Once a year or so, Rev. Aija lets me take the reins (and the pul­pit) for what we call “Music Sunday”—a wor­ship expe­ri­ence that’s all about music, except when it’s not.  Com­ing up with a theme for Music Sun­day is always pret­ty easy—there’s always a song I’ve want­ed to find an excuse for the choir to sing, or a top­ic I’ve want­ed to write a song about, or a sto­ry I’ve want­ed to tell.  Except for this year.

This year, as Amer­i­ca’s democ­ra­cy seems to have devolved into a bat­tle of mud­sling­ing and “who’s evil-er than whom,” and as ever-improv­ing and ever more ubiq­ui­tous tech­nol­o­gy makes it hard­er for injus­tice to dis­guise itself as rumor or hyper­bole, I find myself feel­ing inad­e­quate.  There is too much wrong with the world for one lit­tle ser­mon or one new choir anthem to fix it.

My prayer habits are quite a bit dif­fer­ent now than they used to be, but my spir­i­tu­al­i­ty is still one of stub­born­ly sec­ond-per­son the­ol­o­gy: I no longer even pre­tend to under­stand ful­ly who or what God real­ly is, but I know it’s not me.  So after strug­gling for too long to find the right focus for Music Sun­day, I threw my hands up and asked the Uni­verse for a hint—and silence was the response.  Not silence-the-absence-of-response silence.  Silence-the-potent-begin­nings-of-all-that-is silence.

It start­ed with a Face­book post from a friend of mine:

One line in par­tic­u­lar caught my eye, because I hear it a lot from peo­ple of col­or when they express frus­tra­tion with the “shal­low under­stand­ing from peo­ple of good will” that so often describes the reac­tion that I and oth­er white allies fum­ble to man­age as we work for jus­tice.  “Have a seat and study some more.”

In oth­er words, shut up and lis­ten.  There are impor­tant things to be said, and you need to hear them.

So this Sun­day at UUCV we’ll be seek­ing silence.  Talk­ing about silence.  And singing about silence.  And most impor­tant­ly, spend­ing more time in silence than near­ly any of us are com­fort­able with, because growth is hard­ly ever com­fort­able.

We’ll also be hear­ing some breath­tak­ing­ly gor­geous music, of course.  You know I love to show off my lit­tle choir, and they are work­ing mag­ic with the Mark Hayes arrange­ment of “The Sound of Silence”—last night’s rehearsal left me with goose­bumps.  Adding Dani and Marc, who will be back­ing us up on Sun­day on drums and bass, will just take things to a whole new lev­el.

We’ll also be pre­mier­ing a new choral piece I wrote for the occa­sion, called “Sing It.”  The lyrics fol­low; I do hope you’ll join us on Sun­day at 10:30 AM to hear the choir give it wings—and I hope it moves you to the right kind of silence.

Sermon audio

Choir video

“Sing It”

words & music ©2016 David M. Glas­gow

In the silence,
with­out noise, with­out words to save the day,
I can hear me, but I’m not sure what to say.
Rage against?  Stand behind?
Play it safe?  Play the hero?
Do I ever say a word that starts inside?
Now I final­ly have the chance, and I hide.

Then I hear it—
though at first I’m afraid I’m not alone—
soft and clear, it speaks a truth I rec­og­nize as my own.
And it speaks, with­out words, of a strength here with­in me
that could change the world if only I would try.
So I slow­ly close my eyes, and breath­ing deep,

I sing it soft and low and gen­tle
like the breeze that runs its fin­gers through my hair.
I sing it deep and true and word­less,
like the beat­ing of a heart that’s always there.
I sing it silent­ly with­in, and let the music work its mag­ic
in the veins that car­ry life to every cor­ner of my soul.
When I final­ly claim the silence,
I sing it gen­tle.

Eyes are open,
and at last I can see I’m not alone.
You’ve been singing too,
and your spir­it har­mo­nizes with my own.
And we sing, and our hearts gath­er strength here among us
that can change the world if only we will try.
And when we know we’re not alone,

we sing it loud!  We sing it strong!
We sing it bold­ly from the moun­tain­top,
and brave­ly at the cof­fee shop,
and lov­ing­ly to every­one we meet!
Love is born in silence,
but for love to sur­vive,
we must sing it loud!