Post 156.

A Love Supreme as Spiritual Ascent through Creation, Suffering, Sound, and Silence

            The 1965 album A Love Supreme is a radical work of art. Across four movements, John Coltrane purifies bebop language beyond modal innovations toward a singular, freer, relaxed and mystical grammar. The suite is built from simple elements—variations on a four-note motif—communicating structural unity with zealous and unyielding, as well as reflective, consonant and dissonant improvisations. The fourth movement renders a musical narration of Coltrane’s psalm. Printed in the liner notes, the poem begins: “I will do all I can to be worthy of thee, O Lord. It all has to do with it. Thank you, God. Peace. There is none other. God is. It is so beautiful.” As I listen to this album, I resonate with it and hear something akin to Bonaventure’s seven-step ascent toward beatitude in The Journey of the Mind to God: first noticing His vestiges in the universe, then in the sensed world, then His image imprinted on our natural powers, then his Image reformed through the gift of grace—Being itself, which is the divine unity, and the Good—the Trinity, and finally receiving rest. In this short essay, I reflect more deeply on the first two steps and then briefly describe how the rest of the steps are present in this music. 

            In the opening of Acknowledgement, a gong reverberates with cymbals and piano, without shape or form. Dissonance. The sax cries loudly: disorder. Genesis reads, “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth—and the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters—then God said: Let there be light, and there was light” (Genesis 1: 1-3). Order materializes from simplicity. The bass, drums, and piano establish rhythm, and Trane begins crying again. Like Genesis, this first movement, in the space of two minutes, provides a vestige of creation—and the fall—condensed and sounded here. Not justified. Just this. It is.

            The Lord’s vestiges materialize in the sensed world. The piano, drums, bass, and saxophone shape the motif through improvisation. Trane’s timbral choices are harsh. Listening imaginatively, I hear another story from Genesis. The favored son of Israel, Joseph, was betrayed by his brothers, who plotted to kill him out of jealousy but instead sold him into slavery. Through his intelligence and gift for interpreting dreams, Joseph rose to a position of leadership in Egypt. God used him to prepare humanity for a seven-year famine. When his brothers later approached him seeking food, Joseph spoke harshly to them—and understandably. Trane’s tone color reminds me of Joseph’s voice before reconciliation. And when Joseph learns he has a younger brother, he demands to see him. Finally, when his brothers show remorse, Joseph welcomes them into Egypt. This becomes a home for the people of Israel. Joseph explains, “Even though you meant to harm me, God meant it for good, to achieve this present end, the survival of many people” (Genesis 50:20). The roughness of the saxophone’s timbre emerges from the suffering of Coltrane’s people. After centuries of slavery and Jim Crow, the highest love, which can be harsh, gestures toward hope and a possible future reconciliation. Hope and change begin with a change of spirit.

            A Love Supreme’s improvisations reveal the human mind in active imagination. Technique, discipline, and invention become signs of the image of God imprinted on human powers. In Resolution, Coltrane’s saxophone steps forward, gently embodying his psalm with prayerful intention. “God breathes through us so completely, so gently, we hardly feel it. Yes, it is our everything. Thank you, God. ELATION—ELEGANCE—EXALTATION—All from God.” The image is reformed by grace. The music stretches outward while remaining grounded in its simple motif. Multiplicity returns to unity again and again. Being is grounded in this. The Trinity is expressed through distinct voices—saxophone, piano, bass, drums. Unity in multiplicity is sung. “A love supreme; a love supreme; a love supreme.”

             Ultimately, the album ends with the Psalm, choosing contemplation and rest—sound and silence at cessation. On a record, the album stops, the needle needs to be replaced. This silence is also part of the music, which resonates in the silent soul who allows it space to do its work. 

Daniel J. Shevock (video essay version below)

Link to the image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AQC0439_-_C-_minor_-_Reflexions_4_-_By_Arnaud_Quercy.jpg 

Post 155.  

