Divine Sound: A Cross-Cultural Phenomenon in the Aftermath of 9/11

Introduction: A Distinct Sound Heard in Memorial Park after 9/11

In “‘Send Thou Me’: God’s Weeping and the Sanctification of Ground Zero,” Kimberley Christine Patton and John Stratton Hawley interview Reverend Betsee Parker, an Episcopalian priest who spent significant time at Ground Zero and the Bellevue Hospital’s morgue in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy.^[1] In the interview, Parker describes a chilling experience that often leaves readers awestruck and inundated with questions. During one of Parker’s early morning walks through Memorial Park in the first few days after the towers fell, she audibly hears this “very frightening deep moaning sound.”^[2] It was a sound that she had never heard before but one that would leave a lasting impression on her. She describes the sound as “a very low drone,” which reminded her of a primeval Eastern musical instrument with “a very deep vibrating resonance,” and “a primitive, deep, ancient, penetrating sound.”^[3] In recalling her experience, she says that the sound was so deep that “to hear it was actually a physical experience, because you could almost feel your ribcage [sic] vibrating.”^[4] The sound was heard on more than one occasion by Parker and others. A disaster mortician, some Jewish volunteers, and several police officers (faiths unknown) also claimed to have heard this deep moaning reverberation. Parker told Patton and Hawley that when she heard the sound, she knew instantly that it was “God weeping.”^[5] The mortician, a woman of Catholic faith who also heard this sound, came to Parker asking Parker not to deem her crazy and said, “You know I heard God crying down here today—I know I did…I’ve never heard it and I know I heard it.”^[6] Considering the descriptive language that Parker employs to explain the sound, and the fact that people from multiple faith traditions, and possibly some with no faith at all, heard this auditory phenomenon, could this audible frequency be understood as an eternal presence, or a universal echo that crosses into the religious language of some Eastern and Western traditions?

Placing Parker’s experience of audibly hearing a deeply low reverberating frequency alongside the concept of sound from the Hebrew Old Testament and Hinduism’s Vedas and Upanishads, this paper suggests that the sound Parker and others heard in the post 9/11 incident resonates with primordial divine presences that are found within the ancient Hebrew and Hindu traditions, and which also extends out to the vast web of interconnections that mark human life and experience in the world.

Sound as Invisible Presence

Within the interreligious dialogue between Parker, Patton, and Hawley, Parker notes that soon after she arrived at Ground Zero, she recognized the need for there to be a multifaith team present to honor the diverse religious faiths of both the living and the dead. Though she herself was a Chaplain of the Christian faith and there were several clergymen on the scene, Parker insisted that her role was to be about the people, to bless the bodies, and not so much her religious doctrine. She even said, “sometimes it’s important to erase yourself in order to be more visible.”^[7] Around the same time that Parker made herself invisible to be a visible presence, an invisible presence was made visible through an audible sound.

Philosophers Walter J. Ong and Don Idhe both argue that though sound is invisible, there is a certain physical presence behind the sound itself.^[8] Ong, a Jesuit priest of the Christian faith, claims that when there is religious awareness and when “sacred times and sacred spaces” are regarded, a “divine presence irrupts into time and space and ‘inhabits’ them.”^[9] Ong goes on to say that sound signifies action, it unites people, and in more ancient cultures, sound is likened to voices, e.g., thunder as a manifestation of a divine presence. Idhe stresses that “sound has its own ‘bodily presence’” and that it “takes on more than usual significance against a background of darkness.”^[10] For Idhe, a dark scene can become the “visual background for the presence of God in sound.”^[11] Considering the deep darkness that surrounded the 9/11 tragedy and Parker’s insistence on uniting people from multiple religious faiths, the sound heard by Parker and several first responders can be understood as an invisible presence that made itself visible through sound.

Divine Sound in the Old Testament and Hebrew Tradition

Parker’s and the disaster mortician’s religious imagination of this audible phenomenon, which characterized it in the context of God weeping or crying, relates to similar depictions from the Hebrew Old Testament. Genesis 3 presents a story of humanity experiencing a kind of death by partaking of something they were never intended to. After eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve hear a sound rumbling through the ground, which they understand to be the sound of God walking.

And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”^[12]

The term “sound” in this verse, according to the Hebrew lexicon, is קוֹל )qol( denoting “voice, cry, call, sound, noise, thunder, lament, weeping, speech, outcry, [or] the bleating of an animal.”^[13] Although the term is used throughout the Old Testament with diverse meanings, קוֹל is often used to connote the voice of God. Similarly, the term “called” (the Lord God called) is קָרָא )qara( and is depicted as crying out in a loud voice.^[14] The term “cool” (in the cool of the day) is רוּחַ (ruach) meaning breath, wind, or spirit signifying moisture.^[15] While Genesis 3:8 and 3:9 do not directly state that God wept over Adam and Eve’s self-annihilation, after further exegetical analysis of these verses and specifically the words “sound,” “cool,” and “call,” it can be argued that the sound of God that the couple heard was that of God weeping, especially since this concept is implicitly and explicitly stated in the Bible. Furthermore, when God called out to the couple this was not God merely speaking but rather a cry of passion for his beloved. Thus, the garden story raises questions concerning the metaphorical or literal interpretations as to whether God or a primordial divine presence has compassion or sheds tears over what humanity does to itself.^[16]

