Drums and worship

I’ve played the drums in a variety of worship settings: on a set at Pentecostal revivals, on a cabasa during youth group missionary trips, on timpani with an orchestra in an affluent Long Island church, on cowbells and congas in Spanish-speaking churches in downtown Chicago, on a log at campfire sing-alongs, walking around a Celtic labyrinth playing a bodhrán, banging on the stairs and bannisters in a stairwell with a few friends at college, and even accompanying an organ in my Episcopalian church with my doumbek.

Worship is about connection with God. How to describe that connection when it happens? I can only borrow Biblical language. It feels like being on fire. It feels like being filled with light, with living water, with a mighty rushing wind. It feels like being filled to overflowing with raw POWER. It is wonderful, it is terrifying, it makes me think I have an inkling of why our wiser ancestors spoke of "holy fear". To invite in the Source of all power is to invite something powerful, something dangerous, to happen.

But the most powerful worship experience I've ever had wasn't in church. It was at work.

I had just started a new job working one-on-one with a man who had autism. I didn't know much about him except that he was twice my size, couldn't pronounce words, used some sign language to communicate, liked music, and didn't like big changes (such as having new staff). We'd gotten off to a rocky start - he'd bitten himself and slapped me several times over the first few weeks - so I was hoping to find a way to connect with him and get him to associate me with positive experiences. I'd heard that Christmas music was his favorite, and figured it was worth trying out some drums along with the singing to see if he enjoyed it. One of my own favorite songs has always been "The Little Drummer Boy", naturally, so I sang that for him and played along on my little bongos.

And he sang along.

No words, still, but he was nodding and saying "Buh...Buh...Buh..." with the rhythm, and even did his best with "Pum-pum-pum". As I sang the last line - "Then He smiled at me, pa-rum-pa-pum-pum, me and my drum", I remembered Christ's words "What you have done for the least of these my brothers, you have done for Me."

And the guy who'd never smiled for me before was smiling.

I had to fight an urge to drop the drum and fall to my knees. Instead, I held out the drum so he could play. He tapped on it a few times, smiled again, and signed "Ride". So we went for a ride. And we sang Christmas songs as I drove.

That is, to me, what worship is about. When something like music, or laughter, or touch, or food, or tears, brings us together, lets us connect and experience the same thing at the same time; when we become one body with our fellow humans; when we find common ground with those that had been strangers to us; that's when we most truly become one with God. Every religion has at its core the truth that God is love. And love simply means that we work for the happiness of others as hard as we work for our own. When we get that, we get God.

© John M. Munzer