I read a facinating article in Scientific American called “Calls of the Wild” by Michael Tennesen. The article writes of the world of Bernie Krause, a bioacoustics expert, who also worked with George Harrison, the Doors and other rock bands of the 60s. 
Working in the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya he recorded the “natural ambient sounds of birds, animals, insects, reptiles, and amphibians... made a spectrograph of a natural soundscape and realized that ‘it looked like a musical score.... Each animal had its own niche, its ow acoustic territroy, much like instruments in an orchestra.’” (Scientific American, October 2008 p. 24) Krause argues “that many animals evolved to vocalize in available niches so they can be heard by mates and others of their kind...” In other words, each animal must have a distincitive sound, pitch, tone, frequency etc to be heard amidst the cacaphony of the jungle. This study got me thinking about the distinctive, attractive, compelling voice the gospel message must have in order to be heard amidst the cacaphony of voices of today. It does not (and I’d argue it should not) have to have the loudest voice. It can be as soft as the whisper that Elijah heard amidst the roaring wind at the mouth of his cave (1 Kings 19:11-13), but it does need to be distinct... and it does need to be present for the symphony of conversation to have beauty and wholeness. If we need to have a niche voice, I’d like it to be more like a songbird than scratching on a blackboard.
In the 1960s the Second Vatican Council met for nearly three years to decide what the faith should look like in our age. Look how they describe the voice we can and should have.
It comes within the meaning of religious freedom that religious bodies should not be prohibited from freely undertaking to show the special value of their doctrine in what concerns the organization of society and the inspiration of the whole of human activity.’ The free exercise of religion is a social freedom and the right to freedom of religion includes the right to seek to influence the policies and laws by which a free people will be governed and the public culture they share. The dialogic ethic underlying this claim means that protection of active engagement of religious believers in public life, not privatization of religion, is part of the substantive meaning of the right to religious freedom. Equally important, it also means that such engagement in public life should be conducted with deep respect for those who hold differing beliefs. Thus believers should ‘at all times refrain from any manner of action which might seem to carry a hint of coercion.’ Persuasion through reasonable discourse is the proper mode of public participation by religious believers, especially when they seek to influence law or public policy.”[1]
[1] Hollenbach, David, SJ. The Global Face of Public Faith: Politics, Human rights, and Christian Ethics p. 14
-- ERIC SWANSON, Director at Leadership Network
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