I will miss the day when my granddaughter no longer invites me to hear her perform with the Commonwealth Youth Choir. Their very existence moves me to tears, and then they start singing. I prayed they could feel and ponder their selections as they sang the other night. Their songs were showing us the way out and in.
The concert was a fine ending to a good day. We got up early and walked on the beach. Then we listened to Till We have Faces on the way home and finished it just as we turned into our street.
As I often explore with my clients, the good moments need to be elongated, shared and revisited. That makes them stick with us instead of slipping away into nothing. Especially these days, when every day seems to have a new indignity or bit of destruction to torment us (as if we didn’t already have enough), we need to dwell on what is good.
So let’s do that together.
The song right on the edge of freedom
Fortunately, one little song on the concert program that night was very sticky: “Who I Want to Be” by Coty Raven Morris (arr. Saleel Menon) [link].
I lead with my spirit
keeping love in the circle around me,
expressing my spirit,
loving what I see and cannot see.
I take care of the vessel I’m in.
I love the me that’s under this skin,
taking care of my mind,
envisioning the me
I want to be.
At one point, selected singers went to the mic to voice the goodness that is in them. It was a blessing to hear what every psychotherapist must wish their clients were singing.
However, I have to admit there was a bit of a trap waiting in the song for the unsuspecting. It so firmly begins with “I” — and it is such a burden to be in charge of one’s spirit! But at least they were keeping a circle of love around them — love is so uncontrollable, it disabuses us of the idea we can control everything. And they included expressing love for what they “cannot see,” which led to the deeper places in the next song.
The song about the Great I Am
If they missed the connection with God I hoped they would make as they led with their spirits, the kids had another chance to connect with something bigger, along with the rest of us, during “Spirit,” Beyonce’s contribution to Disney’s live-action Lion King [link].
The wind is talkin’
for the very first time
with a melody that pulls you toward it
paintin’ pictures of paradise…
Spirit.
Watch the heavens open…
Go into that far off land
and be one with the Great I Am.
Beyonce grew up singing in the choir of St. John’s United Methodist Church in Houston. Methodism can come with lots of rules and labels, but it is hard to miss the personal and universal spirituality John Wesley experienced within it. The “strangely warmed” places are where the Queen B has landed.
Her song is not too far from Jesus offering some of my favorite sentences in the Bible [link]:
Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’ But you have not known him. I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and I keep his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?”[ Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. — John 8:54-59
Here are the seven “I Am” statements of Jesus in John [link].
The quote about entering the the far off land
People come to the Great I AM in strange and mysterious ways. I think sometimes they are with Jesus and don’t even know it. Often, quoting a Bible verse is no more help to people than their latest walk in the park — and could prove to be much less helpful. C.S. Lewis is honest about that. If you read his spiritual memoir, he is just being honest about his own journey.
We bought the audible book of Till We Have Faces in March and finished it in June — we have not become preoccupied with the immense library of stuff we can listen to. But the timing turned out to be just right. The ending was a great prelude to the questions the kids were singing. At least they were questions I hoped they were asking as they began their journey into the “far off land,” rather than just consuming nice words and music, as we are tempted to do.
C.S. Lewis gets at the heart of why our spiritual journeys are often long and convoluted [Audible]:
When the time comes to you
at which you will be forced at last
to utter the speech which has lain
at the center of your soul for years
which you have, all that time,
idiot-like been saying over and over,
you will not talk about the joy of words.
I saw well why the gods to not speak to us openly,
nor let us answer.
Till that word can be dug out of us,
why should they hear the babble
that we think we mean?
How can they meet us face to face
till we have faces?
I know it is not obvious what Lewis is talking about in that quote. It is not crystal clear if you read the whole book! But it is at least as clear as Beyonce calling us to be one with the Great I Am. Crystal clarity is way over-rated.
About the video: Aneel Aranha is good at A.I. He came to faith later in life, but he is making the most of it.
The quote that sticks in my mind
No matter what scraps of truth and love I find along the way to my destiny, I rely on God to make a feast of them and to host the feast, to boot. Though we try to sit in God’s seat and host our own party, grace is new every morning. We are pulled toward the light like my lilies, growing more in the shade than they should be. I see myself, my children, grandchildren, and my clients stretching toward the light all the time.
They lean, even though they are, like we are all, to a degree:
hearers of the word and not doers,
they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror;
for they look at themselves and, on going away,
immediately forget what they were like.
But those who look into the perfect law,
the law of liberty,
and persevere,
being not hearers who forget but doers who act—
they will be blessed in their doing.. — James 1:23-25
Every little doing of reaching out and up matters, no matter what your core story keeps repeating. Every step of keeping love, of going to the “far off land” — both that vast inner territory and the vast times and places yet to be known, matter.
May the good songs elongate in your head as you go. May God bless us children as we take our first steps, next steps and repeated steps, and bless us all as we persevere on the journey.