How Can I Keep from Singing?

"My life flows on in endless song above earth's lamentation..." These words speak so personally to me.

Regularly called on to work with adolescents, I ask them to collaborate, to think, to feel deeply and to create something with their time and the music we sing together.  Today's culture does not always expect this of young people.  Robert Lowry writes in the last verse, "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." This text speaks so simply of those early days and this new arrangement is for these singers. 

I dedicated this piece to Dione Peterson, my high school choir director from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, who now lives a few miles down the road. She has inspired generations of young people to sing for theirwhole lives and gave them the tools to do it. She helped us learn to love it.

Dione also taught me one of the most powerful lessons about choir that took me a while to learn: the most important part about singing together is the together part. As a high school student, I could never figure out why some others were in choir--they just goofed around and got in trouble. Dione helped me understand that choir was the one place that all of the tumult and strife in the rest of their their lives was silent. It was a place where everyone could belong.

One of my graduating college seniors who did not sing in her junior year sent these words to me yesterday: "What I realized was that I missed the honest community of choir, the openness of the members, the daily spiritual moments, the fulfillment I only receive from making music.  Chapel Choir is a time and space where I know our walls are stripped down, moving music will be made, and we will come together as one."

Thank you Dione.  How can I keep from singing?

Your Little Ones, Dear Lord

Baby Elliot.

Our dear friends wished for him, and planned for him, and prepared their lives for him.  For years.  And as the time for him got closer and closer we were all ready to meet him.  Baby Elliot was due to arrive in February of 2013 and we were so thrilled for his parents.

So in early December of 2012, when Christopher and I recieved an email from his mommy and daddy, the news was tense and unexpected.  Elliot was not going to wait until his due date.  He was coming soon.  A little bit too soon.  Such a tiny boy.  

"Is there anything you two need?  What can we do?"  

"Not a thing," was the reply.  "It's out of our hands now.  They are getting good care.  The medicine is working.  They are trying to keep him from being born as long as possible."  

As the days went by the news got better.  He was little, but he was still inside mom.  His lungs were growing and he was still inside.  They were getting ready for him and he was still inside.  I told Christopher that I was sending a box to the expectant and fragile mommy with silly things like magazines and cookies because I didn't know what else to do.  I wanted to send her healing and hugs.  I wanted to send her days and weeks and time for that little boy to get just a little bit bigger.  And that's when I heard the piano.

"What are you doing down there?" I called to Christopher.

"I'm writing a piece for Elliot because he is so little and so loved and I don't know what else to do."

And so, over the next few days, Elliot and his mommy stayed the same.  She waited.  He stayed inside.  And this was good.  Good enough.  And the notes came along.  Then the notes matched with words.  Revision after revision.  We all waited.

Just one week after we heard the news of Elliot's plan to arrive nearly three months ahead of schedule, Christopher declared,

"I think it's finished.  I'm going to go to my office for awhile before church this morning so I can get it engraved and have it ready for Elliot.  I want it to be ready when he comes."

About an hour later, while Chrisopher was in church, I recieved an email from Elliot's daddy.  Little Elliot had passed away.

Your song was ready little one.  He finished it for you that morning because somehow he knew it needed to be ready.

With songs we hasten you to greet, little one.

We will hold you in our hearts, if not our arms, little one.

Music binds us.  It is born of people and events and circumstances and it directly links us to the ones we love.