Amy Lu's View

I was just sitting there, contentedly latch hooking away. I was not expecting any big feels. (That’s the whole point of doing latch hook–it’s calming and not very emotional, although I do sometimes get irritated when my yarn frays).

And then, I heard a choir start to sing the hymn “Abide With Me.”

I wasn’t having an auditory hallucination–we were watching the recording of our church’s national worship service held last week in Portland. 

I wasn’t surprised to hear the choir, but I wasn’t expecting them to perform that song, which I strongly associate with my past. It was one of my favorite hymns as a young conservative Lutheran. (The song is in our Unitarian Universalist hymnal but our church rarely sings it and I definitely didn’t expect it at a national service). 

I loved it so much that my friend Jennifer and I sang it for a senior concert when we graduated from high school. 

Even more powerfully, I remember playing it on piano at my parents’ house when I was staying there when my mom was dying. I didn’t give a performance for my family or even my mom or anything like that–it was just something I played to comfort myself (although I do think my mom said at the time she liked hearing me play it–along with whatever else I was noodling around with).  

Beyond the emotions stirred up by the connection to my youth and my mom, this encounter with “Abide With Me” blew my mind. After the choir sang the first verse, a spoken word artist, Lea Morris, wove her performance–her beautiful, powerful, profound performance–into the song. 

I won’t try and describe the awesomeness of the performance of this song–you really should just watch/listen to it. (https://youtu.be/66NdjDRPvhU?t=3533). As a small taste of it, Lea Morris offers this line: “Liminal space is feeling so breathless.” I don’t pretend to know what that means, but it is beautiful and opens me up to all kinds of ideas and thoughts. 

“Liminal space is feeling so breathless.”

–Lea Morris

And to be honest, and hopefully not offensive, the juxtaposition of a song that I think is so embedded in white conservative culture with a spoken word performance by a black woman in a way that feels totally authentic and creative and relevant and not at all cheesy makes me feel that music can be so powerful that anything is possible.

Just a few blog posts ago I wrote about “The Wedding Song” by Paul Stookey, and I think this morning’s experience of “Abide With Me” is very similar–the intense feeling of being transported to the past by a song, while simultaneously being inspired to think about something in a different way. 

Music, and ritual, can connect us to the past and honor that past while still inspiring us to have new ideas. We can be comforted by familiarity and challenged by a different perspective–a perspective that’s new, or one that’s only possible after gaining some life experiences.

What can it mean to ask someone, or something, to abide with you? Who or what could that be besides or beyond the understanding I had of God way back in time when I lived out on the rural Wisconsin tundra? 

What if the song isn’t just about asking for or seeking comfort, but a reflection on how we can give solace to others? How can we abide with each other in community and love?

I could finish several latch hook projects as I ponder that.