Love is the Song
I met with a family recently, to plan the funeral of a loved one. As they spoke with me about the choice of songs to sing, I could hear, almost tangibly touch, their connection to those with whom they have sung these hymns through their lifetimes.
There was anticipation for how the singing of these hymns today would evoke memories, swell hearts, and even help us feel the presence of the one we honoured that moment, and others before her, with us as we sing.
To sing uses our whole being, which is why it is such a vital part of the work we do as a community of faith. Our faithfulness demands our whole being.
Singing is physical, of course, lungs and vocal cords, muscles and bones and breath combining to make our voice and create our part in the song. Singing involves our cognition, following the melody, understanding the words – hymns of our faith invite us to consider and articulate ideas about who is God and who are we; to reflect on the stories of God and God’s people through time; to sing the Song of Holy One and understand how it invites transformation of our living and being as we align ourselves with the Way of Wisdom. Singing engages our soulfulness in this way, too: our spirits meeting with Holy Spirit in moments of musical mystery and wonder. In our congregation, we often sing adaptations of familiar hymns, as I and others listen to those that gather for worship today, and how we give expression to Divine mystery, wonder, redemption and restoration. For what we sing not only expresses, but shapes, our ideas, and it is important to let the songs grow with us. We keep something of connection through familiar tunes, and ideas; and connect better with ourselves and our developing ideas through updated language, imagery, expression.
Singing, finally, engages our emotions. Emotions, which by the way are not to be feared or apologised for: emotions are human, are natural response to the world, are indeed interpretation of events and encounters that help us learn and grow and even keep us safe. When we sing, we do feel: in response to the music, the words, and the connections we make to where we have been when we have sung these words before, and with whom. Singing is belonging.
Singing weaves us together. When we sing together in congregation or sports stadium or choir, singing draws us together, forges us into one for a moment, or over a lifetime. In the case of a community of faith, this belonging, this weaving together, is love.
These songs we sing, the Sacred Song we sing with our lives, hold us together in love through our joy and grief, through life and death – nothing can separate us from Love, from Sacred Love.
When Love is the Song we sing, as I know it to be sung in this family, we find a depth to Love’s truths that hold us in our most difficult moments, when we need it most: through illness, separation, loss, even death. When love is the song we sing together, we find – as Paul wrote in another letter –
Patience and compassion
Endurance and courage
Grace and generosity
Peace
And
Hope
When I looked at this family and the part of the journey I’ve seen them take together these last years of their loved one’s life, and I see, I hear, I feel, the Song of Love. Which, for them I think, is how the funeral carried a mood of celebration through the grieving.
Love. Love weaves us together, and welcomes us home.
May we each find our place in the Song of Love.
Amen.
A few days after that funeral and its reflection on the Sacred Song of Love, I found myself again reflecting on the Song as we considered Paul and Silas, who are thrown in prison after liberating an enslaved girl from a possessing spirit, and thus greatly upsetting her masters and their opportunity for making money through her. (Acts 16:16–34)
God is the Song
Paul and Silas – when are they singing? It is before they are released from their chains; while they are still incarcerated in their prison cell. Paul and Silas sing with, and of, a different kind of liberation – to be set free into trust in the Holy Way, Wisdom that seems foolish, life that transcends death … aligning our selves with Holy One changes how we sit within the challenges we face:
so that we can wear colour and celebrate life and love even as we grieve at a funeral;
so that we can celebrate the healing of our inner being, finding peace, even as our bodies continue to struggle with ageing, or ill health;
so that we can sing of freedom from within the bondage of a prison cell;
we can sing on a cotton field as a slave – you’ve heard I’m sure, you’ve sung, gospel songs, defiant acclamation of a freedom these humans will not let other humans take from them …
aligning ourselves with the Sacred, however we name it, for I won’t make claims for others, however much I am convinced the Sacred Source of Life is a source of liberation means that:
humans can sing from Uluru with a statement of love and hope;
humans can sing from the slums of South Africa, as I have heard stories told of visitors from the Iona Community who found songs of hope – defiantly, joyfully even, freely, sung from within the bonds of poverty, illness, apartheid’s long shadow;
aligning ourselves, here in this community, with the Sacred we know through Wisdom Christ, Creator, Spirit, we can sing on Sorry Day, in Reconciliation Week, even as First Nations Peoples continue to strive for fuller liberation – liberation through their grief as Stolen Generations and parents and children of stolen children; liberation from poorer health and education outcomes, higher incarceration and death rates, than their Second Peoples neighbours – we can sing our hope for, our trust in, such liberation, and the freedom to sing while we all actively await the day.
The stories of Paul, Silas, the jailer and his family, and the slave girl, show us that liberation is complicated – it is rarely release from captivity into a life of ease. Every human Jesus healed had to rebuild their life, find new sources of income, reintegrate themselves into communities and families from which they had long been ostricised.
Freedom is complicated, and our freedom is incomplete – us, who know a high level of freedom, privilege – we are not free, until all are free.
And still we sing. For we are, even so, free: aligned with the Way of Holy One that liberates us into eternal life, Sacred Love, inner healing, peace, and evolving wholeness, so that we know that the limitations of earthly life do not bind us completely – to those limitations, we do not cede our freedom.
With Holy One, we are free enough to sing – and let me say that these songs will not necessarily always be songs of celebration and delight. We are free to sing our lament within the griefs and sorrows we experience; we are free to sing our protest against oppression and injustice we and our neighbours face; we are free to sing because the Song is God’s – the Song is God, and the Song sets us free.
The call of God in Christ that we heed, is a call to sing liberation with hope and defiance, with voice and action, in solidarity from our freedom for those who are not yet free. May we continue to be a community of faith who sing of liberation, for freedom, with our neighbours – for we are not truly free, until all are free. So how can we keep from singing?
and then we sang the hymn, How can I keep from singing? I love the version from Audrey Assad.
