So This is 45?

Thank you for celebrating my birthday on Sunday. Y’all surprised me with the flowers and the singing of “the song.” You, dear church, are a gift of God’s grace.

As I look onto the horizon of a new year of life, I’ve reflected on the year just completed. “So this is 45?” I’ve asked myself. This past year has been most challenging and difficult even as it held unparalleled beauty. With all life’s complexities and complications, the last twelve months provided ceaseless invitations to practice resurrection.

Wendell Berry writes:
“As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.”

Holy Week is fast approaching, and the cross feels closer than Easter, a reminder that death is an undeniable and unmistakable rite of passage in the practice of resurrection. We must “keep on rising from the dead,” as hymn writer Fred Pratt Green once said. Resurrection requires practice—lots and lots of practice. And, importantly, the practice of resurrection is never a solitary endeavor; it is a communal activity, requiring the mysterious work of the Spirit and a gathering of practitioners who sing each other back to life when we have forgotten the words.

In July 2024, the Rev. Dr. Carl P. Daw, Jr. and I met at the Annual Conference of The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada. Since then, Carl has become a dear friend, the editor of my hymn texts, a co-architect in worship planning, and a thoughtful conversation partner for each Sunday’s lectionary. Through this serendipitous meeting, God’s providential awkwardness was at work in ways beyond our understanding—which is, as always, the nature of grace.

Carl wrote a new hymn text for me in recognition of my birthday: “Nature Lifts Her Voice to Raise,” set to the tune ELYRIA by Maria Luigi Cherubini. The picture below to this article shows both Carl’s text and the music. In his poetic brilliance, Carl crafted double acrostics, with each verse beginning with a letter of my first name, continuing again in the second line of each verse.

What this next year of life holds, I cannot say for certain, except for more grey hair. But here is my desire: I hope there will be as many opportunities to practice resurrection as there were this past year.

From far behind and far ahead is heard an invitation to “offer God an endless song”—a song that all nature sings and round us already rings. Such is the music of the spheres and the anthem of all creation practicing resurrection.

Practicing with you,