songs of ascent

Death comes for us all.

Whether it’s the death of a loved one, the death of a relationship, or the death of a dream, we all walk through dark valleys in our lives.

Psalm 23 has long been a favorite for many due in part to its message of God’s presence, provision, and promise through all of life’s peeks and valleys.

I wrote this song based on Psalm 23 after the death of someone who played an important role in my life during a dark valley.  They were with me and they helped me - a comforting presence amidst a deeply challenging season. When they died (too young), like most humans do, I wrestled both with grief but also with the seeming injustice of it all: Why them?  Why now?

What or who comforts us in our dark seasons?  For me, it’s remembering I’m never alone, that God (who is Love) is always with me, that while death comes, life persists.  That energy cannot be created or destroyed, so when someone we love dies, they are still with us, as Love endures in all its forms.

And we can rest in that Truth.

A song of lament for Ash Wednesday

We wait in quiet stillness 

with aching, gasping need

We wait in expectation

yet struggling to see

Your Light in darkest shadows

Your Hope born in the dirt

We’re waiting on Your healing

We’re waiting on Your word

We wait in tired resilience

We’re wondering where You are

We wait in resignation

yet trusting that You keep

each tear that burns our faces

each cry that chokes our breath

Our hearts beat through the silence

to find Your promised rest

Come, Love, comfort our hearts

Come, Peace, order each part

Come, Joy, fill us anew

Come, LORD, we need You

Our tangled weeds ensnare us

This pruning pierces skin

A drop of dark blood staining

the snow that lies within

The stump cut off is aching 

This growth appears stillborn

Yet roots are digging deeper

Truth waiting to be born

Into the mad dark dawning

a molecule of Light

into the chaos spinning

comes Glory, clear and bright

With healing restoration

creation is renewed

where Hope is always growing

and Love waits to bloom

This song feels like the weighted blanket I desperately need right now.

In the 10+ years since I first wrote this song, my faith has shifted and evolved to embrace doubt, the gray, raw honesty about the messiness and challenge of attempting to live a faithful life in God’s presence.  (How I even define and imagine “God” has shifted and changed.)

In her final book Wholehearted Faith, author and public theologian Rachel Held Evans often prefaces a theological insight with “On the days when I believe,” immediately followed by “And then there are the other days.”

Today is an “other day” for me.

I want to believe, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

I want to believe God has a “perfect” plan, that somehow [in what today feels like some magical, impossible, cosmic math] the obscene mess of this world will be redeemed, “all things working together for good” and all that.  I wish.  I hope.  I pray.

But who gets to define “God’s will” TODAY?  Who gets to decide what or who to claim in the name of God?  What horrors and atrocities have been done (ARE TODAY being done) by those who claim to be acting in “God’s will”?  [Excuse me while I rage and primal scream into what today feels like the void. WHO EVEN ARE WE?!?!  WHERE EVEN ARE YOU?!?! @&$*@#&%(*#&%#]

So today.  OOF.  Today I need someone (and Someone) to help me believe. To help me see. To let me curl up in a ball on Their lap and watch the Light dance through the window of my discouragement and disbelief, to help me recognize the beauty always present, illuminated, even in the mess.  Especially in the mess.  [And what a  #%^&@*$ mess.]

LORD, have mercy.  Help me see. Cover me.

And then help me get up and do something about it.

If you had told 2008 me that I’d be living in South Dakota in just over 10 years, I would have said you were out of your $#@! mind. NO. WAY.  Oh, and also, married to a pastor?  HA. Right. It was one of my earliest vows to never marry a pastor!

And yet.  Here I am.  Happily married to a pastor and living in South Dakota.  [Insert quote about God laughing when we make plans here.]

When we moved to South Dakota from Pennsylvania in January 2019, (as ridiculous as this sounds) I had no idea just how much further north we are here, how much colder and darker it gets for how much longer in the winter, how those winds really do come sweeping down the plains to the tune of -20 wind chills that quite literally take your breath away and burn your lungs. OOF.

