May We Chant OM in Church?
a question from the youth choir
Jay McDaniel (1/7/2019)
We Chant it in Yoga Class
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from Jean Yoga |
May we Chant it in Church, Too?
Choir Sings OM SO HUM MantraTaize ChantingA Taize service in ChicagoOm Shanti by Alice ColtraneOne hour of OM
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Dear Reverend Fleming,
We, the youth choir at Grace Church, would like to chant OM in our worship service this Sunday. It would be one of the three hymns we sing; the other two would be Taizé style. We hope that our chant will sound a little like the chant in the video on the left marked 'Choir sings OM SO HUM mantra," except we'll do only OM. If you listen to it, you'll get a sense of the sound we seek to emulate. We got the idea of chanting OM in a worship service from our study of the world's spiritual music in Sunday school class. (And also from a local Yoga studio where my mother goes.) We had a four week series in Sunday School called Sacred Sound, using chapters from Sacred Sound: Experiening Music in the World's Religions edited by Guy Beck. It got us thinking about how we might include sacred sounds from other traditions within our services. This Whole World is OM: Even Trees Clap their Hands We understand OM as the creativity of an interconnected universe filled with vibrations. As a scholar with a PhD from Harvard puts in the video below: "This Whole World is OM." When we say that all things are vibrating, we mean that they are moving in and around and between one another, We believe in a moving universe. It sounds Hindu, I know, but we think it is also biblical. We've learned that the Bible, too, has an image of creation as vibrant and dynamic: even the trees praise God. “You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.” (Isaiah 55:12) We see OM as a South Asian way of acknowledging, and deepening, the idea that trees can clap their hands, and that mountains and hills can burst into song. God with a Spacious Heart I know what you may be thinking. But what about God? Here we are influenced by process theology and, more particularly, from the inspiring work of a Christian process theologian, also a pastor like you. Her name is Patricia Adams Farmer. Reverend Farmer envisions God as a loving presence, kind of like the Soul of the universe, and then suggests that God is at work in the world as a dreamer. Here's how she puts it: I think this is the way God dreams in the world. In every moment, God envisions possibilities for wholeness and beauty amid the rubble of our lives. The "Adventurer of the Universe" feels everything, even the most tragic, and through that deep empathy with "what is" carves out a new vision for "what might be" among the wreckage. We process thinkers call this "creative transformation," and it begins with the divine dreamer, a visionary God who lures creation forward with such dreams of beauty, visions born out of love from all the possibilities at hand.
We appreciate her way of thinking about God, and we think you might, too. Like you, we believe in God with a Spacious Heart. You preach about God's love often in our worship services. This is where OM comes in for us. If the whole world is OM, and OM is the vibrational creativity of the entire universe, then we think of God as the primordial and loving expression of this creativiity. We see God's love as revealed in, but not exhausted by, the healing ministry of Jesus, including his death and resurrection. Respect for South Asian Peoples We know that the origins of OM are in South Asia and more specifically among Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists. We want to honor these traditions, as we know you do. We know all religions are not the same, and that the differences make the whole richer. That's process theology, too. The God with a Spacious Heart is not found in Christianity alone. But we also know that we can learn from other religions, and they from us. Chanting OM in church is one way of learning from, and building upon the wisdom of, our Indian sisters and brothers. We also feel like OM is a gift to the world, and that chanting it might help our congregations grow in a sense of unity and harmony with one another and the rest of creation, and take us into a place of softness where God can work in the heart. Is it alright with you if we experiment a little, inviting our congregation, and ourselves as well, to grow into the softness. Mary from the Youth Choir * Dear Mary from the Youth Choir, Yes, it's fine. Thanks for thinking of it. You might want to include a handout for the congregation that explains what you have in mind. Yours in friendship, Cynthia Fleming |
Handout at the Worship Service
With gratitude to people from South Asia, we will chant OM in our worship service today. We think of OM as the vibrational creativity of the universe, the primordial expression of which is divine love. Hills and rivers, trees and stars, spirits and ancestors: all are OM. Plants and animals, human beings and other sentient beings: all are OM too.. When we chant OM we are seeking to feel at one with the world that God loves and also with the God who loves the world. We hope OM will help clear out our hearts so that we can be more whole ourselves and help build communities that are creative, compassionate, good for animals, good for the earth, and good for people -- with no one left behind. We think God dreams of this kind of societies on earth. We do, too. Please chant with us if you feel inspired or just listen if that's your preference.
