Galineau's arrangement of Psalm 23 is one of the most beautiful, gentle, and heartfelt I have heard or sung. Although I sing often at funerals, I do have a very difficult time offering my voice to these sacred days. The fragility of life. The sacredness of the occasion. The awareness of the limitations of my vocal abilities when I want to offer beauty, comfort, solace, and prayer. Today, I sang for my beautiful friend Teresa's mom's funeral at St. Joseph's Church here in Lincoln. Teresa offered the gift of her music and played piano at her mom's funeral, and I was blessed to sing. I was so glad when Father McCabe acknowledged the rare talent that Teresa offered by playing piano---and so many beautiful song selections---at her mom's funeral.
Teresa and I built a friendship through music at St. Michael's Catholic Church here in Lincoln, and it has been years since we made music together. To be invited into the sacred space of her mom's funeral was a blessing of friendship and grace. The stories that Teresa's family offered about her mom's life inspired me to love my children more fervently and devotedly, to embrace this vocation of motherhood with gratitude and zeal, to love my family unreservedly and exuberantly, and to live life with joy and kindness and goodness and gratitude. Today was a gift in every way.
It is hard for me to sing at funerals because I become so overcome by the beauty of a soul, the grief of a family, the wonder of God's love for His creation, for the transience of life and death and the mystery of it all. And then, with lump in my throat and tears streaming, I have to find a way to sing what the family has carefully selected to honor their loved one. I am never worthy.
In the past, I often reflected on the famous passage from one of my most favorite novels of all time, George Eliot's Middlemarch:
“That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”
But one of my priests says I have this all wrong. Eliot's "squirrel's heartbeat" and Wordsworth's "The World Is Too Much With Us" have it all wrong. With God, we ought not to fear the "other side of silence"; we will not be overcome by the enormity of a squirrel's heartbeat or the sound of the grass growing or the roar of the other side of silence. We ought instead go deeper into that space of empathy and love and awareness and kindness. With God we can become united with Him and become like God Himself, infused with his love and grace and goodness. The world is not too much with us but rather inside of us. Thanks be to God. I am still unworthy, but I am blessed by friendship and grace and love and God's promise of eternal life...
Here is a link to the livestream of the rosary and funeral (scan down until February 3)...my first singing notes were off...but the rest went ok. It is a blessing to offer what I can to people I love...
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