Deep Church

“Deep Church” - an experience of worship using sonic meditation techniques from Pauline Oliveiros’ Deep Listening methods. Music Room (right side of building)

As a follow up to our How to Pray series, we are trying a collaboration that has come out of our Practical Spirituality workshops. We’ve had musician Ben Richter of Ghost Ensemble with us to lead Deep Listening sessions, and now we’re exploring how those practices might help us enter in to an experience of sacred presence more explicitly. In those workshops, it struck many of us that the kind of attention that we cultivate in Deep Listening feels very much like the best experiences of prayer or meditation we’ve had in other contexts. So what happens if we combine them?

Deep Listening, the practice developed by Pauline Oliveros, explores the difference between the involuntary nature of hearing and the conscious nature of listening. The practice includes bodywork, sonic meditations, and interactive performance, as well as listening to the sounds of daily life, nature, one’s own thoughts, imagination, and dreams. It cultivates a heightened awareness of the sonic environment, both external and internal, and promotes experimentation, improvisation, collaboration, playfulness, and other creative skills vital to personal and community growth. Or to make it more concrete: we make a bunch of sounds in various ways, not as self-expression but as a way of training our capacity to listen and not just hear.

Here’s how the church part works: FCC is currently holding two “church” services a month - the first being a relatively recognizable communion service, and the second is a more experimental, workshop-like experience. Both are inclusive and designed to be accessible regardless of one’s previous church or religious backgrounds. On January 25, we’ll have the first of these collaborations, with time to experience some of the range of the Deep Listening approaches. On March 1, in the morning, we’ll use Deep Listening practices as a way in to approaching the bread & “wine” (grape juice) ritual more communally - a spiritual understanding that would have been closer to what Jesus and his friends would have taken for granted as understood.

Whether you’re a Deep Listening fan, someone who finds music and the arts the basis of their spirituality, or someone frustrated by the lack of spirit in much of institutional religion, we think you might find this meaningful. We would love to have you be part of these experiments. Worst case? You try a new thing. Best case? You find a life-sustaining spiritual practice, and fellow travelers on your journey.

Questions? For more info, email Marisa at pastor@fccnorthampton.org.