If These Were Silent, the Very Stones Would Cry Out

Tags

joy, lent, Music, the welcome wagon

I’ve been thinking a lot about music lately. This is a pretty typical occurrence, but music has been on the brain more than usual, even for me.

Monday night I got to sing with a group of wonderful people whose band is called The Welcome Wagon at a lovely place in Charlottesville (the Haven).

I hardly even know what to say about it. Making music with people can be such an indescribably beautiful and joyful thing. When people come together with their instruments and voices and their hearts are in what they’re doing and they bring their experience and hard work to beautiful melodies and harmonies, something happens in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

We may have been singing for 20 minutes. We may have been singing for an hour — I don’t really know how long it was. Not everything went perfectly. Maybe that was part of the charm. Not everything clicked the whole time, but enough went right and there was enough true music happening that it felt like I was standing singing and also watching from one of the old wooden pews. I merged for a few moments with the music that bounced around the room, showering the place with loveliness. I don’t know how it appeared to those listening, but to me, it was something special.

Oh, it sounds silly and strange to try to put it in words, but just try to think of a time when you were, however fleetingly, perfectly content and knew that for that moment you were exactly where you were supposed to be. That’s how it felt. Whatever else I was made to do, I was also made to sing.

If you haven’t heard the music of the Welcome Wagon, look them up.

On a slightly related note (no pun intended), I also made a mix for this season of Lent (yes, I’m aware it could possibly be slightly dominated by Sufjan Stevens songs… I’m ok with it).
Sorry, I haven’t figured out how to actually put all the songs up here to listen to, so this is a bit anti-climactic. But this is what I’ve been listening to this month (well, aside from all the time I’ve spent listening to “Welcome to the Welcome Wagon”).

Remember That You Are Dust…
1. Man of Sorrows -Jill Phillips
2. Behold the Lamb of God -Andrew Peterson
3. The Violet Hour -The Civil Wars
4. Nothing But the Blood -Page CXVI
5. Roll Away Your Stone -Mumford & Sons
6. To Be Alone with You -Sufjan Stevens
7. Hosanna -Jill Phillips
8. This Too Shall Be Made Right -Derek Webb
9. Oh God, Where Are You Now? (In Pickeral Lake? Pigeon? Marquette? Mackinaw?) -Sufjan Stevens
10. Up On a Mountain -The Welcome Wagon
11. The Seer’s Tower -Sufjan Stevens
12. What Wondrous Love is This -Jill Phillips
13. He Never Said a Mumblin’ Word -The Welcome Wagon
14. Crucifixus -Erskine College Choir (composed by Antonio Lotti)
15. Jesus Dies (Alas and Did My Savior Bleed) -New York Hymns
16. In Manus Tuas -The Cambridge Singers (composed by John Sheppard)
[If you want more info on these songs, just ask and I'll see what I can do.]

“Remember that you are dust…

Tags

ash wednesday, lent

…and into dust you shall return.”

For those of you who keep up with this sort of thing, last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the church calendar season of Lent. Until last year, I had never been to an Ash Wednesday service, and I slipped in the door at 12:01pm so everyone but the few latecomers would be sitting down already and I could sit in the back and observe. Attending a religious service when you do not know exactly what to do is slightly nerve-wracking. You sit in the back and watch to see what happens, and you participate haltingly, unsteadily.

So this year I had one Ash Wednesday service under my belt, and sat more in the middle of the room with some of my co-workers. I like this service because it is a stripped down and simplified service, solemn and quiet. The whole point is to remind us of this startling fact: we are mortal. American pop-culture objects to being reminded of this fact; we are taught that we should savor youth as the best time of our lives, and we should try to stay young forever, to hold on to the illusion of immortality. But Ash Wednesday is a reminder that we cannot escape death. Sooner or later, everyone dies.

How morbid. And yet, it has been strangely good to be reminded of my mortality. Perhaps it is the perspective gained from such meditation. Thinking about serious things suddenly makes some of my interests seem frivolous, and it makes me want to do things that matter, instead of just coasting along through life. A reality check is always good; it’s so easy to live in a world of smoke and mirrors and believe what I see is real.