Notes of Rest, A Musical Mini-Retreat
With the holidays on the country’s doorstep, now is as good a time as any to think about how the church values rest. Sadly, we can easily see how often we do not value it enough. After all, there is always more righteousness we can pursue or sins to redress. Yet the arc of Scripture shows us the importance of choosing rest as a means of living in a rhythm not fully governed by the patterns of this world. For instance, on Day 7 of creation God took time to refrain from creating anymore, and on Holy Saturday God chose not to raise Jesus from the dead, but instead wait until Sunday morning. Neither extreme destroyed God’s sense of rest, and that is an invitation for we the church too: to follow after ancient Israel and receive God’s gift of rest. This is why I created Notes of Rest.
Notes of Rest is a spiritual mini-retreat that interweaves Scriptural meditations with solo piano music in order to cultivate rest, contemplation, and creativity in all who will hear Jesus’ call. I offer these virtual and in-person sessions for churches, seminaries and affinity groups (e.g., lawyers, healthcare workers, caregivers, parents). The goal of the ministry is to let contemplation of God emerge from our resting in Scripture and music such that we can see and hear more of God. The Lord is not only at work, but at rest too.
The name Notes of Rest is a play on the word “notes.” In musical terms, notes and rests must come together in order to create music. So from that perspective, Notes of Rest is about giving people music that helps them pause and “center down” as Howard Thurman would say. But the name also emerges from the practice of preaching. A sermon is a series of notes on a passage towards a particular end. So in the case of the retreats, my brief meditations and resultant questions are designed to help you rest and be introspective. When the notes from Scripture meet the notes of music, we can be formed to experience the gift of rest anew.
If you have ever attended a worship service, you have probably experienced the formative power of joining music and Scripture together. In many traditions, the service is a constant interplay between Scripture and music. When we aren’t hearing one, chances are we are hearing something based on the other. The back and forth is characteristic of so many traditions because since biblical antiquity, we have recognized the capacity of text and sound joined together to shape us for Christian life. So in Notes of Rest, I join them in order to form us to be well-rested disciples.
A Notes of Rest session flows through three movements: Rivers, Banks, and Wellsprings. During Rivers, I read Scripture and then surface from the text several questions about your spiritual journey. As you sit with the questions and text, I play familiar church music for you — such as Great is Thy Faithfulness or Give Me Jesus — so you can travel this journey of introspection with familiar companions whose theologies can help you find your responses. (As an aside, the grassroots organization Fearless Dialogues, another space I serve, helps people explore hard conversations around taboo subjects using familiar objects such as music.)
After swimming in the Rivers, we dry ourselves off on the Banks (short for riverbanks), where we talk about what happened for us in the waters of Scripture, music, and questions. Participants’ responses are rich in diversity. Some talk about their feelings. Some talk about their thoughts. Some just give thanks for being able to sit still in the music. As they share, I can sense the spirit of rest radiating out of people, even over Zoom!
Concluding our time is Wellsprings, which is when retreatants get to respond to what is bubbling up inside them due to Rivers and Banks. As I play for the retreatants again, they are invited to engage one of four verbs: rest (some more), pray (for yourself and/or someone else), encourage (yourself and/or someone else), or create! The diversity of responses during Wellsprings astounds me. One of my favorite stories comes from a session on marriage a few months ago. Welling up in a participant was a profound longing for her husband who couldn’t attend, so she used Wellsprings as a time to dance. Only God can birth such a creative impulse!
Notes of Rest creates a moment for us to receive the gift of rest that God demonstrates for us in Genesis and the Gospels. Whether we are in a time of great productivity and/or of lamentable death, Rivers, Banks, and Wellsprings becomes a space for us to respond with the rest Jesus provides in abundance.
As an outgrowth of the retreat’s impact on my own life, tomorrow (Thanksgiving) I am releasing my debut solo album entitled Rest Assured. This project comprises some of the retreat’s music that specifically addresses God’s faithfulness and our ability to rest assured as a result. From traditional Anglophone hymnody such as “His Eye is on the Sparrow” and “It Is Well With My Soul,” to the Negro Spirituals “Give Me Jesus” and “I will Trust in the Lord,” to the Taizé community’s chant “O Lord, Hear My Prayer,” the album invites us to embody the posture of trust that Jesus summons his disciples to have in Matthew: “Look at the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.”
No matter how you enter this holiday season, be it a time of Eden-level fruitfulness or Golgotha-level despair, I pray that you and your community find rest in God. For when we choose stillness, the Spirit reminds us that our rhythms with God are always bigger than the good we produce or the evil we witness. May we rest assured knowing that salvation has come and is coming.
