Boston: Instruments of Mercy

I was at a concert the other night, of Thomas Adės conducting scenes from his work ‘The Tempest’. As I listened and watched, I began to think: ‘Where is God in this concert hall tonight?’ Is God, as is sometimes thought, directing the forces of this world in the same way that a conductor does a symphony orchestra? I wondered whether God is rather in the instrumentalists, whose skills and abilities — particularly the ability to respond — yes, and willingness, actually give voice to the music. Such an analogy is most notable when the instrument is the human voice, of course. Or perhaps God is in the instruments; or perhaps the divine lies in the sound created.

            The metaphor of a harmony in the world is an ancient one: harmony of the spheres maybe, song of the earth or dance of the stars, which from antiquity have been believed to govern human fates. But then  follows discord, even tempests.

            I woke next day to news of the Boston marathon massacre. It falls in the class of human events that, based on hatred, deny the harmony, the song of the world. It’s among the confrontations, alas almost daily across the world, between an ideal harmony directed by a loving God, and a ruthless reality imposed by violent humankind. Atheism is one response to the devastation of life and beauty caused by such events. The concept of God as a conductor of this symphony of disaster almost beckons disbelief.

            However graceful such an image, the divine director guiding a perfectly fitting world is, it seems to me, too small. God is unknowable, as Aquinas found out, but we can see how the world is filled with human ignorance and that disregard for the wellbeing of strangers that the ancients termed ‘hatred’. Anyone who can ignite bombs in the midst of crowds of random individuals clearly doesn’t ‘love’ others.

            If God is in the instruments, however — both instruments of love and rescue and their players — that might bring a closer vision. Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the ultimate rescuer, ‘reconciling the world’ to God, as it says in the liturgy. My own response to the tempests of human violence comes from another part of the same liturgy: the appeal for mercy. ‘Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy,’ we say. Thus we pray to the unknowable God: have mercy on those who suffer, on those who do, and those who fail to do, on those who pray and on those who do not believe. Thus we pray to the God whose ‘property it is, always to have mercy,’ but understanding, I trust, that mercy is conveyed from one to another only through the instrumentalists, ourselves.