“Gabriel’s Oboe” and music as a channel of the numinous

Let’s take a break from Hunter. I know several guys have the book and have started reading. I’ll come back next week with some thoughts on the tension between the sacred and secular.

Does the Spirit ever speak to you through melodies? Or through musical lyrics? Of course, for a church attender, the voice of the Holy often speaks through the lyrics of church hymns. That is not what I am trying to explain.

I am referring to the apparently random irruption of intuitive revelation through a seemingly secular song on the radio in the real world; the 9 to 5, Monday through Friday world.

During the years that my wife was sick with terminal cancer, I pretty much stopped listening to “Christian” music and “Christian” radio stations. I was not angry at God, but I was just tired of the Christian "ghetto." I normally had the radio tuned to NPR or occasionally Latin or pop music. There were numerous moments when I felt completely defeated, or overcome with grief, and suddenly Uncle Kracker would come through the radio waves saying “follow me and everything will be alright!” or the moment that my faith was wavering, Journey came on the radio singing “Don’t Stop Believing.” Or the time I was struggling with anger and frustration and God spoke to me through the Beatles: “When I find myself in times of trouble,Mother Mary comes to me speaking words of wisdom, Let it be.”

 But the strangest experience I have had with music and the numinous was several months before Debbie was diagnosed with cancer (I also had a dramatic foretelling dream that prepared me for what was to come, but that is another story for another blog post). Somewhere around February or March of 2005, I started waking up in the morning with a haunting melody stuck in my head. It was a very distinctive melody, instrumental only, and it seemed to be trying to tell me something. Weeks went by while I puzzled over the source of the melody. Where had I heard that music before?

One day while I was looking for a DVD in my entertainment center, I came across an old video in VHS format of the 1986 film with Robert De Niro called “The Mission.” I had not seen that film in 15 years. I got it out and put it in my VHS player. When Father Gabriel (Jeremy Irons) climbed the waterfall and went into the Paraguayan jungle to reach the Guarani Indians, armed only with love and an oboe, the melody that he played, and that enchanted the Guarani is called "Gabriel's Oboe" and was composed by Ennio Morricone. 

I had found the melody that had been haunting me for weeks, but why?

A month or so later I was to go to Brazil to spend five weeks apart from Debbie learning Portuguese in Rio de Janeiro. I was nervous about being alone in one of the most sensual cities of the world.  About two weeks before I was to leave, our world began to fall apart as the test results came back positive for cancer. How could I go to Rio de Janeiro for an entire summer and leave Debbie to deal with tests and cancer by herself? (hear Gabriel’s Oboe here in your imaginary ear). Debbie was adamant that this was a God-given opportunity and she insisted I continue with my plans to go. Her mother would stay with her while I was gone.

After I arrived in Brazil and began building relationships with a great group of students who were also there to study Portuguese, I continued hearing the melody in my mind. A metaphor began to take shape in my thoughts. God was calling me into a secular jungle to play a melody of love for millennial and university tribal groups!

The instrument--my oboe--was my 35 years of committed marriage to Debbie, and the melody was our true love. I played that melody often with other students, some of whom were amazed to actually meet someone with a successful, long-term marriage that really worked, and that was better at the end than it even was in the beginning. One student came to a profound and lasting faith. Others, I have maintained contact with.

When I returned from Brazil, we received further bad news. The cancer was stage 4 and terminal. Seven years went by, seven wonderfully difficult years full of danger, courage, adventure, romance, grief and joy; and then Debbie died. Now I find myself wandering and feeling lost in a jungle of a different kind, no longer so sure of my metaphor.

Yesterday, I played The Mission for my religious studies students as I do every semester. Whenever the theme of Love surfaces in the film, the faint melody of Gabriel’s Oboe can be heard in the background, like when Mendoza (Robert De Niro) is finally shot, defending the Guarani that he once hunted and enslaved. He strains to look for his friend, Father Gabriel until he sees that Father Gabriel is also killed while carrying the sacramental host. While the melody continues to play, Mendoza closes his eyes and follows Father Gabriel into the next world. 

Every time I hear it (even in the classroom), I choke up. There are times that I no longer care. There are times that I want to give up. There are times I want to say "fuck it" and live hedonistically in the moment. But then I hear that haunting melody calling me forward toward love and hope--almost against my will -- almost. Love has me in its strong grip, it will not let me go … (I am choking up a bit as I write this)

Ennio Morricone - The Mission Main Theme (Morricone Conducts Morricone)

 A few years ago Sarah Brightman received Enno Morricone's permission to write lyrics to go with Gabriel's Oboe in Italian titled "Nella Fanstasia"

   I still cry when I hear Gabriel's Oboe, but now the metaphor has changed. 

Now I am no longer the heroic missionary who courageously enters the jungle and plays the oboe for the benighted natives. Instead, I am just another lost soul myself, floundering around in the darkness of the secular jungle (with the community of lostness) and Someone is playing an enchanting melody of love and hope which forever draws me forward and toward that same Someone, and toward a dream of a better world where each night there is a little less darkness, a "dream of souls that are always free, like clouds that float..."