Looking Back: Enduring Song

 Welcome to Spiritual Journey Thursday. Here you will find a group of authors and poets who write monthly about spiritual matters. You are welcome to write your own response and join in. I'm hosting today so you will find links to other posts in today's comments. Our prompt is about looking into the past for something that has shaped or inspired our current spiritual practice or outlook. 

When I was a child, my family attended a lovely little church. Every Sunday we sang a call-and-response liturgy which became very natural to me and which included these words from Psalm 51:

Create in me a clean heart, O God

and renew a right spirit within me

cast me not away from thy presence

and take not thy Holy Spirit from me.

Restore unto me

the joy of thy salvation

and uphold me with thy free spirit.

These words are inscribed on my heart and in my head. They come to me unbidden, and have become some of my favorite verses. My current church does not practice a musical liturgy, and I sometimes miss it. For me, there is value in the repetition of these words. Over time they have grown in meaning as they were repeated and reconsidered. I find that now, in my grandmother years, the music and words come to me as both a comfort and a strength. 

Words and music hold immense power. They move us to action or bring us to tears. I've put some of my favorite prayers, scripture and quotes on my walls and over my desk. I like being surrounded with words that lift me up and orient me spiritually.

I hope you have found, or will find, words/songs/psalms that take on deep meaning, that you can fall back on as touchstones. I hope they bring you strength, joy, courage and peace.  

Many blessings, and thanks for reading. 

A Song of Everyday Miracles

Thanks to Bob Hamera for hosting this month.  You can read about two miracles in his life HERE. Look through his comment section to find links to others in this group. Bob provided our prompt this month, to write about everyday miracles.  

Do you experience miracles in your life? I find miracles through my life experiences, and also through the books that come my way. Frederick Buechner, Kathleen Norris, and Madeline L'Engle were authors who spoke to me in small miracles. Also Sigurd Olson. 

Right now, Jennifer Ackerman's What an Owl Knows is on my reading table. It isn't exactly spiritual, but it does celebrate the many aspects of owls. And owls are one of God's miracles.

We saw a little saw-whet owl sitting on a wire just outside our window in one of our earliest apartments in Minneapolis. It was a cute little thing, no bigger than a robin, and we got a very good look at it. It didn't mind being out during the daylight hours, sheltered as it was between our duplex and the hill full of trees just behind. How lucky to be visited by such a creature.

Thanks to Cornell Lab

Later, walking in her Minneapolis neighborhood with my sister Marion, an owl flew just over my head. To be honest, I missed this encounter altogether, but Marion exclaimed and ducked on my behalf. 

My most memorable owl sighting was in Omaha, visiting my niece Becky.

Just before dusk we began to hear an owl, so we walked into the wooded area to see if we could find it.  No more than twenty steps and there it was, perched on a low branch: a great horned owl! What a gorgeous creature. We stood and stared for a long time, and the owl stared back. After a while we went back in the house and then into the woods again, and the owl was still there. It seemed to be communicating with another owl a short distance away, which we couldn't find. We thought the adult might have been shadowing a fledgling to be sure it was safe.

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/great_horned_owl

Now Ackerman's book brings me back to this memory, and teaches me about owls. The vocalizations of owls, for one thing, are much more varied and interesting than I understood. Did you know that owls don't just hoot, they shriek, yap, chitter, squeal, squawk, warble and wail plaintively?  Among great horned owls, the hoot is distinct from one individual to another. The number of notes can differ, and the spacing between hoots can change from one great horned owl to another. Did you know a nesting great horned owl will produce a broken-wing display when threatened? Fascinating!

Check out this little video of owl calls:

https://www.audubon.org/news/learn-identify-five-owls-their-calls

Communing with nature centers me and brings me peace. Looking into the eyes of an owl is an exciting and extraordinary experience. And consider that there is always more to learn, and that we as humans hunger for learning. These to me are miraculous.  

I believe the world is full of more miracles than we can imagine. Today it may be owls, but who knows what it will be tomorrow? 

Perhaps the miracle of surprise.

Have a wonderful, miraculous month. The world is waking up. Don't miss it!  

A Waking Song

It's early January and our Spiritual Journey group has the habit of choosing One Little Word (OLW) as a guide for the year. Choosing the word can be an arduous journey in itself. I notice that several of us have considered a particular word, decided to look further, but ended up coming back to the first word. I'm in that camp this year.