The Old Testament book of Jeremiah provides another lens through which we can investigate the idea of God weeping in Memorial Park in the aftermath of 9/11. Through a comparative study examining the relationship between science and theology and an exegetical analysis of Jeremiah, David A. Bosworth places God weeping for Israel in the context of attachment theory emphasizing the parent-child bond between divinity and humanity.^[17] While several chapters and verses within Jeremiah signify God weeping for Israel, Bosworth highlights Jeremiah 48:32 where Yahweh also weeps for those outside the Israelite and Judaic communities. According to Bosworth, while the Christian tradition upholds the “apatheia of the divine,” meaning the impassibility of God, some theologians acknowledge the language of divine pathos in the Old Testament.^[18] However, Bosworth argues that “traditionally, anthropomorphic language about God has been understood in a metaphorical or analogical sense rather than as literal truth”; that God can literally have emotions or weep for creation.^[19] When Patton asked Parker why God was weeping, Parker responded “my sense was that [it was because] those whom he loved the dearest had been ravaged and hated and destroyed by those whom he loved the dearest.”^[20]

Some theologians and philosophers have interpreted the voice of God in the Old Testament as signifying different forms of divine manifestations. From an etymological perspective, Jeffrey Niehaus finds that the words within Genesis 3:8, especially קוֹל, have Akkadian roots suggesting a theophanic storm.^[21] Niehaus proposes an interpretation of the sound of God walking as that of natural phenomena, thunder, and not the literal voice of Yahweh.^[22] L. H. Brockington provides a metaphorical analysis of audition in the Hebrew Bible. He argues that hearing God was critical in the Hebrew experience as it constituted the awareness of the reality of God’s presence. Like Niehaus, Brockington investigates Genesis 3 and other verses concerning the sound or voice of God. He finds that the Hebrew literature records human beings hearing God’s active presence moving about the earth.^[23] Through a close reading of 1 Kings 19, in which the prophet Elijah hears the sound of God in a still small voice דַקָּה דְּמָמָה קוֹל (demamah daq qol), Brockington asserts that the phrase can be understood as “a low moaning sound.”^[24] Let us recall that Parker described the audible sound of God weeping as a “very low drone” and “a frightening deep moaning sound.”^[25]

Divine Sound in the Hindu Tradition and Texts

The descriptions of the sound heard in the 9/11 incident also resonate with the religious language of the Hindu tradition. Parker characterized the audible sound of God weeping as a “primitive, ancient, deep, penetrating sound” that had a “vibrating resonance” that reminded her of an ancient Eastern musical instrument.^[26] Through a theological and philosophical approach, Guy Beck’s work investigates the sonic realm in Hinduism and finds that sound is a common thread in the Hindu experience.^[27] Beck argues that sound, also known as sacred sound in the Hindu tradition, is a “central mystery” and a numinous expression.^[28] He emphasizes that sound is not only built within Hinduism’s structure but is a “living, universal truth,” that “most fully characterizes or represents the ineffable and irreducible character of the divine.”^[29] Because sound can be understood through several Sanskrit expressions, Beck breaks down the concept of sound into the words sabda, nada, sruti, and vak, from the ancient Vedic tradition and later introduced in the Upanishadic tradition.^[30] According to Beck, sabda is a more generalized and widespread use of the word sound but can be defined as “sound, noise, voice, tone, note, word, speech, language, the sacred syllable Om, verbal communication or testimony, oral tradition, verbal authority or evidence.”^[31] Some of these definitions resemble קוֹל, the Hebrew word for sound. Beck also points out that sabda denotes a “meaning bearing,” “linguistic,” and “vocal sound.”^[32] Nada is referenced as a voiced, musical sound.^[33] Sruti is considered that which is seen and heard and, according to Beck, is the “auditory character” of the eternal Vedic truth that was revealed to deeply intuitive poets who were in touch with “Supreme Reality.”^[34]

In the Vedic literature the term vak is used in multiple dimensions including an eternal incomprehensible utterance, thunder, and became associated with the word Brahman (Ultimate Reality).^[35] Beck tells us that Vedic sound focuses on divine speech as vak.^[36] He also asserts that later in the Hindu philosophical literature and the Upanishads, sacred sound became known as Sabda-Brahman (Sonic Absolute) and was superseded by Nada-Brahman (Voiced Absolute), which is “identified with the notion of a primordial sound or vibration existing before the creation of the universe and simultaneously residing within the human body.”^[37] During the interview when Parker recalled hearing the sound, she mentioned that the sound was a physical experience, one with such deep registers that it seemingly vibrated her rib cage.^[38] She claims that when she heard the sound God did not speak directly to her, but in hearing the sound at length and sitting with it, the depth of God’s love for creation was revealed to her; a love “beyond any depth” she had ever felt.^[39]

