The Sacred Power of an Off-Key Beatles Song

“There are no unsacred places. There are only sacred places and desecrated places.”-Wendell BerryA few years ago, I was hanging out with a friend who’s an Episcopal priest, when the topic of wedding music came up. I told her that I’d walked down the aisle to The Beatles’ “And I Love Her,” played by my brother, Karl, on acoustic guitar.My friend explained that, in the Episcopal church, “only sacred music is allowed,” so no Beatles for weddings.I wondered if she was right. Ought I have marched down the aisle to Bach or Vivaldi? Indeed, the switch from organ prelude to my brother’s acoustic and his off-key singing was a bit jarring!Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Still, her response rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was because I’d ingested enough bad Christian art (Christian contemporary music, Kirk Cameron movies, THOMAS KINCADE) to last me a lifetime. The problem with this sort of Christian “art” is that the artists feel the need to clobber the viewers over the head with The Message. There’s no nuance, no subtlety, and certainly nothing that could offend the delicate sensibilities of the largely Evangelical audience. (You’ll never hear someone swear in a Christian movie, for instance.)Thomas Kincade aside, this division between sacred and nonsacred art offends me as an artist. The point of art (be it visual art, film, literature, music or the humble Substack) is to reveal capital-T Truth. In my opinion, the primary measure of artistic success is how effectively Truth is revealed, if at all. The idea that art has to be explicitly about God or Jesus for it to be sacred strikes me as absurd. Why should the church (or anyone, really) gatekeep what others find transcendent? This argument about The Beatles is what came to mind when I read the above Wendell Berry quote last week. Whereas I was raised to believe that certain places, times, and things were holy (i.e. the sanctuary, communion wine, etc.) Berry challenges us to find holiness in the ordinary places and things around us, something echoed in the work of Father Richard Rohr, who writes:“Over time, we move beyond a dualistic view of God being ‘up there’ while we are ‘down here’ to a vision where God is up there, down here, in others, and within ourselves, all at the same time…In taking this view, we start to see that all things are sacred, including the masks we wear, the shadows we seek to hide, the wounds we carry, and the parts of ourselves we consider profane. Every thing is sacred.”The truth is, sometimes I get wrapped up in my own cosmic significance. I want to save the world and create great art and be capital-I Important. But mostly my life is not these things. Mostly I am washing dishes and making meals and chaperoning field trips. It’s not prestigious or even paid, not seen as having much purpose in the grand scheme of things.Can I find sacredness in such work?Thinking back to Karl’s performance on my wedding day, it was so many things: jarring, off-key, sincere, lovely. I remember standing in the narthex, vibrating with nerves because Holy shit I am 22 years old and going to promise to do WHAT for the REST OF MY LIFE?!?!?!? I was totally spiraling. And then my brother’s voice crackled over the PA system. And it was so goofy and sweet and I remembered who and where I was and who was around me and what I was doing. I took a deep breath, my dad squeezed my hand, and the church doors opened.In that moment, my brother and The Beatles grounded me. And that’s sacred, too.The more I explore my spiritual practice, the more I see that the challenge is not in finding right answers, in parsing this or that doctrine, the challenge is in unlearning the artificial divisions created by labels and striving to see God in all people, places, and things. Even The Beatles, even bad singing. Even myself.Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Heretic Hereafter at heretichereafter.substack.com/subscribe