Categories: uncategorized
Date: 15 March 2009 23:29:23
Tonight I have been making a memory. One that I hope to hold onto and drift back to over the years.
I had the privilege to just sit, chill, laugh and sing with a group of v. ordinary but in their own way quite extrodinary people this evening. We sang a selection of hymns and songs composed at various stages over the last 300 or so years. The songs and hymns held within them a range of individual aswell as collective memories and meanings. Yes we were worshipping, but we were all remembering as we went through.
I am sure I couldn't have been the only person who was finding one version of the soundtrack of their lives within the choices made by a group of disprate peeps.
I The Lord of Sea and Sky - The song has a variety of memories tied up with it. Strongest one has to be last summer, singing it in church just after I had handed in my resignation to work and was preparing for the journey up north. In that situation the chorus had a whole new meaning.
Shout to the Lord - Immy's baptism.
Let Your Anchor Hold - The Boys Brigade Hymn, one of those sung at my wedding. There was a time when singing these songs hurt, but now they just hold memories of a different land in a different time.
Guide Me Oh Thou Great Jehovah - The song I chose for mums funeral.
Be Thou My Vision - Variety of places and memories. Most special ones relate to playing it on the computer in my front room in Herne Bay, with the lights down and the candles lit - just chilling with God.
Will You Come and Follow Me If I But Call Your Name? (my choice)- Sung at the Outerspace communion service at Greenbelt a couple of years ago. Verse Four is the one that all ways gets me where no other hymn / song can. "Will you love the ‘you’ you hide If I but call your name?, Will you quell the fear inside And never be the same? Will you use the faith you’ve found To reshape the world around,Through my sight and touch and sound In you and you in me?"
Brother Sister Let Me Serve You - It's one of those songs you sing at communion. I have memories of some communion service when we were encouraged to actually sing it to those around us - incredibly powerful.
From Heaven You Came - we would sing it on Good Friday morning, at the service in Christchurch (the parish church in Herne Bay). For me it was the signal that Easter had started and the ressurection (signalled by singing Thine Be The Glory at the sunrise service on the beach) was on the way.
There were others we sang which had some memory or previous significance aswell I guess but the ones were the ones which took my mind back. Tonight they have each had a new memory attached. A simple yet incredibly powerful one. The power of song in making memory is sometimes, I think, under-estimated. That's why when new hymn books are produced it it is important to make sure that whilst the new is included, and the past is examined for theological soundness, that lots of familiar songs are included. They provide our folk memories.