Like Beck, C. Mackenzie Brown and Jan Gonda highlight the vibratory elements in the Hindu concept of sacred sound.^[40] Through a historical analysis, Brown investigates the oral and written attributes of Vedic word as an eternal and powerful vibration stemming from the ancient Hindu tradition and later into the Puranic tradition. Brown associates sacred sound with mantras and claims that the sacredness behind Vedic sound is not only emphasized, but the sounds are such powerful vibrations that they produce “real effects in the universe.”^[41] For Beck, mantras are a kind of “applied vak.”^[42] Gonda’s work employs a linguistic methodology emphasizing the Indian mantras from Hindu antiquity to modernity.^[43] Gonda argues that mantras are a form of a deity. He points out that “the Eternal brahman exists in its form as sound-brahman (Sabda-brahman),” which is the substance of all mantras, and from Sabda-brahman “the whole universe proceeds.”^[44] In other words, Sabda-brahman is the divine form of sound, it is a vibratory frequency that is also a “spiritual sound.”^[45] The explanations and interpretations from Beck, Brown, and Gonda affirm that Hinduism contains references to many forms of divine sound that resemble the people’s description of the deep vibratory sound at Ground Zero as well as God weeping or lamenting as demonstrated in the Bible, even though the Hindu concept of sacred sound does not signify that of a deity crying.

A Primordial Universal Sound?

What can the possible explanation be for all these connections concerning the idea of divine sound between the ancient Hebrew and Hindu traditions and this audible vibratory resonance that was experienced by some of the people working the horrific scene at Ground Zero, Memorial Park, and the Bellevue morgue? Though Parker represents the Christian faith tradition, she recognized during those early crucial moments after the towers crashed to the ground that religious doctrines and religious rules did not or could not apply.^[46] Francis Weller, a psychotherapist that centers his work on grief and healing, says, “there is no isolated self stranded in the cosmos; we are participants in an entwined and entangled net of connections with a continuous exchange of light, air, gravity, thought, color, sound, all coalescing in the elegant dance that is our shared life.”^[47] Divine sound, characterized in the Old Testament as the voice of God or in Hinduism as Sabda-Brahman or Nada-Brahman, is also not isolated to one specific religious tradition. Rather, experiencing such a sound, whether internal or external, points to the intersubjectivity embedded within human life and their interactions in the world.

From Parker’s interfaith perspective and the ideologies from religious thinkers within this present work, a primordial transcendent and eternal divine presence, one beyond the religious doctrines of Christianity, the Hebrew tradition, the Hindu tradition, as well as others not mentioned in this paper, made its presence known through sound. That sound broke through the barriers of tradition, dogmas, and individuals’ beliefs, not to underestimate or undermine any one tradition but to accentuate the possibility of something sacred that has existed prior to the creation of the universe, as Beck suggests, including before the formations of religious doctrines.^[48] Perhaps the Hebrew and Hindu religious traditions help us understand the vast incomprehensibility of this infinite presence, as described by Ong, that irrupted into the time and space of the 9/11 incident. Weller asserts that “the earth [itself] is a revelation” and that “we are most alive at the threshold between loss and revelation; every loss ultimately opens the way for a new encounter.”^[49]

Comparing sound as a cosmic phenomenon from the Hindu religious experience to that of the Hebrew religious experience as well as the characterization of God weeping, according to Parker, the mortician, and the Old Testament texts, this audible sound and presence can be understood as a divine, universal lamentation, a deep primordial outcry, for all human beings suffering loss amid a great calamity. If we are all participants in the cosmos, as Weller suggests, then destroying ourselves in a sense could affect this presence, and therefore why would that presence not deeply vibrate and penetrate the atmosphere? Why would that presence not weep, wail, and cry out after the immense grief surrounding the 9/11 attack? Perhaps this same presence laughs when we laugh or leaps for joy when humanity puts their differences aside and truly loves one another, respects one another, helps each other, and works together.

Conclusion: Divine Sound as a Cross-Cultural Phenomenon

It is unknown whether the ancient Hindu and Hebrew people literally and audibly heard a divine presence or if their religious language was merely symbolic. It is also unknown if their religious experiences were always due to loss, but we do know that they experienced sound as revelation, whether internal or external, silently intuitive, or physically and audibly reverberating. What we also know is that several people responding to unimaginable crises in the days following the massive darkness of the 9/11 tragedy encountered the phenomenon of an audible presence. While those of one religious tradition may describe this auditory phenomenon as the voice of God or God weeping, those of another religious tradition may describe it as Sabda-Brahman or Nada-Brahman, universal truth, and a primordial vibration of the divine and the infinite. Albeit it is quite possible that both religious traditions and Parker’s account of her experience, as diverse as they are, may be describing a cross-cultural phenomenon of a divine presence that made itself known through sound.^[50]