What is the oldest musical instrument in existence? The VOICE of course!
And this is not only the human voice, but dogs, cats, frogs, elephants and most spectacularly: BIRDS! Many iva express themselves vocally and the Church of Infinite Dimensions rejoices in the wonderful variety of creative self expression that we hear in a healthy world.

Certainly bird calls are one of the great wonders of life in arda, but spectacular as they are, within a given species they are highly repetitive, and even though some species have a greater vocabulary than others, there is no voice in nature to compare with the richness, variety and creativity of the HUMAN voice!

The spoken voice is a tremendous thing of great power and utility, but for sheer beauty of expression you cannot go past the SINGING voice. A song has an entire extra artistic dimension added to the already excellent artistic expression of poetry, and that is: the dimension of MUSIC! When you combine these two arts you achieve perhaps the highest expression of the human soul that may be achieved. A great song can raise you up and make you see beyond yourself. It can reach into your heart and reach into your soul. It can communicate with a power that may reach someone where words alone might fail.

The power of song has been well known since before the dawn of history, and all the peoples of arda have an extensive repertoire of songs that they pull out for various occasions. The various churches of this world have been onto this from the beginning, and they all have books full of hymns to suit any given situation.

The Church Of Infinite Dimensions is no different in this regard, and it intends to build up its catalog as soon as it can. Using the text of traditional hymns is clearly out of the question, as:

• They all refer to a being that this Church considers non existent.
• They refer to events of legend as though they were events from history. Confusing and misleading, this kind of thing is basically lying.
• They generally adopt a groveling attitude that this Church considers insulting and inappropriate in the extreme.
• They generally ask this non-existent entity to solve their troubles for them, instead of standing up, taking responsibility on their own shoulders and fixing their problems themselves.

Their is nothing wrong with the musical side of the traditional religious canon of course, indeed, much of the greatest, most evocative music ever written in this world has a religious context¹. For this reason, it is the policy of this Church to reuse the best of the existing hymn melodies from other religions, and appropriate popular songs, and to simply change the words. This doesn't mean that this Church can't or won't produce its own music, whatever works best is what we are looking for.

It is a big job to produce a full hymn book, even using existing melodies, and one can expect this section of the website to grow slowly. Still, even a few is a start, and in time the book will be filled.