Singing As We Go

Here is a discussion of the fragments of history that attest to the importance of singing in the post-apostolic Christian church. 

https://www.plough.com/en/topics/faith/early-christians/at-the-end-of-the-ages-is-a-song

I'll add that the early Christians weren't the only people known to have faced the things humans fear most with songs. "Last songs" and "death songs" appear in descriptions of brave people around the world. They were obligatory in some Native American traditions, for example. "Nothing lives long but the earth and the mountains" was a typical song for a brave warrior to compose and practice in advance of need, but some cultures had some hope of a blessed afterlife and reunion with loved ones.

Singing was also used not only to pace work, but to relieve the feelings many of the laborers in the ancient world must have had about being slaves. (Consider the description of Elvira Ware's singing in Jubilee.) In some cases singing was mandatory; as Alice Walker recently reminded us, slaves might be ordered to whistle or sing while carrying food, so that they had no chance to eat any of it. Slaves in countries that were foreign to them could also express subversive feelings, or even relay secret information, in their songs, as in Psalm 137. 

Joel Clarkson mentions that in the Bible, a word that is now usually translated as "groaning" could also refer to singing. The idea was that breath and voice were being used to help someone, in this case "the whole Creation," endure struggle or suffering. A simple chant like "Jesus Thou Son of David, have mercy on me," or for that matter "Nothing lives long but the earth and the mountains," is easier for other patients in a hospital to bear than a cheerful song or a groan, but groaning works the diaphragm and balances the brain too.

I remember a day when the fact that my husband had terminal cancer hit both of us at the same time. We started crying. We realized that if we continued crying we'd be unable to do what had to be done on this project of being parted by death. We remembered that, according to a close friend, during the many times when Martin Luther expected to be martyred, he said to his friend, "Let us sing the 46th Psalm." Their version of the 46th Psalm was the hymn Ein' Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott, which Americans know as "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." We sang it. We sang songs from our shared experience of Seventh-Day Adventist "Sabbath School," for hours. It did not make the next few weeks' necessary suffering pleasant. It did make them bearable. 

We think of singing as a way to express good feelings because it so often is. While the commercial music industry is obsessed with sexual love and can't get enough of songs that bring "nice" singers ever closer to strip dancing, real people are likely to sing to express other happy feelings like mother love, group loyalty, celebrations of occasions, anticipation of good times ahead, nostalgia, "spring fever," or pure high spirits. But traditionally people have sung or chanted to relieve pain and distress, too. It works because singing, chanting, laughing out loud, panting for breath during exercise, or even groaning starts a hormone cycle that raises the level of endorphin in the blood. It's a natural pain medication that also works on panic.

Someone out there is dealing with something with which the human brain does not naturally deal. To that person I recommend singing or chanting.