I thought I’d offer a bite of what I’m working on in my upcoming book, which is tentatively titled “Sacred Texts: Stories of Living With the Dying”. This is still very much a work in progress, but at least progress is being made. I welcome your comments!

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528Hz

“You know that the universe vibrates at 528 Hertz, right?”

This was part of the first conversation I had with Neil, who had just come on hospice and was living at home with his mother. It was my initial visit with him, and it was already off to an interesting start. When I arrived at the time we had set up, he wasn’t available. The neighbors who were sitting outside his apartment building in Pittsburgh’s South Hills said that he had just gone out to the local Rite-Aid with his girlfriend. I waited on the patio until he arrived.

Neil right off the bat struck me as an interesting guy when he arrived. He was in his mid-50’s, and his long white hair, thin build, pale Hawaiian shirt and straw fedora made him look like a wandering beachcomber. He carried a portable oxygen concentrator, the only visible indicator of his end-stage lung cancer. “Hey man! Sorry I’m late. I had to go get my meds and some toothpaste.” He introduced me to his friends and then escorted me inside, chatting the whole time.

Neil described himself as a Christian but he didn’t “buy a lot of that stuff in the Old Testament.” He had never really attached to a particular church or denomination but he was a very spiritual person. He prayed often, and during our hour and a half long conversation he brought up his beliefs quite a lot. He asked me about my beliefs about God, spirits and the Bible. At one point he brought up how on two occasions he felt engulfed by the Holy Spirit. “I just knew it was God. I felt warm all over, and just felt connected to Him. I didn’t hear any words or a voice, which was how I knew it was God.” He then told me of how once he saw a “milky white face” before him which spelled out its name and tried to tell him that he was God. Neil said “That’s how I knew it wasn’t God. God never talked to me like that.” When Neil said “Jesus!” the face made a look of distaste and said “I don’t want to hear that again!” and went away.

The conversation we had took a lot of odd twists and turns. One subject would bleed into another, and it seemed like he was talking more in a stream of consciousness than in any clear direction. He could bounce between the historical and the fantastic without missing a beat: his history of mental illness and bad experiences with medication, his concern about his mother who was also ill, his personal experiences with spirits, his estrangement from his brother who was a “die-hard Bible thumper”, his ability to “become a tree” by sitting and meditating under one (“trees are really intelligent, man”).

I found myself putting on my psychological hat more than once during our conversation. Looking back, if I’m going to be honest, I’d have to say that his talk of confrontations with evil spirits made me afraid. I wasn’t afraid of him or even of the spirits he mentioned, rather I was afraid of being asked to venture into a space where I felt very uncomfortable and unprepared to enter. Not because of him or his beliefs, but because of my own baggage.

Growing up, my religious upbringing leaned heavily on the rational – which is pretty common in the Presbyterian tradition my family raised us in. There’s a reason why Presbyterians are called the “frozen chosen” after all, and it has nothing to do with relationship to ambient temperature. It’s not that we didn’t believe in the work of the Holy Spirit – it could do whatever it wanted. We just believed that it did so according to very strict, orderly guidelines, none of which involved raising one’s hands above one’s waist unless you were holding a hymnal. While we certainly believed that spiritual gifts like speaking in tongues and miraculous healing happened in the past, they didn’t happen now. Those evangelists that proclaimed these gifts today were often seen as charlatans at best and, at worst, pagans.

Hearing Neil talk about seeing and talking to spirits made me wince. It shouldn’t have, and I bear responsibility for my own arrogance. I took his religious experiences at face value as they meant a lot to him, even if they didn’t mean much to me. But his talk of becoming a tree along with some other pretty expansive ideas made me wonder what else he might still be dealing with. I found myself being judgmental and dismissive, and fought hard to keep a nonjudgmental stance during our conversation. Which brings me to 528 Hz.

“Did you know that the universe vibrates at 528 Hertz? Everything in the universe vibrates at a particular frequency, and when the world was created it vibrated at 528 Hertz,” he said. “But now it’s vibrating at a much lower frequency. That’s why everything is so wrong. It’s gotten lower and lower, and there are people trying to raise it. I follow Christ and try to treat people well. When we finally get back to 528 Hertz, I guess that’s what you call the Rapture. We’ll all be gone. I don’t know if I’ll ever see it – well, I know I won’t in this life but maybe in the next.” He chuckled and moved on to something else.

But it struck me that what he described was one of the better metaphors for sin that I’ve heard. What else is sin but something “being off” what it should be? Like an old-fashioned TV set that can’t quite pull in a clear picture no matter how fine you tune the dial, sin distorts and interferes with the true and the good. The best we can get is a grainy picture and audio filled with pops and buzzes. We can see, but not as we were meant to see. Now imagine being brought up in an environment where all you know of the world is delivered through that distorted channel. You wouldn’t even realize there was distortion and static until you actually came in contact with the real, undistorted world.

There are a lot of metaphors for sin in the Bible: an arrow missing the mark,[1] a stain,[2] a burden,[3] a debt.[4] All of these speak to different aspects of sin and its impact on us and the world. That is why this frequency and static comparation struck me as a metaphor for sin because sin disrupts and interferes with our experience of the world and of God. I can easily grasp the frustration of trying to tune in a radio or television station where I just can’t seem to find the exact frequency because I grew up in a generation where watching TV required lots of antenna management and fine tuning just to watch Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. I still have trouble tuning in local radio stations on my old analog clock radio. No matter how little I move the dial or how close I come to the real signal, I can’t completely escape the static that disrupts and interferes with it. To Neil, following Christ as best he knew how was his way of grabbing the rabbit-ears and trying to clear the picture of the distortion of sin, not only for himself but for others as well.

