Advent 4 – Music and Wellness
By Kate Nicholas
One of the things I love most about the run up to Christmas is the music. As soon as we hit Advent, I begin to listen Christmas music. It forms a soundtrack for the season; each piece carrying with it memories of Christmas’s past and a reminder of the breathless seasonal anticipation I felt as a child.
My tastes in music are fairly eclectic, and favourites range from the sleigh bells of the Pogues Fairytale of New York and Sergei Prokofiev's Troika to slower paced pieces such as Steeleye Span’s rendition of Gaudete and German instrument Stille Nacht. I even quite like Wizard’s well known pop song, although if it was Christmas every day, I suspect we would lose our capacity to wonder.
Because that is what this season is all about – wonder that God so loved the world that he became incarnate. And – in the words of the sublime carol – in The little town of Bethlehem, the hopes and fears of all our years were answered by the birth of a child. So very human and vulnerable, yet also divine and eternal. The greatest mystery in the universe wrapped in swaddling clothes. As a Christian and an author, I have made it my life’s work to try and convey something of that wonder, but I think there’s also a point where words run out and music takes over.
Music can express the transcendent in a way that perhaps words never can; powerfully expressing the awe and wonder of faith, taking our souls to hitherto unreached heights. Music can bypass the rational part of our brain, stirring something within the deepest core of our being and opening us up to the wonder of Emmanual, God with us. As a writer, I am often humbled by music.
In the busyness of Christmas preparation, it’s so easy to feel overwhelmed, but the right music can help us to find the rhythm of grace that underlies our lives. Neuroscientists tell us that music is a powerful complex stimulus that can enhance our mood, regulating stress hormones as well as activating memories. But our relationship with music goes deeper than this; there is a wellness that music brings, not just through melody but through what it awakens in us – an openness and sensitivity to the sound of the Spirit and the presence of God.
So in the midst of your busy schedule, I encourage you to take a few minutes today, to listen again to your favourite Christmas song and open yourself up to wonder.
To The Ocean Floor
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