Each Springtime, I introduce my 5th and 6th graders to the Japanese folksong, Sakura, and a haiku by Hokushi. I found the pairing of this song and haiku in one of the many general music method books I keep at work. Like much of my teaching, this lesson emerges from a mixture of sources including music education and ecomusicology articles, conferences and workshops, and songs I have discovered or developed over time, including lessons in my 2025 book, Music Lessons for a Living Planet. However, because I am a philosopher, this mix is never eclectic. Rather, diverse activities are to be held together within a stable grammar of essence meaning, moral meaning, and growth meaning; with one pedagogical emerging in my life as a teacher, creative meaning.

            Cherry trees flower each Spring, delightfully present for a day or maybe a week, and then drop as the tree puts on its yearly leaves. Sakura presents cherry blossoms as they are—momentary, rich, but already vanishing the moment that they appear. Spend the wrong week indoors and you might miss them. The song dwells in the fleeting abundance, lingering inside their appearance. Essence meaning emerges as we—teacher and students—dwell in an unfamiliar timbre and curious melody, singing in imperfectly pronounced Japanese. Moral meaning develops as song forms restraint. The limits of one tree’s profuse beauty cultivate in us a recognition of the rhythm of seasons, years, growing and dwindling. The message: Accept beauty without owning it. This is fit. Encountering Sakura each year, its growth meaning, forms patience and comfort with incompletion. Attentiveness even when recompence is short-lived.

            Hokushi’s haiku reads:

            Ashes my burnt hut
            But wonderful the cherry
            Blooming on the hill.

The essence meaning we uncover is that this author’s home has burned down, and all that remains is ash. Children are already aware of disaster; many adults mistakenly attempt to shield them from it. However, hiding tragedy does not protect children from it. It leaves them unformed to truth, and ill-equipped to endure it. How does Hokushi respond to tragedy? There’s no explicit lesson. He notices the abundant cherry blooms. As noncompetitive truth-telling, the blossoms do not override or correct the ashes. Both are here, now. Both float on the wind and are temporarily profuse.

            Hokushi’s “But wonderful” leads us to the moral meaning—how must we reply? Of course, there are many ways Hokushi might reply. He might close his eyes and inhabit loss. He might grow irate and chop down the cherry tree. He might pretend to not be distressed. Hokushi teaches us to be honest about suffering, refuse despair’s domination, and admit gratuitous beauty where it materializes. Moral meaning restrains verdicts and awaits truth.

            What sort of person is formed by this haiku accompanying Sakura? Its growth meaning is a kind of enduring without hardening. Remaining sensitive to pain but not allowing it to dominate us. To allow catastrophe to be temporarily unresolved without acting too quickly or falling into the void and not acting. We must be faithful to perception when it hurts, because endurance needs resilience and presence.

            Suffering is not explained to the children. It is presented. Only after this grammar is well-known is creative meaning possible. Students compose their own haiku, including three lines (I refuse pushing syllable counts as the American haiku tradition ignores syllable counting) about nature, and a turn (the kire) that expresses an unexpected reality of the poem. We sing these haiku with percussion accompaniment and then create a cherry tree on the classroom wall, sharing the various haiku. 

Daniel J. Shevock 

Link to the image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cherry_blossom_festival_2018_-_Yoyogi_Park_-_Tokyo,_Japan_-_DSC05549.jpg 

Link to the video: https://youtu.be/eZJ3TOKIy-Y?si=3hAxLYfQ5d8Egqc1 

Post 154. 

Medieval authors, including St. Bonaventure, engage a three-sense grammar to read the twin books of nature and scripture. The first sense, the allegorical (which I name Essence Meaning) reveals specific occurrences in nature and passages of scripture in Christ and the mysteries of faith. Unlike modern readers, when Bonaventure uses the term allegory he is not referring to mere symbolism, but to ontological—essential—participation. Essence Meaning discloses the True. 

            The second sense, the tropological (which I name Moral Meaning) relates nature and scripture to the formation of the soul—to virtue, conversion, and love. Moral Meaning discloses the Good. 

            The third sense, the anagogical (which I name Growth Meaning) draws the reader toward the future as ultimate fulfillment in God—the soul’s ascent into divine life. In hope, the Growth Meaning of nature and scripture reveals Beauty. Read together, Essence Meaning, Moral Meaning, and Growth Meaning offer a repeatable grammar that illuminates our relationships with nature and scripture, as well as logical and psychological experience. 