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.”  Romans 8:18-24, NKJV

Some Christian traditions and theologies see sin as primarily a personal matter. While we are called to lives of personal repentance and piety, the effects of sin in the world are essentially irreversible. Healing of the world comes only after its destruction, when “a new heaven and a new earth” are instituted by God.[5] I heard this view from time to time growing up: the world was lost and corrupted, doomed to destruction by God in the “last days”. The same view persists in those who have told me that man-made climate change isn’t happening because “only God can destroy the world”, and even if it was happening, we shouldn’t bother too much because it’s all part of God’s plan and it will all be destroyed anyway. “Better to worry about our own souls and the souls of others. It’s all going to burn in the end anyway,” is a sentiment I heard on more than one occasion.

Others see the healing of the world as something that can and should be done now. This is prevalent in some branches of Evangelicalism as well as more mainstream and liberal strands of Christianity. These branches of Christianity are quite concerned with how we are caring for the world and how we as faithful people can work this out now, not only in care for a sin-broken world but in caring for the sin-broken people who live in it. However, this view can see repentance as primarily a political act, replacing personal piety with public policy.

The tendency has been for the church to swing towards either of these poles in an “either/or” choice: either sin is primarily internally, within individuals’ hearts, minds and actions, or externally, in political and social systems that oppress others. A full view of scripture though sees sin as a “both/and” problem: sin is both a problem “in here” and “out there”, wherever “here” and “there” are. Sin is a universal problem, affecting all things at the deepest core level.

Neil’s description of the entire universe being harmonically off captures this view. It also lends another shade to the reading of Romans 8, in which Paul describes the entirety of creation “groaning” together in its current state, as it waits in expectation to be restored and redeemed by God. If you play a 528Hz tone and start to turn the frequency down, it will start to sound like a groan. It will sound “off”, especially compared to what it was before. In Neil’s view, in the same way that the whole universe “groans” at a lower frequency than intended by God at creation, sin causes the whole universe to groan and suffer, longing to be brought back into harmony with God’s intended order. Until then, the static and disharmony of sin affects everything. Neil was experiencing the interplay of signal and static in his own spiritual life. Even though he rejected parts of orthodox Christianity, he was still trying to reach through the static to listen to God. And God reached him in a way that made sense to him.

The word of God has always come to us in some sort of mediated way, whether through written word, visual representation or personal experience. These elements of culture convey meaning but also add their own particular static to it. How one receives and experiences Jesus will vary widely among cultures, and the task of translating scripture often begins with understanding the culture being reached.

Western Christianity tends to believe that its own vision of Christianity, as well as of Christ, is ubiquitous and culture-free. Yet Christian art has for centuries adapted the story and image of Christ within the culture of its recipients, whether they be from India, Japan or Africa. For example, there are thousands of shrines across Europe that portray the Madonna and Child not as pale but as dark-skinned, something which the Church has at times tried to whitewash away.[6]

Reaching out across cultures to others opens me to their vision and experience of Christ. At times I may find this puzzling or offensive, or just simply “wrong”. This task requires discernment and especially the insights of others who can help discern signal from static. If I had dismissed Neil as some sort of weirdo, I would have missed out on a new and culturally relevant metaphor for sin. I think that can happen to us when we come across someone who has a faith, value or spiritual system that seems foreign to our own. It could be a Pentecostal who speaks in ecstatic tongues, a Catholic mystic who has visions of the Saints, or a Fundamentalist who feels that the end of time is imminent. But many of the symbols and metaphors we have in Christianity, such as the trinity, would come across as the ramblings of an insane person to those unfamiliar with them. It can be hard to accept something as true when it doesn’t mesh with reality as we understand it. But even if we can’t accept something as true, we can – and should – still accept it as valid. If it is meaningful to the other, then it is meaningful. And if it is meaningful to them, maybe it can be meaningful to me in some way. I as well must discern signal from static in my own life, which is a lifelong process and perhaps a good metaphor for salvation as well.

After that visit with Neil, I found an audio recording of a 528Hz tone online. I listened to it while I did my charting that evening. I didn’t have a spiritual awakening, but I did grow to appreciate how people use sound to meditate, pray and focus. Interestingly enough, I found that scientists were actually studying the use of sound, including the 528Hz tone, to help alleviate stress and other medical conditions in clinical trials.[7]^{, [8]} I talked about this with him at our following visit, and he appreciated how interested I was. Neil, though, decided to pursue aggressive treatment for his cancer and came off hospice. I haven’t run in to him after that, and I hope that he has found a lovely tree to talk to.

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[1] The Greek word hamartia which is often translated in the New Testament as “sin” means “to miss the mark”

[2] Jeremiah 2:22, Isaiah 1:18

[3] Psalm 38, Isaiah 53:4, Galatians 5:1

[4] Matthew 6:12-15, Colossians 2:13-14

[5] Revelation 21:1

[6] For further reading: “The Black Madonna in Latin America and Europe: Tradition and Transformation” by Malgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba

[7] Babayi Daylari, T., Riazi, G. H., Pooyan, S., Fathi, E., & Hedayati Katouli, F. (2019). Influence of various intensities of 528 Hz sound-wave in production of testosterone in rat’s brain and analysis of behavioral changes. Genes & genomics, 41(2), 201–211. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13258-018-0753-6

[8] Haridy, Rich (2022). First human trials test light & sound therapy for Alzheimer’s disease. New Atlas. First human trials test light & sound therapy for Alzheimer’s disease (newatlas.com)