a chorus of humanity

March 19, 2017

Kansas City, Missouri

Sun filled the gallery windows and a clear blue sky surrounds us.  Budding trees and brick buildings are blurred through the glass. A train rumbles across the tracks and the streetcar comes to a creaking halt at its next stop. Runners zip through barren, Sunday morning city blocks and birds find fallen crumbs and peck at insects in patched of dirt. Inside, the guitarist strums the chords and our voices unite.

Before the first line is uttered, chills run through my body, connecting to the timeless words that span oceans and tongues. It leaves me shaken and in awe, time after time, as it did on my wedding day, when my dearest friend and her husband sang under a giant tree, next to a red barn.   You would know the song, Be thou my Vision, from a poem published in 1912. The words, Rob tu mo bhoile, a Comdi cride, from an Irish poem dating back to the 8th century. Poetry turned into prayer, as it should be. Is there a difference, after all?

I'm certain that time has melted away and all that remains are the words woven as stitches that hold time together, launching it forwards, preserving truth for tomorrow.  We join with them, the congregations in great stained-glass cathedrals, the small communities in country chapels, the families gathered by candlelight on stormy winter nights as the wind howls around them, the weary mothers sitting in quiet rooms rocking babies to sleep, the dreamer standing in the salty wind of ocean-side cliffs, and broken souls desperately seeking light, barely able to utters the sounds.

I wonder at all the humanity that has been carried in the breaths taken between words, the unspoken hopes and fears lingering in the empty spaces.   And he is there, in all those places, as we utter our plea of communion. There is nothing too great or small that would be unable to find a home in these words. And today, it is us who pick up the notes and sing.

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light

Here we are no longer lost or unseen.  We reach out and he reaches towards us.  

Heart of my own heart, whate’er befall
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all

amen.