Religious Scholar

A couple of my friends are always telling me they are atheists.  Come on. These are the same people who love music, love people, love food, love poetry, love art, love nature, love beauty.  What do they think God is?

The celebrated atheist H.L. Mencken loved Bach, possibly the most spiritual of all composers, and would travel from Baltimore to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, each year for the Bach Festival.  Atheist: right. Give me a break. If you don’t hear the voice of God in Bach’s music, what do you hear?  Mechanical sonorities? The progression of modulations through time? Human intelligence and emotion filtered through German culture?

Cliches from popular and religious literature say it all. “Love makes the world go ‘round.” “All you need is love.” “God is love.” The Deity is not the old greybeard in the clouds, sorry.  When music flows from Bach’s brain onto paper into the hands of performers, through their voices and fingertips, out into the air, through our ears, into our minds, flooding our hearts:  that is it.

Call it what you like. You may despise religion, embrace nihilism, and reject the notion of a supreme being. But if you have ever loved, you’ve felt the Pulse.  We may not be able to weigh or quantify or measure It. But it is knowable. And it is love.