Living After the Manner of Happiness

  photo by Olisaknit, Etsy  (https://www.etsy.com : accessed 24 January 2022) I awoke with a heavy heart following events of the past couple of days, and this blog post I wrote last year came back to mind. Here we are nearly a year later, and it often feels like the divisiveness has only continued to escalate. So many I care about are feeling hurt and pain. Pondering on this, the words of a song came to mind this morning. It’s like a symphony Just keep listening And pretty soon you’ll start To figure out your part Everyone plays a piece And there are melodies In each one of us Oh, it’s glorious 1   Music speaks to my soul, and I love the symphony analogy used in this chorus. The word symphony derives from the Greek word symphonia, which means agreement or harmonious sound. 2 The whole point of a symphony is bringing various musicians and instruments together to create something beautiful. There are times when small solos enhance the piece, but generally, the best symph...

At the heart of just about every general education program is a humanities class. Almost every college student takes one, and it was my turn two years ago. As its name implies, humanities classes help us understand what it is to be human – human intellect, artistic creativity, and the record of human experiences as seen in the arts. It was one of my favorite classes in my educational journey. One of our first lessons was about music – specifically harmony.  A quick review for those who may not have had a music theory class recently: harmony, in short, is playing or singing more than one pitch simultaneously. Groups like Pentatonix, The Nylons, or BYU’s Vocal Point come to mind. When we think of harmony in music, we usually associate it with what is known as consonant harmony – stable and pleasant. There is also a different kind of harmony known as dissonant harmony - when the notes can sound harsh and unpleasant and feel very unstable. Think about the music accompanying the showe...