Voice, Wine, and the God of Silence

American soprano Renée Fleming, informing us that singers breathe in their own special way, writes in her book, The Inner Voice, “a singer releases her abdominal wall and back muscles outward, without pushing, as much as is humanly possible, allowing the diaphragm, involuntarily, to release down and the lungs to expand to their fullest. Crucial to this process is a release of the intercostal muscles, the ones that connect the ribs; releasing them allows the rib cage to expand outward and slightly upward as well.” (p. 39) I understand her, barely. Her world is not mine. Counting the muscles she must summon to her aid, she admits “that it’s almost impossible to check all of them off in your mind, and even more impossible to control them, since they are largely involuntary.”(p. 39) I can’t quite grasp the mechanical process of controlling, in some measure, what is beyond conscious manipulation, particularly given the many variables that, together, construct a voice. We, the listener, insofar as we bother to inquire, are simply amazed by the outcome. How does she do that? But, then, she sees mystery at every turn in the process of her education. What can be said about the voice? “It’s a bit like talking about God: you almost have to talk around it, because there is no exact language for the thing itself. And the lack of an exact language is always going to cause a great deal of misunderstanding.” (p. 59).

Are we not friends now? She will use circumlocutions for her topic, the small bands of cartilage God has put in her throat, and I—I dance around and with every word I utter because I can never get at the THING ITSELF.

The recent success of the film “Sideways,” which is ostensibly about the relationship between two friends, may largely be credited to the prominence of wine as a third character, a mysterious character at that. How do we talk about it, that luminous and ancient libation? There is a scene in which Miles, the snobbish connoisseur, instructs his friend in the art of wine tasting. Noting the subtleties of a particular wine, Miles goes a bit too far in finding the “faintest soupçon of asparagus” and a “flutter of nutty cheese.” (Wine Spectator, 4/30/05) But, then, what do we say? It is not enough to say it tastes like . . . wine! What help is that? What we might mean, in that case, is that the wine is young, vibrant, open, has a relatively short finish, is refreshing, and not too complicated. Simple and good. Fortunately, there is a lot of wine in this category. But, then, like a human voice, with its manifold manifestations, you really are forced to talk your way around the thing. It’s too subtle for a direct strike with strident and precise words. It needs to be evoked.

Now, let’s go to a party together, a conversation in the corridors of the office, a short greeting on the street. I (we) try saying to our conversation partners the ancient word: God. What happens? Everything goes dead, usually. Too bad we can’t talk openly about our faith. Is it? Openly, as in directly? How do we talk openly about God? How do we give words where no words are sufficient, and many words have done harm. Words, of course, are about all we have in trying to communicate, so the church has made ample use of them. But—we are told—the words are used analogically, that is, they suggest and evoke in ways that are true without claiming to be exhaustive.

In a world in which religion is now counted among our most lethal threats, some reticence may help. I certainly know that openly confessing my priesthood everywhere I go is less than becoming, and garners very few friends. So, for instance, three years ago, having met a fellow Latinist at a conference in Kentucky, whom I immediately liked, I left religion out. I was there for Latin. There were, of course, a few young clergy about in full gear, which my new friend found rather amusing, and irritating. I said nothing. We spoke and laughed through our tattered Latin for 10 days. On the last day, standing on the sidewalk beyond the grounds where Latin was enforced, she asked me in plain English, “What do you do?” “I’m a priest,” I said. We’ve been wonderful friends ever since. Had I spoken early, amidst her anti-religious remarks, all would have come to a crashing end.

I’m not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I am, however, less than thrilled by a growing (and growing louder) popular Christian culture in which the word “God” is always at hand, spoken in clipped consonants, and, particularly among radio preachers, piped through strained vocal cords. I hear the mechanical reverberation, giving either a false depth to the voice, or, strangely, accentuating a high pitch verging on a shout. People don’t normally talk like this. What am I hearing? We could perhaps learn something again from Moses, standing alone, frightened in the presence of a burning bush.

“If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you.’ And they ask, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” --Exodus 3:13,14

Among possible interpretations, we have, “the formula constitutes a refusal on God’s part to betray his name to humanity, consequently reaffirming his transcendent otherness.” (The Jerome Biblical Commentary) Later, there developed a deep reverence for the name, whose Hebrew letters are YHWY. This was a God beyond all knowing, beyond manipulation, whose inner mystery could not even be pronounced. WHO IS—the mysterious ground of all creation. If it doesn’t help to say, “It tastes like wine,” or, “Why don’t you sing better,” then we should expect a wide space for silence and the necessity of circumlocutions, poetry, evocations, prayers, and gesture as a way of groping toward a mystery we cannot simply call forth with sharp, commanding words.