-- the Youth Choir
-- the Youth Choir
Background for OM
Finnian M.M. Gerety
OM is the world's most influential sacred syllable, and it has a long history. That history is explained by Finnian M.M. Gerety in his PhD dissertation at Harvard (2015). Gerety is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Brown University, a rock and roll singer, and a scholar of South Asian culture and history. As he explains, OM begins with Vedic thinkers in ancient India and works its way into the present, such that now OM is chanted by people all over the world, some of them identified with Hinduism, Jainism or other Indian religions, some not. They chant it in yoga studios, on rock albums, and even in church settings. Here's a little background.
OM is the world's most influential sacred syllable, and it has a long history. That history is explained by Finnian M.M. Gerety in his PhD dissertation at Harvard (2015). Gerety is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Brown University, a rock and roll singer, and a scholar of South Asian culture and history. As he explains, OM begins with Vedic thinkers in ancient India and works its way into the present, such that now OM is chanted by people all over the world, some of them identified with Hinduism, Jainism or other Indian religions, some not. They chant it in yoga studios, on rock albums, and even in church settings. Here's a little background.
This Whole World is OM
A Video by Finnian M.M. Geretry
The History of OMThis Whole World is OM: Song, Soteriology, and the Emergence of the Sacred Syllable
Finnian McKean Moore Gerety, Harvard Dissertation * Abstract This study explores the emergence of OM, the Sanskrit mantra and critically ubiquitous "sacred syllable" of South Asian religions. Although OM has remained in active practice in recitation, ritual, and meditation for the last three thousand years, and its importance in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions is widely acknowledged, the syllable's early development has received little attention from scholars. Drawing on the oldest textual corpus in South Asia, the Vedas, I survey one thousand years of OM's history, from 1000 BCE up through the start of the Common Era. By reconstructing ancient models of recitation and performance, I show that the signal characteristic of OM in the Vedas is its multiformity: with more than twenty archetypal uses in different liturgical contexts and a range of forms (oṃ, om,̐ om, o), the syllable pervades the soundscape of sacrifice. I argue that music is integral to this history: more than any other group of specialists, Brahmin singers of liturgical song (sāmaveda) fostered OM's emergence by reflecting on the syllable's many and varied uses in Vedic ritual. Incorporating the syllable as the central feature of an innovative soteriology of song, these singer-theologians constructed OM as the apotheosis of sound and salvation. My study concludes that OM plays a crucial role in the development of South Asian religions during this period. As the foundations of South Asian religiosity shift, from the ritually oriented traditions of Vedism to the contemplative and renunciatory traditions of Classical Hinduism, OM serves as a sonic realization of the divine, a touchstone of Vedic authority, and a central feature of soteriological doctrines and practices. * Moore Gerety, Finnian McKean. 2015. This Whole World Is OM: Song, Soteriology, and the Emergence of the Sacred Syllable. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. ' Link: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:17467527 |
Gerety's Conclusion"I suggest that the most significant and enduring impacts of OM's construction in the Vedas pertain to its sonality, authority, and soteriological potency. During the many centuries of the syllable's construction, even as the ritual and theological paradigms of Vedism and Brahmanism underwent dramatic transformations, the significance of OM continued to grow. In this way, the syllable was quite literally transcendent, in the sense of crossing beyond the boundaries of time, geography, and a changing cultural landscape. To accomplish this feat of continuity in the midst of radical transformation, Vedic thinkers constructed OM as an eternal force abiding in the midst of multiformity: it is the one sound among thousands in the liturgies that the officiants share, the essence of the sprawling Vedic corpus, and the audible counterpart of brahman. The syllable's capacity to realize sacred sound bonded older layers of the Veda, which focus on heaven, immortality, branch identity, and specialization in external rituals; to the later layers, which focus on ātman-brahman, liberation, pan-Vedic identity, and mastery of internal practices. The totality of Brahmanical religious culture was now packaged into a mantra of a single syllable. Meticulously constructed over nearly one thousand years of reflection, OM emerged as a sacred syllable too precious and powerful to give up. As the ritual and theological streams of Vedic religion flowed into the formative currents of Classical Hinduism, OM retained its pride of place." -- Finnian M.M. Gerety,Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 2015
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OM in the Upanishads
From the Mandukya Upanishad |
From the Chandogya From the Katha Upanishad |