Don't forget to sing

‘Toutes les prairies offrent mille fleurs, tous les claires de lune ont la bouche en coeur, tous les rues de ville sourient au soleil, tous les jours de pluie ont quité leur deuil. Ma petite muse, c’est toi, Seigneur, c’est ta joie qui fuse dans mon coeur. Ma petite muse, c’est toi, Seigneur, c’est toi qui m’imbibes de ton bonheur…’

Yesterday evening I had to park my car on the street and walk home, because the condominium was repaving our parking lot. I got out of my car, and immediately started singing, in French, as I usually do when arriving home from work. To come home is such a joy. To be at home. That’s why I sing. A neighbor was also getting out of his car just ahead of mine, a big black man, forty-ish in age, with whom I have sometimes exchanged a few words. He drives a tank, an old Lincoln Continental with a broken door window and a patched tail light, probably damaged in a parking garage accident.

I stopped singing and greeted him, and we started to chat, first about his little dog. ‘I hope you didn’t let him out while the blacktop was still sticky. His feet’ll track that stuff into your house!’ I said. ‘Huh? Was he out in the parking lot today?’ he responded, forgetting for a moment that we had both just arrived. By the end of our short walk together to our townhouses, just two doors apart, I had learned something new about him. He works for a cruise line, and had just gotten back from working a Caribbean cruise to Belize. ‘How exciting!’ I told him. ‘I wondered why you seemed to come and go at such long intervals sometimes.’ Then he reached to give me his business card, but found he hadn’t any on him, so I asked him to just slip one into my mail box when he had a moment. I’ve never been on a cruise, but…

This morning, on the way to work, I began singing again, without noticing. ‘Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace, good will toward men,’ using an old Anglican melody. When I realized what I was singing, I finished, and then, just to be fair, sang the same chant in Greek, using one of the Byzantine tones, ‘Dhóxa Si to dhíxandi to Fós, dhóxa en ypsístis Theó, kai épi ghis iríni, en anthrópis evdhokía…’ Then I started thinking, and thought led to talking, to myself, then to the Lord, and talk then flowed into thanks. ‘Lord, my God, how great You are! How You have prepared everything for us so wisely! Glory to You, my God and my Hope, glory to You!’ Yes, I really do talk to Him like this. Pretty simple, but no one else is listening. Well, just this time, you are.

‘What makes us human?’ I asked myself. The answer started coming even before I finished forming the introspection. ‘Sing, sing while you know you’re still living,’ a line from a song by my favorite vocalist and song writer, Cat Stevens, from his song, Music. Yes, singing makes us human.

Yesterday, I was on the edge
hoping everything was going to work itself out.
A good honest man, doing the work of God,
Trying to make things better for Him.
A lover of life in a school for fools,
Trying to find another way to survive.

Chorus
New Music, new Music, new Music,
Sweet Music, can lighten us,
Can brighten the world,
can save us.

My friend said, ‘Well, I think I found a way
To help make myself richer.’
I said, ‘Don't you know, well, it won't be too long before
The bad ol’ devil will get you back.’
I said, ‘Put back your heart, and sing, sing while
you know you’re still living,
Sing, sing, sing, while you know there’s still…’

Chorus
New Music, new Music, new Music,
Sweet Music, can lighten us,
Can brighten the world,
can save us.

Take a look at the world,
Think about how it will end.
There’d be no wars in the world
If everybody joined in the band.
Think about the light in your eyes,
Think about what you should know.
There’d be no wars in the world
If everybody joined in the show.
Oh, oh…


Think about the light in your eyes,
Think about what you should know.
There’d be no wars in the world
If everybody joined in the show,
In the show…

Don’t forget to sing.


Sing to the LORD a new song, his praise from the ends of the earth, you who go down to the sea, and all that is in it, you islands, and all who live in them.
Isaiah 42:10