Jazz and the Spiritual Life by Jon Jelfs

I am finding jazz music a great metaphor for the spiritual life, having just returned from the Southport 'Jazz on a Winter's Weekend' festival.

A wide variety of bands and artists offered interpretations of well-known tunes as well as completely new original ones. There was a great sense of community in the festival, a shared sense of both enjoyment and purpose. That purpose was a creative one, working together to produce great music dependant on the great tradition of jazz music but producing something new and fresh. There were some real highpoints in the music when you just knew you were hearing something extraordinary, something which really affected you, even changed you. For me those moments were spiritual moments where I felt one with the music, one with everybody present and actually one with the extraordinary creativity in the world that can produce such music and so many other things too. All of it based upon established chords and patterns which can be woven together to produce something exciting, beautiful, peaceful, playful, rhythmic - the blending of established forms and structures with new improvised sections, the band working together and also providing the foundation for wonderful solo improvisations.

You might say "what has this got to do with the spiritual life?" Well, metaphorically speaking quite a lot. This is how I think life, religion, spirituality works - building on what we know, what we have done or experienced before but reaching deep into our creative selves (connecting with Presence) to express something that is not only new but relevant, even necessary, as a response to this moment, this time in history.

In my spiritual life I am learning how to honour the traditions, beliefs and structures of Church past and present while at the same time not being constrained unnecessarily by them. I see being a Christian, also church itself, as dynamic - responding, developing, changing according to the times and the need, always seeking to be in harmony with the sense of Spirit or Presence within and all around. Like jazz musicians, using the chords and patterns that have become established but not being limited to them, indeed expecting them to change or evolve. I call this 'embrace and transcend', to express a sense of being rooted in the tradition - not wanting to discard it - but always expecting more Goodness, Beauty and Truth to be experienced and expressed in fresh ways.

In my own faltering attempts to learn jazz piano I see the value of knowing how things have been understood and structured before. I want to understand those things, practice them but then allow that inherent creativity present in all of us, and all of reality, to have its expression.

I love jazz, but even more I love that creative Presence that continues to beckon and call us into the future with hope, love and compassion through.