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It’s not unusual for me to cry at choral concerts.
Like, a slowing sliding down in my seat, shoulders heaving, teeth clenched, deep breathing, trying not to sob, unable to stop, wishing the floor would swallow me up type of cry.
Frequently.
A bit on the odd side, I know.
As I’ve told this part of the story before, I’ll keep it brief.
Singing has always been my first love. I’ve sung in a choir since I was five. Some really top-notch choirs. Our high school choir, under my original director, had a statewide reputation. Our college chorale was known nationally and internationally. The professional ensemble we sang with in Toledo was nationally recognized. As were all the directors. TOP. NOTCH.
And there is NOTHING, and I do mean NOTHING, like spinning liquid gold together with people you love at a level that makes you feel, for just a fleeting, other-worldly moment, as if you are truly angels.
When we moved to Columbus, our daughter was 18 months old, and we didn’t have any options for evening babysitting. There was a professional chamber group holding auditions—we agreed that first tenors are typically in higher demand, therefore Tom auditioned, made the group, and continued to sing. With a few gaps here and there, he has continued to enjoy that privilege and delight.
I had hoped, being an alto, whose voices mature and are at their best in their 40s and 50s, that I would one day return to that level of music-making. Gold-spinning. Joy-creating.
But, unfortunately, my instrument is in disrepair, my body can’t even make it through an entire worship set from my seat in the congregation, and the only voice it appears I will be using going forward will be the one that flows out through my fingers, not my vocal chords.
So, when I cry at concerts, it is usually the heart-rending ache of having lost my first love, never to be restored. They are tears of grief, of deep, deep sorrow that my heart and my spirit will forever be singing along but my voice—my BODY—will never again know the joy of joining them.
This angel has, well,
fallen, I suppose.
And heaven is a bit farther than my keyboard can reach.
But this past concert—this most recent public moment of utter devastation and humiliation—was different.
On Friday night we had the joy of hearing the Anderson University Women’s Chorus sing the world premier of a piece written by an AU music alumnus, Douglas Beam.
The piece, entitled “Letter from Ann,” honored an alumna named Ann Smith, who, now in her 90s, started her #myAUstory in 1971. Smith, who spent many years in both local and international service and ministry, had an interesting practice.
Hadley Duke writes, in The Andersonian,
Every year, Smith sets a theme for her life that she wants to pursue. One year, her theme was, “I want to show up where my body is. Be present.” That is the main theme of “Letter from Ann.”
Dr. Joani Brandon, director of the women’s chorus, has been friends with Smith for decades, worshiping at church together and attending the same Bible study. Over the years, Brandon has collected these “themes” by which Smith has attempted to live her life, posting them all over her office walls.
When she and Beam began talking about collaborating on a new piece for the women’s chorus, he told her he could write the music and the arrangement, but words weren’t really his strength. Brandon eventually found her way to collecting several of these “themes” into a poem, which then became the text for the piece.
The piece that UTTERLY AND COMPLETELY UNDID ME.
Because this piece…
Oh, my friends, this piece.
Here is the poem upon which the song revolves:
Letter from Ann
I want to show up where my body is… be present.
To see a sunrise, to hear a new song,
To celebrate a new day to sing, play, love;
To take a breath, to hold a child, to sing a song,
To live with expectancy, not expectations.
To dance with God who is bigger than my questions,
A whirling, spinning, messy, masterpiece.
Free, thankful, blessed.
I want to show up where my body is.
(Ann Smith, Poem by Dr. Joani Brandon)
I. COULD. NOT. BREATHE.
I cannot begin to tell you—as a person who has struggled with life-altering chronic illness for over six years—as a person who has seen her daughter struggle with even MORE life-altering chronic illness for over TEN years—what happened within me just within those first 40-some seconds of hearing I want to show up where my body is sung over and over and over as if an incantation meant to snap me into focus.
To cause me to be present.
I can’t even get past this first line, right now. Its too painful. Too immediate. Too vulnerable. Too REAL.
I want to show up where my body is… be present.
I have never wanted anything LESS yet wanted it MORE.
That longing alone—never mind the rest of the piece, chock-full of enneagram four-ness with all of its desire for the fullness OF IT ALL— for the SWEET, GLORIOUS ALLNESS OF LIFE—is enough to split my heart wide open in grief…
…and it did.
Right there in Park Place Church of God.
With the president of the university sitting right behind me in a suit and tie as I wiped tears and snot on the sleeve of my sweater because I failed mom school and neglected, as usual, to have tissues on hand.
Many of you reading this are still trying to figure out what that line MEANS, let alone why on earth it set me into the silent ugly cry in the middle of a concert.
And that’s okay.
Be glad—be so, so glad you don’t get it.
But there are those of you reading this who DO.
Those of you who know what it is to be desperate to be away from your body.
And those of you who know how to make that happen.
Who know All. Too. Well.
And those of you, like me, who know you need to come back,
but TBH you just really, really, REALLY DON’T WANT TO.
Because it hurts too much.
Because it’s scary and unpredictable.
Because the pain has broken you.
Because the fatigue has emptied you.
Because the darkness has swallowed you.
Because it’s just easier to be somewhere else.
And that’s all true.
It’s all true.
And then, as if that weren’t enough, the rest of the song reads as if it were straight out of my journals—the longings of my own heart set to music expressive yet somber yet joyful yet serene.
BUT.
But it’s these three lines
that sum up the hard, heart-work of my last year and a half:
To live with expectancy, not expectations.
To dance with God who is bigger than my questions,
A whirling, spinning, messy, masterpiece.
Perhaps the work of the next year will be to be free, thankful, blessed.
Perhaps.
Because I’m not sure the current work is even close to BEGUN, let alone to completion.
And then the song concludes where it began—
I want to show up where my body is.
And I wonder again at this line—at its importance, at its impact upon me.
Why?
Why must I be where my body is?
Where my body is.
This knit vessel made of yarn yet of clay.
Made of flesh yet of Spirit.
Made of mud yet of God.
Where my body is.
This tent within which camps the Divine.
This wriggling sacrifice upon Love’s altar.
This bread within which resides eternal life.
Where my body is.
This frail shell not unlike the one taken by an infant king.
Not unlike the one worn with callouses and splinters.
Not unlike the one unable to sink, unable to drown.
Not unlike the one kissed by blurred betrayal.
Not unlike the one nailed to a tree.
Not unlike the one that lives again.
I want to show up where my body is.
Because where my body is…
is where the Healer is.
It’s getting late, and my cracked, light-leaking vessel is reminding me to take a breath.
To be present to the weariness.
To be present to the way in which the spinning and swirling within is slowing, slowing, slowing.
To be present to the Presence within me.
And to go to bed,
free, thankful, blessed
for having experienced, for those three beautiful, heartbreaking minutes on a Friday night,
the fullness of it ALL.