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Song as Prayer

By Newton Lewis
Washington Window
Vol. 79, No. 4, July – August

“When we sing, we pray twice” St. Augustine

In her book, When in Doubt, Sing, Jane Redmont tells of a seminary student in New York City who was serving her field education in hospice ministry. One day she visited a dying patient she had never seen before who was past the point of talking. When she felt unequipped to deal with a situation, the seminarian would turn to the Holy Spirit for help. She started to sing Amazing Grace and then “Precious Lord/take my hand/Lead me on/let me stand./ I am weak/I am tired/I am worn/Through the storm/through the night/lead me on to the light/Take my hand/precious Lord/Take me home.” The patient seemed calmer. As she sang she noticed a woman had entered. She assumed it was an orderly but it turned out to be the man’s wife. The woman started crying, saying, “Oh thank you, thank you for being here and singing. I needed this too.” The seminarian was amazed that the song was for all three of them: “We all needed this song.”

This story resonates with me because it brings last November to mind. A longtime choir member, Bob, was terminally ill. It was a blessing to have him in my life, and a further blessing for all of us who were able to go to his home the Friday before he died to sing him his favorite hymns. Indeed we all needed the song.   
Virtually every Christian denomination sings. Of course the people of Israel sang songs and made a joyful noise in their worship long before Jesus’ time, and from this tradition Paul exhorted the Colossians to “Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your hearts.” Singing has been carried with the church community, from Byzantine and Gregorian chant to the hymns of the Reformation, spirituals, shape-note singing, Gospel. Song is a community venture. To paraphrase chant scholar David Steindahl, the song of the people is folk art. Its imperfection is its perfection. It accommodates all kinds of voices and skills. The song of the people is sung by whoever happens to be there and enters into a shared spirit: A remarkable transcendent beauty is generated when ordinary people give themselves to song.

A story comes to mind about monks who sang loudly every day in prayer. Then they were joined by a young monk who had a gorgeous voice. Gradually the other monks stopped chanting (praying) to listen to his voice. And God was very sad. The message is that it doesn’t matter what we sound like, God wants us all. When we sang for Bob, it wasn’t like the stars of the Metropolitan Opera had descended on his house; it was that we were there.

St. Augustine was on to something. How often while reciting prayers has the shopping list or today’s schedule intruded into your thoughts? Redmont tells of a friend who said, “My prayer had become stale, so I started singing it.” You cannot sing, really sing, and not put your whole self into the act. The whole self is involved: posture, emotion, intellect, with our breath weaving them all together. Further, when we are a part of a group we transcend ourselves and become bound together heart, mind and soul by our breath. In New Testament Greek, the word pneuma signifies both breath and spirit. To sing is to have breath, to have spirit, to be in the eternal now.

When we are together in breath, we become a community. Redmont quotes a music director who says: “The beauty of song brings me close to God, but also to the community. The community needs work; there can be backstabbing for example; but then coming together in song and knowing that God is present in singing, it unifies us.”   

When we are young, we learn about our religion through music. As children, many have internalized the love of God by singing Jesus Loves Me. We are discovering that when and what we learn in song goes to some deep place in our psyche. In December, members of our choir sing Christmas carols to Alzheimer’s patients, many of whom remember the words and sing along.

In the words of an old Quaker hymn:

“My life flows on in endless song/Above earth’s lamentation;/I hear the real though far-off song/That hails a new creation./Through all the tumult and the strife/I hear that music ringing;/It sounds an echo in my soul,/How can I keep from singing?”

Lewis is the music director at St. James’, Potomac. This article originally appeared in The Pilgrim, the parish newsletter.