It is the willingness to sing
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- Created on Sunday, 22 May 2011 01:00
- Written by Beth Norton
{player 2011-05-22-11am-ehn-reflection.mp3}
It is the willingness to sing
That surprises me:
Out of tune,
We drag the organist along
And sing, knowing we can’t
And our quite ordinary voices
Carry us over. . .
Now, we are changed
Making a noise greater than ourselves . . .
Kathleen Norris’ words come back to me each fall, when what I have come to call “The September Miracle” happens. It’s that first Wednesday choir practice and several dozen quite ordinary people walk through that door, willing to sing, most with admittedly “quite ordinary voices.” We come together and sing, making a beautiful noise that is so much greater than any one of us could make alone. Even after 17 years, it never fails to move and amaze me.
We celebrate this today – what the music speaks to, or rather “sings” to. The power of “choiring” to transform us from an assembly of ordinary individuals with ordinary voices into a choir – or a congregation. That, I think is a goal of worship and of singing. It might be what brought you to this congregation: making a noise greater than ourselves.
As Gary mentioned, we’ve gotten into a rhythm here on Lexington Road on Monday mornings these last couple of decades from September to June. These days it’s Gary, Jenny, Margie, Pam, Craig, Faith and I; preachers, teachers, musicians. We’ve got this conversation going with one another and with you, the congregation. We talk about what’s happened, what’s coming, what’s in our hearts: Homecoming, All Souls, Divali, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Solstice, Christmas, Passover, Easter. Grief. Love. Loss. Faith. Forgiveness. Doubt. Going out into the world, having courage, holding on to what is good. There is scripture, the newspaper, poetry, prayer and music. All of these “gossamer threads,” as Gary has called them, woven week after week into worship. Gossamer threads, filaments which are sometimes invisible, even to us, until they are revealed by grace in the light of Sunday morning. It is a conversation I cherish. I have learned so much from Gary and these colleagues.
And yes, we do laugh when you come up to us and say “the music and the sermon went so well together” – as if it were an accident. I particularly love it when you say, “That song made me cry,” or, “This hymn means so much to me.” This is what the music part of the conversation is meant to do – to open hearts to receive the gift of words so skillfully and lovingly written; to till the soil of our minds so that seeds of wisdom might take root and grow; to lift us out of the ordinary and carry us over to moments of transcendence.
When Gary and I decided to celebrate this alchemy of music and word today, I chose a number of songs from the choir’s repertoire that particularly expressed the power of singing – either by their words, or by their wordlessness. The choir voted on them; the songs you hear today are the top six choices. Often it’s just too hard to write or speak about singing and what it means – better to just sing. But two of the texts from these songs get it just right for me.
Siegfried Sassoon’s poem “Everyone Sang” is the text to the beautiful anthem that began this service. “Everyone Suddenly Burst out Singing” - a virtually unanimous choice for the choir. Sassoon was a decorated infantry officer during the early years of World War I. Even while on active duty, he expressed an ardent pacifism. His often bitter and satirical poetry vividly portrays the horror of war. But some of it is mystical:
Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted
And beauty came like the setting sun
My heart was shaken with tears
And horror drifted away.
O, but everyone was a bird
And the song was wordless
The singing will never be done.
Sassoon’s lines have an elegiac quality coupled with transcendence and hope. Perhaps the birds are the souls of the many war dead. Perhaps they are our own souls, lifted and freed by the power of our “quite ordinary voices” singing. When the choir sings that line, I imagine we are all lifted like those birds. . . ”changed, making a noise greater than ourselves.”
And then there’s this last anthem. Steven Sametz’ “I Have Had Singing” captures, for me, the essential gift of singing for an individual and a community. Sametz paraphrased the reminiscence of Fred Mitchell, a character in Ronald Blythe’s Akenfield : Portrait of an English Village, a book which portrays life in a tiny Suffolk village during the 1960’s.
As a young man, Fred’s strong body and all his future prospects were ruined in a farming accident and he spent his adult life on crutches, adding physical hardship to an already hardscrabble existence. Now in his 80’s, he looks back on this difficult life:
“. . . I never did any playing in all my life,” he says. “There was nothing in my childhood, only work. I never had pleasure. One day a year I went to Felixstowe along with the chapel women and children and that was my pleasure.
But I have forgotten one thing – the singing. There was such a lot of singing in the villages then, and this was my pleasure, too. Boys sang in the fields, and at night we all met at the Forge and sang. The chapels were full of singing. When the first war came, it was singing, singing all the time. So I lie; I have had pleasure. I have had singing.”
And so let us have singing: With Fred Mitchell, with Siegfried Sassoon, with Kathleen Norris and Anne Lamotte - with Gary. Let us have singing to strengthen and celebrate our community, let our singing open our hearts and allow us together to transcend our ordinary, sometimes difficult existence. Let it carry us over our physical limitations and emotional barriers to make a noise greater than ourselves.
How can we keep from singing? “Gary’s favorite Hymn” No. 108.
Sources
“Mrs. Schneider in Church” – Kathleen Norris
“Everyone Sang” – Siegfried Sassoon
Ackenfield: Portrait of an English Village – Ronald Blythe