Song

It started while I was curled up from pain in a hospital bed.  The specifics aren’t important, but the morphine had been given and I was barely responding.  I was curled up like a bud.  It was a miracle that brought the harpist into my room (a miracle named Mom). The musician came in with her harp and played the song of my heart for me.  Over those fifteen minutes my body uncurled, petal by petal, giving into the pain and the pain meds and the music.  Letting that music open me. 

God is a harp.

And She the singer.

 As I look back now, I didn’t realize that the music of my heart, that song which had been ignored or treated poorly or was rotting, was re-awakened.  I had heard it softly here and there.  I had even sung a verse or two.  But, if I had to choose a word to describe my song, it would have been “dormant.”

 Next came my faith community’s world conference.  It was a big deal for me.  Out of nowhere my song tapped me on the shoulder and told me to sing!  And so I did. With good friends, in front of the conference, I showed up singing.  I would show up many ways that week, in prayer, in ordination, in running around getting things done, in relationship with others I love and others I met.

 But, when asked if I wanted to sing before or after my ordination night, I asked for before.  I wanted to be authentically who I am, show my community who I want to be.  The song.

God is a song.

And She the singer.

How freeing to find my song right where I had left it, in the rows of that grand Auditorium.  Right next to friends and families I’d sat there with along the way. The place made me, and I sang it’s song.  I sang our song.  The song of community.  I sang it with vibrancy and I prayed that it would thrive.

 These were the first two entry points for my heart song.  A third came soon after.

 Every summer I hang out with a bunch of rowdy and precious teenagers on the staff of a Sr High camp called SPECTACULAR.  This was my first year as a new kind of SPEC leader and I was nervous.  I was set to open the camp at an opening worship and my friends, who I deeply trust, asked if I would sing:  What a Wonderful World.  Sing before I spoke.

I agreed and was transformed in the singing.  If a song can soar, this was my flying.  I don’t know if anyone else liked it – a bunch of teenagers?  Hard to tell.  But that bud that had begun to unfold in the hospital, that had continued to open in the auditorium, that bud had become a fully open flower.

 And then four:

 It was happenstance, really.  I was at a beautiful campground on Samish Island in Washington and ready to be a part of a new community for a week.  I loved everything about it.  It was beautiful and I had a few good friends there.  Some from so far back, our songs were intertwined.

 What I didn’t expect was that my friend would say to me:  Hey, they’re having a music festival Wednesday night in the Gazebo and I told them you could sing.  They’re in that building practicing.  Go on over. Check it out.

 And so I did.  It sounds ridiculous but maybe you’ve had this moment, too.  I walked through the door of that large space and somehow was transported back to that hospital and my opening, back to that Auditorium and my thriving, Back to that stage with those teenagers listening to what I had to say, I was placed lovingly right in front of them.  My new friends.  The ones who, for some magic reason, were singing my song. 

 I’ve never felt so welcome.

 Turns out my song is voice and guitar.  And friends.  My song is relational.  My song is soaring love.

 I’ve been looking for a place to fit.  For a space to hold all of my wildness.  A place not to tame me but to take my openness and make it it’s own.  I now know it isn’t a location.  I now know it is a friend or two.  It is, if you’ve ever heard me sing, you.

 I sang a lot that week.  More than I have in years.  I sang and soared in the singing.  I was made whole in ways I cannot explain.  I left there deeply content, deeply connected, and deeply grateful.

 Since then, I’ve become a little over-enthusiastic, if I’m being honest.  I’ve been looking for music wherever I can find it. I’ve been longing for it.  I’ve been singing my song whenever I can.  I found my song in the Redwoods around a fireplace, chairs in a circle, an odd group of singers, just like me.  I found it listening to a guitar player on a sofa while taking a much needed break.  I found it in the home of some of my dearest friends, their one year old blowing bubbles and me singing while they floated their own notes.

 Gosh, it sounds magical.  And it is.

 This morning I was walking through the new Kansas City airport on my way to gate B25.  As I passed B27 I heard something that sounded like my music.  A man playing guitar, just sitting there, in an airport chair.  Playing his song.  I sat with him, listened for quite a while, matching my breathing to his notes.  And then I asked if he knew my favorite song to sing:  “The Rainbow Connection” made famous by that superstar singer, Kermit the Frog.

 He didn’t.

 After I picked myself up from some awkwardness of asking a stranger music maker if he knew a song by Kermit the Frog, he said:  Do you know this?

 Fire and Rain.

Of course I knew it.

We sang that James Taylor song together, airport guy and I, and we sang it well.  Soft.  Like we knew people were milling around and wondering if they were really hearing a guitar which seemed so out of place.  But bold.  Like we knew those people needed a bit of that music in their own lives at that moment.

 When we finished, he nodded and said “nice voice.”  I nodded and told him “thank you.  My name is Shandra.”  He never told me his name nor did I know the other couple of songs he played.  It was natural when I got up and moved on.  It was time.

God is a guitar.

And He the player.

I’m reflecting on this as I’m flying home.

 These sacred spaces:  a hospital bed, a conference chamber, a stage, a fireplace,  in a living room filled with bubbles, an AirBNB,  and a campground.  An airport. 

 I haven’t spent much time on my knees in prayer lately.  Hardly any.  I haven’t wept at the brokenness of the world for a while.  I haven’t gotten quiet in the face of the awesomeness of nature. Maybe you think I should.

 But I’ve sung. I’ve sung and sung, and I’ve sung some more.  And, in that singing, I’ve remembered who I am, and I’ve deepened into God’s heart as I’ve deepened into my own.

 I’ve held a prayer for the earth in my song.  I’ve held deep grief and sung true hope.  I’ve sent my song soaring across a creek.  I’ve sung in a bubble that finally popped.  I’ve opened, like a flower that is so beautiful it stops you in your tracks when you walk by.  Suddenly you become one who stops and smells the roses.

 I’ve always done that, stopped for flowers.  But now, turns out, I’m one of the open flowers inviting you to slow down and listen.  I’ll sing you a song if you do.

God is a flower.

And She the opener.

And so, here’s to the future song of my heart.  The music that will wrap around the words and tune.  Here’s to the prayers that will be sung, the opening of my soul, the feeling I get when I sing that all is right and possible and honest and true.

I’ll give you my favorite few words from Kermit as my prayer for this flight and then this “what comes next” in my life:

 “What’s so amazing that keeps us star gazing, and what do we think we might see?  Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers, and me.  All of us under it’s spell.  We know that it’s probably magic.”

 If you want to sing this song with me I’ll see you in August.  I’ll be under a Gazebo on a Wednesday night singing with my music-making, flower tending, prayer singing  friends. 

And so, too, God.