By Kay Augustine

I came to Milwaukee Friends Meeting in the year 2000, but I knew about it long before that through my friendship with Bill and Sandra Brown.

I had spent many years as a church musician, most of it coordinating the volunteer musicians at St. Benedict the Moor and putting together a small choir for special occasions there. Some memories are still precious:  Singing the “Exultet” after the lighting of new fire at the mass on Holy Saturday evening, singing the old a cappella plainchants for the Sanctus and Agnus Dei with the St. Ben’s community, playing piano with the gospel quartet which led the music for the St. Benedict School Alumni masses.

I wasn’t ready to give up these special spiritual and musical experiences. I also loved the symbolism of the Eucharist, where, at St. Ben’s, all are welcomed and reminded in this ritual that we are One. But I had also battled over many years with the authoritarian structure within the Roman Catholic Church.

After the last and most painful of these battles, I was disillusioned and ready to leave the words behind and worship in shared silence. So it was a revelation when, at a women’s spirituality Saturday at the home of the Greenlers, out of the shared silence someone began a song, others joined in, and a perfect unison, totally unrehearsed and sublime, transfixed me.

I hadn’t left the music behind after all; it was waiting for me all those years! And during my 20 years with the Quakers, it has been a joy, when I am reminded during worship of one of the songs I learned long ago, to be able to share it in worship, either alone or especially, if others know it, in unison with them. I did that a few weeks ago when a cooing Birdie reminded me of Janet Smith’s “Johnny’s Lullaby,” published in the 1968 Survival Songbook.