            To illustrate this grammar in action: awakening, beneath the severe sound of wind, I hear robins, juncos, and cardinals singing in this icy winter predawn. 

            Essence Meaning, revealing the True. I attend to the birdsong, lingering with the counterpoint and charm of what I receive gratuitously. These birds live and sing to the glory to God in their own ways—ways partially, but not wholly, graspable by my human ear. I recall the words of Jesus: “Look at the birds of the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet our heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they” (Matthew 6:26)? These birds must suffer—at least in some measure—in this cruel weather, and yet they sing. Like Christ on the Mount of Olives, vulnerable to the elements, these birds participate in Christ’s hope to enact the Father’s will, imparting their intelligence to me, an attentive eavesdropper. 

            Moral Meaning, revealing the Good. I sympathize with these birds’ discomfort and hope. Within my heart, I bear the paradox of distress and trust—that one cannot trust without first encountering distress. This virtue must be started and tested; otherwise, no opening to trust exists. Just as a fractured mirror may reveal a rainbow, the distressed being is given an opportunity to express trust amid doubt; hope rather than cynicism and anger. Jesus prays, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still, not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42)—and in harmony with Christ, these birds sing. 

            Growth Meaning, revealing the Beautiful. In a state of awe, I am astonished. Beyond our control and presumed self-reliance, there awaits an abundance of God’s care, disclosed to me in this birdsong counterpoint. The Spirit breathed life into each creature’s body at the dawn of time (Genesis 2:7) and sings into being now a compelling and brittle sound, elevating my mind toward immeasurable Beautying. This is an echo of the faultless in the limited, the timeless in the fleeting, the mighty in the fragile. All creation may partake, in diverse ways, in the eternal Word’s suffering, hope, and resurrection. 

Daniel J. Shevock 

Link to the image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fran%C3%A7ois_Lombard_-_Le_Miracle_de_saint_Bonaventure.jpg 
             

Post 153. 

In The Journey of the Mind to God, written in 1259, Bonaventure reasons that the triune deity’s perfect light is imperfectly reflected in creation. The process operates in the same way that a person might be presented with an unfamiliar Mozart symphony or Georgia O’Keefe painting and infer who the artist is, considering elements such as form, texture, color and the like. By examining the natural world, our minds can ascend, as climbing a ladder, to a fundamental consciousness of God. Bonaventure suggests that created things contain vestiges of their creator, and while the creator is eternal, sovereign, and faultless, created things are temporal, contingent, and flawed. I have come to believe these flaws, like cracks in Bonaventure’s mirror, offer unexpected beauty: sunlight, upon entering a prism, diverges into the colors of a rainbow. From one, many. With this in mind, I write this poem:

            Father’s light, alight divine
            Creator, Word, and Spirit, love
            In these fissures, spectral signs
            Mirror broken, image appealing
            A beauty less-than Beauty above
            Word and living Breath and feeling
            Through these fractures, shine, shine, shine!

            In a short essay, Chance, Simone Weil writes: “The vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is a mark of existence.” This suggests that the faults in the mirror are part of the plan of creation. The Father’s creation, ex nihilo, was of existing things. Existing things are vulnerable. This vulnerability is beauty. We seem most vulnerable the cracks in the mirror of ourselves through which we attend to God’s light. Weakness, if we attend to it, can become beautiful sites of understanding.

            When we look at our world today, we cannot avoid noticing its wounds. Standing in a park, the water in this creek must be purified if I would drink it; the trees in this park have been planted in the decades since they were cleared for logging; this soil has remnants of lead, arsenic, and PCBs from the land’s coal and farming history; and my skin must be guarded from the sunshine itself using sunscreen. Yet it is this light through these leaves glowing on this soil by this water where I glimpse residues of my Creator. We aren’t afforded the opportunity to be born in the Garden of Eden, but we remember it in these faults, here.

Daniel Shevock

Link to the image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Red_Canna_(1923)_by_Georgia_O%27Keeffe.png