I Will Sing

Ok, I've caved. I'm a blogger now. And it looks like this could be a lot of fun except it's taken me two days to think of what to title this thing. I'm curious about how long it took you. I'm a slow cooker and prone to think to long about everything. Anyway, I will say a bit about the name as obliged to do in a first post.

I came across Mary Oliver, a poet, about six or seven years ago. She said things that made me feel known. She named the struggle I was in in a way that I understood. She seemed to lean hard into mystery and thought it was worth while. In the moment I was asking what my place and work in the world was, she told me what I wanted to believe was true that seeing and naming mysteries are the real work.

Here are her words :

I will sing for the veil that never lifts.
I will sing for the veil that begins, once in a life time maybe, to lift.
I will sing for the rent in the veil.
I will sing for what is in front of the veil, the floating light.
I will sing for what is behind the veil—light, light and more light.
This is the world and this is the work of the world.

It would be hard to unpack all the ways this spoke to me, but I held onto it for years. In my dark moments I would come back to this. When I felt myself of no consequence or thought I had made no contribution to the world, I would remember that struggling to name mysteries is what I wanted to do. I would remember that I had, at least, written my own poems that wrestled with things that were veiled, that there had been a handful of times when that writing and my sharing it had lifted veils for others and it was a great consolation.

However, I don't think I ever dreamed these words would be more than consolation. Recently I have seen that these words have actually been prophetic words for my life.

I never really sang, at least not for anyone. But about a year and a half ago the dreams in my life completely extinguished. I mean totally out. I didn't even have a far fetched fantasy in mind. What was I doing? I saw no way ahead and no happiness in the present. I knew two things though, the first was that God loved me. I know that's an often misunderstood phrase, over used and often trite sounding. But through a long season I'd really come to know it deep in my heart. Which leads me to the second thing I knew, which is that I loved God back. This and a deep frustration were all I had.

I thought something has to change. I should try something new. It doesn't have to be earth shattering, just something different than I've been doing week after week. I had been attending a midweek worship service. It was small and humble and I noticed an inconsistency with who would sing or play each week. I thought to myself there seems to be room, I think I can do that, it's not a show here so I think my small voice might be all right for this place. I think it could sound nice enough and not be offensive. I'll try out and see.

So I started singing.

And I was humbled that when I opened my mouth what came out wasn't all the frustration or anger or fear I was feeling, but the love I knew and the love I wanted to know more deeply.
I haven't stopped singing a year later and I'm still making song. Every time I sing I get to enter that mystery. I sing about the veil. I sing about what is in front of the veil and what is behind it.

What a gift. What a privilege to sing.

I love that it was a surprise too. It was something that I might have seen, but I didn't or couldn't. God's redemption was laying close by all along.