| Memphis School of Servant Leadership |
| Contact Information: Phone: (901) 320-7005 E-Mail: mssl@moumumc.com |
| Our Journeys, Our Stories: |
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| How Can I Keep From Singing? by Tom I am a man of unclean lips…yet my eyes have seen…the Lord of hosts!…Here I am; send me. – Isaiah 6:1-8 Elizabeth O’Connor’s both/and description of God’s call is “a feeling of awe-filled dread…combined with one of being companioned” (Cry Pain, Cry Hope, p. 32). That describes the Isaiah passage above. And it describes my life – both the chapter I’m living now, and the chapter I lived before this one. I believe God called me to be in other places, then to leave those places – in order to come home to Memphis, where I belong. “One of the ways to test the authenticity of call is to determine whether it requires a journey. This journey is not necessarily geographical, although…it is not unusual for it to involve leaving one’s work and home” (O’Connor, p. 82). I know about geographical journeying, having lived in a different place (more often than not in a different city) on the average, until recently, of every two years. It has not always involved leaving my work. Yet as a pastor, “moving on” is so often literal, as well as symbolic. After three years of seminary and fourteen years of parish ministry, after the simultaneous dissolution of a nineteen-year marriage and a parish pastorate, I started all over again. I became a chaplain, first in Kansas City, then in Memphis. I enrolled in clinical pastoral education, a chaplain’s training residency, learning about pastoral care from both theoretical and applied perspectives. I learned once more how to listen deeply – to God, to others, to myself. O’Connor continues: “Whether or not the call includes an outward journey, it always requires an inward one. We need to be delivered from all that binds and keeps the real self from breaking into music and becoming joy to the world” (ibid.). I found my greatest deliverance, both in Kansas City and in Memphis, by joining a semi-professional chorus. Doing this confirmed to a great degree something a nun once told me about music: it “releases the feelings, which release the healing.” While I first left parish ministry, I had the luxury of nights and weekends off. And I sang with the finest chorus I’ve ever enjoyed. We memorized all our music, and we sang everything – Bach, contemporary classics, spirituals – all of it a cappella. As the section leader responsible for all the tenors in that chorus, I felt both awe-filled dread and companionship on a regular basis. The most fulfilling and terrifying nights were the concerts I arranged for a Chicago tour. We sang at the church I first served, where I said hello to people whom I had not seen in nearly fifteen years. And we sang at the cathedral where I was ordained. Parker Palmer says that “vocation at its deepest level is, ‘This is something I can’t not do, for reasons I’m unable to explain to anyone else and don’t fully understand myself, but that are nonetheless compelling” (Let Your Life Speak, p. 25). I can’t not break into song when my heart breaks. I can’t keep from singing when my heart fills with joy. I enjoyed singing in a Memphis community chorus for a year. Then I returned to full-time parish ministry and had to give up that kind of commitment. Recently a new men’s a cappella group in Memphis called Delta Cappella was formed, and despite my advanced age, I longed to audition. But I knew I couldn’t keep up that pace and my commitment to the full-time work and ministry God has given me in the parish I serve. I used to go to Allen Morgan Health Center most every Friday morning and sing with the residents and staff there for about half an hour. The redemption and release I felt every single time I was there; the way everyone participated at their own level of ability, even those who do not visibly respond; the way my stress was reduced just walking in the building, knowing that I did not have to “compete and win” (Palmer, p. 22)…all of these things remind me again of God’s call to return to that place, a place in which the world fears to tread, a place of awe-filled dread. And yet it is a place where I find true companionship. It is in song that I can most easily be the servant leader – the student teacher, the collaborative harmonizer, the one who, while singing, prays twice. Perhaps God is calling me to a new way of being a servant leader of song. All I know is I need to go back and make melody and harmony with those nursing home residents – and I need to take other musicians with me. How Can I Keep From Singing? My life flows on in endless song Above earth's lamentation. I hear the real, thought far off hymn That hails the new creation Above the tumult and the strife, I hear the music ringing; It sounds an echo in my soul How can I keep from singing? What through the tempest loudly roars, I hear the truth, it liveth. What through the darkness round me close, Songs in the night it giveth. No storm can shake my inmost calm While to that rock I'm clinging. Since love is lord of Heaven and earth How can I keep from singing? When tyrants tremble, sick with fear, And hear their death-knell ringing, When friends rejoice both far and near, How can I keep from singing? In prison cell and dungeon vile Our thoughts to them are winging. When friends by shame are undefiled, How can I keep from singing? |