Sometimes in Church

The Windhover, a publication of Mary Hardin-Baylor, has recently published an essay of mine entitled "Sometimes in Church." You can order a copy of The Windhover here and also see excerpts from the issue, including my essay, in Volume 24.2.

I wrote this essay before COVID-19 kept us from regularly meeting together in church, and rereading it has brought me back to a former time--before extra spaces between seats, before masks, before church-on-the-living room couch.

I miss singing in church and singing with fervor. Not just any song, although I do love singing Les Miserables and LaLa Land songs while Elisabeth plays them on the piano, and you'd be surprised at how many Stevenses can start belting songs from Frozen 2 all together.

I miss congregational singing. Yes, we sing along with the online church service, and that is very good. But it is not the same. I look forward, and with hope, to the time when we can all join in congregational singing again, without fear of infection, or unintentional spread of disease, without masks or hindrance.

"Song," writes Eugene Peterson, "is heightened speech. The heightening does not come through the addition of more words or turning up the volume of the words but by singing the words. So what does the singing do? It obviously does not add to the meaning, at least the objective, dictionary meaning. Something else is going on and that something eludes precise accounting. Song does not explain, it expresses; it gives witness to the trans-literal. Song is more than words and there are no words to convey what that 'more' is precisely. Song is one of the two ways (silence is the other) of giving witness to the transcendent."

Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

Even as I long for a return to normalcy, I know that God is praised in song in so many beautiful diverse ways. I think of the way churches in so many cities have joined together virtually to sing "The Blessing"--New York, Pittsburgh and more. And then there are times of prayer when song erupts, because it simply has to. So yes, song, as Peterson writes, continues and will continue to give witness to the transcendent.

I'm quite excited that The Windhover has chosen my piece for their August issue. I hope you enjoy it.

Comments

Good Morning An der Wietze

(I don't have pictures to fit this topic, so these will have to do for now!) Today is Tuesday. John’s alarm rang at 5:20 or so, and he pushed snooze as usual. When it rang the second time, we heard another sound after he turned it off--Henry crying for us. He has been having a hard time getting to sleep lately, and wakes up easily in the morning. We’ve tried a towel at the bottom of the door to hide the light, and even stuffed the keyhole with tissue paper. He still manages to hear something. John turned on Henry’s cd again and tucked him in and told him he could get up when the CD ended, which would be about an hour. I slept for a few more minutes, then got up to start the day. I have not adjusted to coffee here yet. For a while we had a good Starbucks stash, and there is a Starbucks by the main train station in Hannover, but it is so expensive. I thought I should try out some different kinds here. A new friend of mine who is German and lived in California for 20 years...

Bonn Ami

Beethoven in Bonn On Saturday we saw a little bit of Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. In the morning we visited the Beethoven House where Beethoven was born in 1770. We walked around the tiny house for almost two hours, listening to our audio guides. Our son, Mr. Numbers, made sure he listened to every track on his guide, all 32. Elisabeth stopped periodically to draw pictures: the organ Beethoven played in a nearby church, two of the pianos he owned. She said she wanted to go home and write music. I was moved by the account, in Beethoven’s own words, of his hearing loss and his intense inner struggle. We heard portions of his 5th and 9th symphonies as he would’ve heard them at the time they were first performed. It was a barely audible muffled sound. Though Beethoven wanted to take his own life, he felt he could not, because of his burning desire to to the work he had to do, to write the music that was in his...

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

I first heard Bryan Stevenson, defense attorney and founder of Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) on a podcast with Oprah Winfrey . I felt like I was sitting in a living room talking with a friend. I was immediately grateful for the stories Bryan told and for the honesty with which he told them. I was humbled. Growing up, I had put people in boxes--in categories in my head--if you're in jail it's because you're a bad person. If you do drugs, you must be a bad person. But when I learned about my older brother's drug and alcohol addiction and how that changed his life, the boxes I put people in began to shift and crumble, and that shifting has changed my life. Listening to Bryan Stevenson continued to shift the boxes--why are some people on death row, why are so many of them black and brown. Why are so many of them from impoverished backgrounds. Just Mercy tells the story of how Bryan Stevenson founded Equal Justice Initiative to provide legal representation for those w...

Laurel Elisabeth Stevens

Search This Blog