Monthly Archives: September 2016

A Tune for All Seasons

25 Sunday Sep 2016

Posted by in action, listening, open heart, peace, singing

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Some tunes seem to thread through my life. “Finlandia” by Jean Sibelius is one of them. I first knew it as a personal, contemplative song:

Be still my soul, the Lord is on thy side./Bear patiently the cross of grief and pain,/in all thy ways, God faithful will remain.

It comforted me, resourced and filled me when I felt very alone.

I then learned the tune as a rousing hymn to action:

We rest on Thee, our Shield and our Defender/ we go not forth alone against the foe./Strong in Thy strength and in Thy keeping tender/ we rest on Thee and in Thy name we go.

A call action in a military mode, in which my part of the community saw a need to defend ourselves and our beliefs against the enemies, waiting to attack us.

But we are in a different time, a more connected world, with much more expressed pain and rage, a much closer view of what is human behavior at its worst, and a continual call to imagining and being Christ’s peace in the world. So these words by Lloyd Stone and Georgia Harkness fill the tune today, my birthday, when I am in the process of recuperating from surgery, when I am given more confinement–but also more space–to actively and contemplatively give myself to the healing of this world in which I live, in which my children and grandchildren more and have their being, the world that God created, redeems and loves.

..hear my prayer, O God of all the nations, myself, I give thee, let thy will be done. 

His Eye Is On the Sparrow

04 Sunday Sep 2016

Posted by in presence, singing, waiting

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Sometimes the world narrows down to  just me and my present experience of the moment, even though my mind know about the infinite number of people of the world and the great capacity of the Creator who made it and who loves it. Undergoing surgery two weeks ago my only focus was my wholeness held by the Holy One, for the procedure, for the aftermath, for the recovery. And all those feel very long.

Yet this song keeps pealing through my body and heart. I learned it first from my mother, whom I remember singing it, tear streaming down her face as she cooked in a steaming hot kitchen, her heart bereft with some secret sorrow. Then I heard Ethel Waters sing it in the movie, “Member of the Wedding,” and later Mahalia Jackson, commanding complete attention in Royce Hall at UCLA. Not for a second did any of the singers forget the grief and care of the world,  but in the moment of singing, the microcosm of particular need to be held under the eye of God herself. echoing the Psalmist, as she prayed her personal prayer for healing and Presence was the trust-filled longing of her heart.

In my recovery, I am still hearing this song in my veins, muscles, nerves, bones. I have been “watched” by the Beloved, I am being healed by the Great Physician, I am being comforted by the Spirit, and in my heart I sing.