Dear Mr. Cantor ~
I wanted to say Thank
you for singing Amy Grant’s “Better than a Hallelujah, Sometimes” last
week. I haven’t been able to get it out
of my mind all week…. Which is a good thing.
I am hoping that within this letter I can share some thoughts with you
on music ministry that I hope you will appreciate. I am old enough, I think, to be your mother
(Amy Grant is only a hair older than me – I grew up with her music as a
teen). I had been in music ministry for
almost 40 years I think. Retreats. Teen Masses.
Evenings of renewal. Confirmation. Weddings. Funerals.
I stopped almost 6 years ago when
the guy leading the group I was with put me on a limb to sing a song I thought
was too high for me (because it was)
and then when we finished Mass he told me that it was terrible and basically
insisted I quit. Wow. Yeah, people do
this in church. What he really disliked
about me, I think, is like Amy’s song, I “get it” that it’s not about the
Perfect Choir. Worship is NEVER about
performance unless you are doing it for the Audience of One. (look up at the ceiling here, yeah,
Him). I’ve seen people do confirmation
music that was completely irrelevant to teenagers … only because it made them
(the Choir) look good in front of a bishop.
But it aint about him, it’s about Jesus, and connecting kids to HIM in
their language. There’s always a strange
shadow that is called Ego that floats into churches and hangs around the choir
loft. Until we sing from a different
place within ourselves he will keep whispering our name and distracting us from
what we are really capable of.
I want to tell you something that
I don’t often talk about – it is my gift to you – hold onto it. Use it as you develop your natural talent and
truly love the music you sing. Don’t
sing it for the money (we both know that isn’t much) sing it for what happens in
your soul and what you are able to emanate to the people around you. Years ago, I sang for a season with a group
in Camillus that had a couple of ASCAP musicians in it. One of them did a very simple duet with
me. Later, she said to the Music
Director that singing with me was like Emmaus…. If no one ever says a good
word about me again, I will just keep that one in my heart forever. You know, Emmaus, where the two disciples
walked with a stranger that turned out to be Jesus in disguise. Do that, Mr. Cantor, BECOME EMMAUS for the
people you sing with….
There is one song I will probably never sing
in front of a microphone: “America, the
Beautiful.” You know why? Because when I get to verse 2, oh beautiful, for pilgrim feet, whose stern
impassioned stress a thoroughfare for freedom beat across the wilderness, I
cry. Not sometimes. Every single time. Because I can see them, their faces, the cold
New England wind I grew up with, blowing at them. They suffered for a purpose, so that you and
I can stand here free…. And sing…. And it makes me grateful, and makes me cry….
(which then makes it difficult to sing).
Last week I saw on Facebook a post
from one of the young women I taught in high school. She had grown up, gotten married, has two
sons in elementary and middle school and became an incredible woman of
faith. Her post was … her young husband’s
tombstone: Lieutenant Johnson… (“the
soldier’s pleas not to let him die, better than a hallelujah some time”). Sing for her, “Better than a Hallelujah,”
that she feel peace.
I am not a registered parishioner
at St. X’s, or anywhere, I just go where I feel led. But I know people at St. X’s…. I know
some of their hurts and pains …. And that song can really minister to them …. Better
than a Hallelujah. So next time you sing
it – and I hope you do it soon – look at the man in the 22nd row who
hopes he can stay sober Today, the woman sitting not far away who almost got
married but her beau died, the couple sitting next to me that wonders why they
just can’t seem to have a baby. And when
you sing that song, with tenderness in your voice, tell them that God loves them in all that brokenness ~ just as they are
~ and it makes His day to hear their needs brought to Him. Take that music outside those horizontal
lines on the page and just speak-sing it to them. Give them Emmaus. That is what ministry is: Emmaus.
