A Word from Pastor Nathan

Dear Friends:

One of my all-time favorite poems is Emily Dickinson’s “I sing to use the waiting.” She wrote, “I sing to use the Waiting / My bonnet but to tie / And close the door unto my house / No more to do have I / ‘Till his best step approaching / We journey to the day / And tell each other how we sung / To keep the dark away.” This poem has new meaning in our current context. We’ve closed the doors unto our homes; we are sheltering in place; we are waiting.

How do you spend the currency of time in waiting? Dickinson said that she sings. Now that we are in Eastertide, I wonder what songs you’re singing? On Easter, we sang Christ the Lord is Risen Today and a brand-new hymn by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, This Easter Celebration. We sing to use the waiting, but something else happens, too, when we sing.

Stacy Horn wrote in her book, Imperfect Harmony, that when we make melodies “we inhabit another reality. [We] become temporarily suspended in a world where everything bad [like a global pandemic] is bearable, and everything good [like resurrection] feels possible… Singing invariably and exquisitely triumphs over all [our] defenses; it has become a place where [we] still hope and still believe.” We sing to use the waiting; we sing to pass the time; and we sing as a means of having faith in what seems impossible.

Sydney Carter, a brilliant hymnwriter and essayist, both sang and danced. He wrote a hymn with the lyrics, “They cut me down and I leapt up high / I am the life that’ll never, never die / I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me / I am the Lord of the Dance, said he. / Dance, then, wherever you may be, / I am the Lord of the Dance, said he / And I ’ll lead you all, wherever you may be / And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said he.” I cannot dance to save my life, but this hymn makes me want to try: one-two, one-two, slide-shuffle, one-two, slide-shuffle. Count with me?

As we continue to shelter in place and wait, let us sing and dance, as we, Christ’s church, lean into impossible possibilities. With Jesus, our partner in song and dance, we’ll practice resurrection.

Singing and dancing (and waiting) with you,

Nathan