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Jun. 26th, 2010 08:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darchildreWent out to dinner tonight with la familia and on the way back, we had a long nostalgic conversation about Camp Pecometh, the Methodist summer camp that Megan and I went to several times as kids. Which, of course, led to enthusiastic renditions of church camp songs,* and then favorite hymns. I've been the accidental choir leader for about five years now - I have a lot of favorite hymns.
That's a big part of why I still go to church and why I continue to be the accidental choir leader, despite my avowed heathenry. I love hymns. I love hearing them, I love singing them. It's no secret that I feel a strong connection between my experience of making music and my experience of the divine. There is something powerful and holy about singing hymns in a group, about singing words that people have sung thousands of times before you and will sing again long after you're gone.
O, for a thousand tongues to sing my great redeemer's praise, the glories of my God and king, the triumph of his grace!
Be thou my vision, o Lord of my heart. Naught be all else to me, save that thou art.
Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day. Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away.
Change and decay in all around I see; o, thou who changest not, abide with me.
Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say "It is well, it is well with my soul".
How can I keep from singing?
I have a deep, deep envy for the Christian musical tradition. I envy the Christians a lot of things, really - their millennia of unbroken tradition, their ability to find a church in any town in this country, their badass religious jewelry - but it's the hymns and the ritual prayers that I really covet. I find that I am hungry for that, lately - for that feeling of adding my voice to a river of other voices that have spoken before. I can write my own prayers and say them often enough that I feel a faint echo of that but I have no talent for writing music. It makes me sad, not being able to properly sing for my gods the way I want to.
Growl, growl. Where is the heathen Charles Wesley, that is basically what I want to know.
*I am going to know all the words to Pharaoh, Pharaoh till the day that I die.
That's a big part of why I still go to church and why I continue to be the accidental choir leader, despite my avowed heathenry. I love hymns. I love hearing them, I love singing them. It's no secret that I feel a strong connection between my experience of making music and my experience of the divine. There is something powerful and holy about singing hymns in a group, about singing words that people have sung thousands of times before you and will sing again long after you're gone.
O, for a thousand tongues to sing my great redeemer's praise, the glories of my God and king, the triumph of his grace!
Be thou my vision, o Lord of my heart. Naught be all else to me, save that thou art.
Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day. Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away.
Change and decay in all around I see; o, thou who changest not, abide with me.
Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say "It is well, it is well with my soul".
How can I keep from singing?
I have a deep, deep envy for the Christian musical tradition. I envy the Christians a lot of things, really - their millennia of unbroken tradition, their ability to find a church in any town in this country, their badass religious jewelry - but it's the hymns and the ritual prayers that I really covet. I find that I am hungry for that, lately - for that feeling of adding my voice to a river of other voices that have spoken before. I can write my own prayers and say them often enough that I feel a faint echo of that but I have no talent for writing music. It makes me sad, not being able to properly sing for my gods the way I want to.
Growl, growl. Where is the heathen Charles Wesley, that is basically what I want to know.
*I am going to know all the words to Pharaoh, Pharaoh till the day that I die.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-27 04:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-27 05:14 pm (UTC)