I Admit It - I'm an Addict!

Hello. My name is Michael, and I'm a harmonolic.

Although I've never used the word, I've been a harmonolic since I was a kid. I remember as a second grader I would sing a third below the melody in music class because I liked the way it sounded. I guess my music teacher didn't think so, as she gave me a B in music. Later I began singing the bass part an octave high. My dad always sang bass, often emulating the quartet basses we heard on "Jubilee" on Sunday mornings, and so I hoped after my voice changed I would become a "lowdown bass singer." Unfortunately, my voice didn't go down quite that far, so at puberty I went from alto to tenor. I'd rather hear and sing harmony than almost anything I can think of.

It goes much deeper than music, though; I deeply and earnestly long for harmony in relationships, both between individuals and between groups of people. Sometimes music has helped to bring together groups of people who had been separated by language, economics, class, or race. In the 1960's and '70's in the United States, it was music groups that brought together black teens and white teens. Music became their common ground, and it held them up, and held them together pretty well.

I still love to sing harmony, and I still long for both musical and spiritual harmony. Recently my two children were riding together, and my daughter Amanda sang me a song, which she often does. I joined her on the refrain, singing harmony to her melody. When she asked me, "Daddy, what's harmony?", I told her, "Singing harmony means singing something different from the melody, but they sound good together." The next time she sang the song, I sang my harmony part, but I heard a different line coming from behind me: my son Christopher (who claims to hate music!) was making an attempt at an additional harmony. In fact, he sounded pretty good. Fluke? Time will tell.

We're about to reach the end of a particularly strident election season - I HOPE! It's too late to hope for the national mainstream media to provide impartial and objective coverage of the campaign; that obviously would have been too much to hope for. Likewise, it's too late to hope the candidates refrain from negative campaign adds; again. The negative adds even reached our area: I heard name-calling on adds for one candidate for state attorney. Think about it: we tell our kids not to call people names, and then those of us who would "rule" the rest of us call our opponents names like Liberal, Neo-Con, Socialist, Redneck, Neo-Com, Air Bag, etc. Then we enlist the help of mass media to broadcast and print our diatribes against our opponents. We even badmouth our opponents for their negative campaign adds.

I have only two hopes left: (1) that someone will win by a sufficient margin that the opposition feels no need to contest the election; and (2) that the wounds inflicted during this election season are not too deep to heal. You see, harmony is healing, and in order for that to happen, we don't need to sing the same line, but we do need to sing the same song, and we need to listen to each other in order for our parts to sound good together. Harmony is not strident - it's beautiful. So are we, if we learn to value people who are singing a different line, or speaking a different language, or wearing a different color of skin, or voting for a different political candidate.

Don't get me wrong - voting for the person we believe is the best person for the job is a good thing; calling those who vote differently idiots is NOT a good thing. And as tempting as it sometimes is, it's NOT appropriate to call persons with whom we disagree liars.

May God have mercy on us all, and may the Spirit of Truth also bring harmony to our discordant world.

Harmonically yours,

Michael