Happy New Year! A renewed trip around the Sun almost always fills us with hope and the expectation of progress. Individuals and societies are often energized to be the change they want to see in the world. Yet, as we begin a new year, my enthusiasm about humanity’s march toward a more productively equitable society is tempered with concern about our apparent inability to cooperate, much less coexist.
We’re entering the third year of a Pandemic, in part because so many people refuse to be good neighbors and get vaccinated. Countries worldwide are slipping further into Autocracy, including former bastions of the free world, the UK and the USA. It’s as if the entire planet is backsliding 100 years.
I have a theory about why coexistence and cooperation are so challenging to achieve and why, year after year, we seem incapable of making progress toward a better society. And by better, I mean one that creates systems and infrastructure with a primary concern for human rights and individual well-being. More importantly, by identifying the cause of our disdain for one another, we also have the opportunity to eliminate it.
Why do humans find it so difficult to live together, to cooperate in our exploration of the universe? Some theologians in the 1920s were thinking about this dilemma, too, and concluded we are constantly fighting because people rarely resonate at the same frequency. Importantly, we don’t resonate at sympathetic frequencies. And this is not as much about having sympathy for each other as understanding that sympathy naturally happens when we resonate with another human being.
So, what is resonance, and what does it have to do with peaceful coexistence?
Galileo discovered resonance by watching musical strings in the 1600s. So we’ve known about this idea for a long time. We just haven’t applied the concept to humans.
Items, in this case, tuning forks tuned to the same frequency, will vibrate simultaneously, even though those two things are not physically attached but merely relatively near each other. This phenomenon is called sympathetic vibration for obvious reasons. Watch this video for a terrific example of resonance.
Now, imagine every human being is a tuning fork. Because we are.
You saw what just happened there, right? One tuning fork begins to vibrate at a specific frequency, and another nearby begins to resonate at the same frequency, in tune. Then, every time a tuning fork is put in front of the resonator, it begins to hum along in perfect pitch. Humans work this same way, and I’m sure you have anecdotal evidence in your own life experiences to support this idea—a time when you were around someone and could just feel everything about them and connect harmonically.
Sympathetic resonance often manifests itself most profoundly when we’re interacting with people who are on an emotional high or low—sick or depressed, elated or ecstatic. Those intense emotional moments change our frequency, the way tuning into different radio stations to listen to news or music or comedy changes our moods.
So the concept of Spiritual Sympathetic Frequency and Resonance is based on the fact that every system (and humans are systems) has a particular frequency or two at which it naturally vibrates.
Resonance is a natural part of the world, like magnetism and electricity.
We are surrounded by frequencies all the time—it’s how radio works, cellphones, microwaves, Bluetooth headsets, even electricity is a frequency. The universe is virtually alive with energies resonating at different frequencies.
Some theologians, particularly Alfred North Whitehead (the de facto founder of process theology), have suggested God’s revelation can be most intimately sensed when we are vibrating at a sympathetic frequency with God—in tune with Universal Consciousness.
This ability to “tune in” to God as readily as we turn on Netflix is part of the reason we literally tune at the beginning of service: so we can experience God’s energy moving through the congregation and the world. So we can sense God’s incarnation personally and palpably.
For the world to coexist and humans to start cooperatively building a more just and equitable society, we all need to work on sharing our sympathetic frequencies. When we all start vibing, we’ll see a real—and permanent change in the world.
I know that sympathetically vibing to each other’s frequencies is a lovely sentiment. Some might even say it’s naïve: Let’s all just get along, happy, happy, joy, joy style. But as I said at the beginning, I’m concerned about humankind’s ability—and even willingness—to create a more joyful, productive, happy, equitable reality.
So, how do we do it? How do we tune into the resonant God frequency of the universe and change the world?
One word: Reconciliation.
In 2 Corinthians 5:18 (The Message), Paul says, “Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other.”
Paul says God calls us to reconcile our relationships with each other, and he understands that cannot will not happen until we first get ourselves right with God. And we do that by tuning into the Christ frequency, the God frequency, the infinite and eternal lovesong of the Conscious Universe.
We must become more aware of and more open to each other’s tuning so we can work together sympathetically and harmonically, not in conflict. We want to create a harmonious chorus in response to God’s love song.
We don’t want to be like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and rip each other apart because we’re operating on such contrary frequencies.
We are all resonating at a particular frequency. Some of those frequencies are going to clash. Others will harmonize. The job at hand is to get THE MAJORITY of us harmonizing. And for us ALL to be in harmony, that means fundamentally everyone has to adjust their frequency.
We are all tuning forks. Every single one of us. We all resonate at specific frequencies, and the frequencies we resonate at probably change many times throughout the day and most certainly change throughout our lives. But we can tune in to God, into the Cosmic Christ, the energy of creation that defines us, that sings us into being.
God is continuously broadcasting a signal of cooperative coexistence for all humanity to receive. When most of us are tuned into that God channel, well, I think that’s when we start living in the “kingdom of heaven” Jesus was talking about.
So, in the coming year, let’s develop a new habit that will stick with us forever: Let’s be sympathetic to each other. Let’s tune in to God and let God’s eternal, infinite Tone of Creation resonate in our souls, generating a frequency that resonates sympathetically with everyone we meet.
May God make it so. Amen.
Question: How can we develop our sympathetic resonance?
