death, Jesus spoke to them: “My peace I leave with you.”
“If Jesus wanted to leave us with peace, why isn’t the church any better about spreading peace?”
If Jesus wanted to leave us with peace, why isn’t the church any better about spreading peace? Instead, we’ve made the world more anxious by claiming we have a corner on the market of peace and if you want some, you’re going to have to come get it from us on our terms. The church has made the peace of Christ a controlled substance.
Back to that knot my therapist says I have about spirituality. It’s a knot of anxiety about what true spirituality means. I no longer think it’s as narrow as I once did. I think our existence is bigger than I was taught. I think there’s a whole lot more we don’t understand than we do.
And I think I still need to be set free.
There’s a quotation wrongly attributed to Mark Twain that you’ve probably heard. It’s relevant for us today:
Sing like no one is listening.
Love like you’ve never been hurt.
Dance like nobody’s watching,
and live like its heaven on earth.
I want to learn to dance to time on a curve.
Mark Wingfield serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global.
Related article:
Upside Down Advent: Despair versus hope