I've been waking from sleep with songs in my head. A dream may be vividly playing in color, random and surprising, but usually behind it is a song. It may be a song I've most recently sung in choir, but sometimes it's a song from childhood, a song I haven't heard in years. It doesn't matter where they come from or how much of the tune I remember, it's playing back there in my subconscious. How wonderful that we have this gift of song, given to so few creatures on earth. 

My OLW for 2024 will be SONG.  Songs express a multitude of emotions, rhythms, attitudes, voices, and volumes. I will follow them through the year. 

Once upon a time, when women were birds,

there was the simple understanding that

to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk

was to heal the world through joy.

The birds still remember

what we have forgotten,

that the world is meant to be

celebrated.

- Terry Tempest Williams

The above image and verse speak to me strongly. Certainly our world can use healing through joy. Certainly we need reminding. The poem also embraces a myth mentioned in To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey, in which native Alaskan women can change into birds. I highly recommend this book if you have not read it. 

My best wishes to all of you for 2024. May you find a song in your heart and a dance in your step. 

My thanks to Margaret Simon for supplying us with the beautiful new logo found at the top of this post, and for organizing this group and hosting us this month. 

Hope is the Thing that Sings

I know it has been a very very rough week. I have friends and relatives in Minneapolis and lived there myself for 15 years. And now across the country... My prayers are with you all. I hope that my confession below will not add to your load, but offer a glimmer of hope in words and song.

I heard this week that our church services, which have been virtual since mid-March, will continue to be virtual, at least for the next month or so. I can live with that. But then I heard that even when we come back to worship, we will not be singing. Why? Because of the possible spread of pathogens. Because when we sing, we breath deeply and project air from the bottom of our lungs, and that air can be filled with our germs.

I love singing. I've been in choir for many years. I don't really know how many, but probably around 25. It isn't that I'm a good singer, it's that singing is so good for me. I hear the harmonies, I challenge myself with the notes and rhythms, and I internalize the words. To quote St. Augustine:

I've listened to music all during the quarantine, but it does not fill the need to sing in choir. Reading and practicing music requires learning and a sense of beauty and challenge and brain twisting all at the same time. My words cannot fully do it justice. But in choir I hear the beauty. I am part of the beauty. And I love the beauty. And I love the sense of worshipful camaraderie there also. Of all the activities I take part in, choir is the most fulfilling.

So in the midst of the everything else, I think this moment in time, more than many others, needs singing. Maybe others feel as I do. Maybe we can find a way to make this work. Certainly I don't want to spread disease, but I do want singing. There was an attempt early on to make a virtual choir, but it was dropped and quite frankly I was glad. It would not work for me. I need to be with strong voices that buoy me up. Strong voices encourage me, in the truest sense of the word, and I will work toward making that happen.

All this is a very roundabout way of saying that I have hope, and music is part of the reason that I do. The words of the song below express my feelings quite well. This hymn was written by Robert Lowry in 1869.  Here are the original words:

My life flows on in endless song;

Above earth's lamentation,

I hear the sweet, tho' far-off hymn

That hails a new creation;

Thro' all the tumult and the strife

I hear the music ringing;

It finds an echo in my soul—

How can I keep from singing?

What tho' my joys and comforts die?

The Lord my Saviour liveth;

What tho' the darkness gather round?

Songs in the night he giveth.

No storm can shake my inmost calm

While to that refuge clinging;

Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth,

How can I keep from singing?

I lift my eyes; the cloud grows thin;

I see the blue above it;

And day by day this pathway smooths,

Since first I learned to love it,

The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart,

A fountain ever springing;

All things are mine since I am his—

How can I keep from singing?

Here's a virtual choir from NYC singing it... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLPP3XmYxXg

The words have been modified by many people and for various reasons, so you can find many versions here and there. I first learned it from a Pete Seeger recording years ago. I especially love the first two verses...  perfect for today. 

My life flows on in endless song
Above Earth's lamentation
I hear the real, though far off hymn
That hails the new creation
Above the tumult and the strife
I hear the music ringing;
It sounds an echo in my soul
How can I keep from singing?

What though the tempest loudly roars
I hear the truth, it liveth
What though the darkness round me close
Songs in the night it giveth
No storm can shake my inmost calm
While to that rock I'm clinging
Since love is lord of Heaven and Earth
How can I keep from singing?

When tyrants tremble, sick with fear
And hear their death-knell ringing
When friends rejoice both far and near
How can I keep from singing?
In prison cell and dungeon vile
Our thoughts to them are winging
When friends by shame are undefiled
How can I keep from singing?

My thanks to you for joining me today, and thanks to Ruth Hersey for hosting. Click the link below to read her wonderful blog about hope, and God coming into deep waters.