While the winters here can certainly be brutal, they also come with a beauty I’ve never before encountered.  Hoarfrost, ice pillars, sun dogs (pictured here) all seem magical - seemingly impossible phenomenon that reveal the real beauty of winter.  They are a sight to behold.  A reminder of the beauty to be found even in the coldest, darkest seasons.

The prayer at the heart of this song is a similar one.  Life can be harsh and brutal, and so we humans armor up to survive - for me that includes (but is certainly not limited to) perfectionism, judgement, aloofness, numbing.

What I want to whittle down are the shields and facades of my False Self, the frozen, armored me who can’t see who I “objectively [am] from the beginning, in the mind and heart of God, ‘the face you had before you were born,’ as the Zen masters say. [My] substantial self, [my] absolute identify, which can never be gained nor lost by any technique, group affiliation, morality, or formula whatsoever.” (Richard Rohr, Falling Upward)

Just as sun dogs reflect sunlight through ice crystals to create beauty in the sky on bitterly cold days, I want my True Self to reflect pure Divine Light through the prism of Love, especially in the coldest and darkest of seasons.

I want to see the Light and be the Light more clearly.

I pray that for all of us.

PS: A few notes on this song, because I’m a nerd like that:

1. You’ll see the name “LORD” (in all caps) showing up in some of my songs. This is a reference to YHWH, the one True Divine Being, whose name is considered so sacred many in the Jewish faith will not speak it.  This is the I AM, Absolute Existence, the Source, the Essence of all and in all.  (You can talk to my in-house theologian/Bible scholar husband about the many names of the Divine. He’s a wonderful resource!)

2. This song was recorded in 2008 on my iPhone, at home with just me and my piano.  I debated re-recording it again to be a bit more “polished,” but then thought that flew in the face of what I’m trying to do here. These are prayers that flow from raw, real life.  It’s not perfect.  It’s awkward and messy sometimes.  You’ll hear my squeaky piano bench, and my fumbling hands. I hope the imperfections are not distracting but will help you feel like you’re actually with me in this moment of authentic prayer.

When I first wrote this song 20 years ago, it was an imagined musical take on the question Jesus poses to Peter in Matthew 16 when he asks, “Who do you say that I am?” I wondered what it would have been like to witness firsthand the life and death of Jesus? If I was physically present in that moment in time, what would I have thought, said, or done in response?  I imagined Jesus asking me the same question, “Who am I to you?”

Now, 20 years later, a new interpretation emerges via my dear partner, Jordan, who after listening to this song for the first time recently, heard something different. He suggested this song could also be heard as my/our question posed to the Divine, to the universe, to all those we come in contact with. A primal question of belonging - “Who am I to you?”

The answer to that question can transform the way we see ourselves and each other, especially those “others” we don’t understand or who make us uncomfortable, who we haven’t had exposure or proximity to, who it’s easier to ignore or vilify than try to empathize with.

Mother Theresa said, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”

The grieving Palestinian mother says, “Who am I to you?”

The terrified transgender person says, “Who am I to you?”

The refugee fleeing death threats and violence in their home country says, “Who am I to you?”

The disruptive bully in class says, “Who am I to you?”

The noncompliant patient says, “Who am I to you?”

We each need to ask the question, “Who am I to you?”

For those of us who strive to follow the way of Jesus, we are uniquely called to welcome the stranger, to care for the widow and orphan, for those especially vulnerable in our society and communities. We are called to Love. Everyone. Always. No exceptions.

“Who am I to you?”

You are Divinely Beloved.

We belong to each other.

May we act like it, and believe it.

There have been times on my journey when I’ve felt alone, uncertain, unclear as to the right next step. This is a song I wrote in such a season, when I needed to be reminded of a Divine Presence who is both incarnate (with us) and immanent (all around us), who is so very near in so many ways.