By Kay Augustine<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My mother grew up a Presbyterian, my father a Methodist, but the only mainline church was Congregational in the little village of Lynxville, Wisconsin, where I grew up. It was served weekly by a lay pastor, a banker from nearby Gays Mills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every service, as I remember it, began with the early 19th century hymn, \u201cHoly, Holy, Holy!\u201d We sang all four verses, accompanied on an upright piano by a tiny woman named Ada Lawler, whose tempos grew slower and slower as she grew older. (In high school, I was asked to replace her, and the tempos picked up.) Although I had next to no understanding of what the lyrics I was singing meant, the strident, ascending melody made me happy; I loved singing it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1. Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty! Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee; Holy, Holy, Holy! Merciful and Mighty! God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Holy, Holy, Holy! All the saints adore Thee, Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cherubim<\/a> and seraphim<\/a> falling down before Thee, Which wert, and art, and evermore shalt be.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. Holy, Holy, Holy! Though the darkness hide Thee, Though the eye of sinful man, thy glory may not see:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Only Thou art holy, there is none beside Thee, Perfect in pow\u2019r, in love and purity.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 4. Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty! All thy works shall praise thy name in earth, and sky, and sea;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Holy, Holy, Holy! Merciful and Mighty, God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n That hymn was what came to mind when I read the theme for this Shareletter: <\/em>\u201cEvery day is a Holy Day.\u201d Just as last year\u2019s harvest theme called out to me to write about the \u201charvest of my days,\u201d this one calls me to answer, for myself, how every day has become a holy day, which for me has come to mean a day of attempting to connect with all that is holy. But my understanding of \u201choly\u201d has evolved over many years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reginald Heber, an early 1900s Anglican bishop, wrote the above hymn, setting it to an already existing tune. At the time, the Church of England frowned on the singing of anything besides metrical psalms in church, and the bishop hoped to change that, writing this hymn to be used on Trinity Sunday. He reserves the term \u201choly\u201d only for God, making that clear in the third verse: The saints, the angels \u201cadore Thee,\u201d but \u201cOnly Thou<\/em> art holy, there is none beside Thee, Perfect in power, in love and purity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a child of ten, I was finding it hard to believe in Heber\u2019s God. I clearly recall looking down the hill from the front porch of my fifth- to eighth-grade building to the steeple of our church at the foot of the hill and thinking, \u201cIf God is real, why do we only speak of him in church?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And yet I wanted to believe. Looking back from my 89th year, I\u2019ve often wondered why church and the music sung there has played such a prominent role in my life. While most of my family of origin attended church regularly (except for my father, who joined us only at Christmas and Easter), I am the only one who devoted so much of my life to church work, teaching Sunday school when I was in elementary school, and spending hours and hours of time as an adult planning liturgies, leading choirs and congregational singing, and seeking spiritual growth with friends I met at church. Was it \u201choliness\u201d which attracted me, and if so, what exactly was that, and how might I find it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The #14 bus I take to Friends Meeting goes past the church of St. Hedwig on Humboldt and Brady, one of three Roman Catholic churches grouped since 2000 under the parish heading of \u201cThree Holy Women.\u201d The three holy women so honored are Hedwig, Queen of Poland from 1384 to 1399; Rita of Cascia, Italian widow and Augustinian nun, who lived from 1381 to 1457; and Mary, Queen of the Holy Rosary. They are called holy (and were declared by the Church to be saints) for a variety of reasons, including evidence of miracles performed during or after their deaths. Reading about their lives, I do not find anything to suggest that the \u201choly\u201d attached to their names exemplifies anything which I seek in my own life. Rita was known, among other attributes, for \u201cmortification of the flesh.\u201d Historians have called Hedwig one of the greatest leaders of Poland. And Mary\u2013we all know why she is called holy. At a bridal shower for me, held in 1960 at the Lynxville Community Hall, a farmer\u2019s wife I barely knew came up to me where I had been sitting opening gifts and whispered in my ear, \u201cRemember your rosary.\u201d I experienced her whispered message with a twinge of foreboding. And have seldom prayed the rosary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having become a Roman Catholic shortly before my marriage, I tried several different forms of prayer over the following years, never sticking long with any of them. Having met Bill and Sandra Brown while still a college student in the 1950s, I once tried, perhaps in the early 1970s, attending a Friends Meeting, but was apparently not ready to appreciate an hour of communal silence. I suspect that my enthusiastic immersion in leading choirs and congregations in song arose out of my hope that by getting people to express their faith through music, I might come to believe, to connect with something holy, myself. Although the singing often brought me joy, the feeling of connection to the holy never happened. Something else, however, did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Psychologist Julian Jaynes\u2019 1976 book, The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, <\/em>was, for me, a glimmer of light in what was my very dark tunnel of doubt. He explained how early humans first came to the idea of a Divine Being and how their experience (of hearing their dead chief\u2019s voice in their head) is still present today in the experience of some mentally ill people. I found that fascinating! Oh, <\/em>I thought, so that\u2019s<\/u> why I can\u2019t believe in God! I\u2019ve made him up from Bible stories learned in church, just as early humans made him up from the voice they heard when afraid and in need of protection and guidance.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I have a very clear memory of sitting alone with that thought in my east-facing living room on a sunny spring morning, feeling first relief at being able to let go of what I now saw as a search for someone who didn\u2019t exist, and then feeling something else: a Presence, unseen and unheard but real, filling the room. Oh, <\/em>I thought. And who are you?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n More\u2019s the pity I didn\u2019t stay with, attend to that question over the next 45 or so years! Some time spent in Centering Prayer created a spiritual connection which, although I didn\u2019t realize it at the time, brought back that feeling of Presence. Certainly my 23 years with the Friends have shed more light on that path toward connection with the Holy. It has very gradually dawned on me that time spent in silence, listening for the voice of conscience, is my way to connect with a form of Goodness I can believe in and also to possibly connect with whatever creative Spirits exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I often read a Jane Austen quotation which has been posted on my wall for many years: \u201cWe have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c…if we would attend to it\u2026!\u201d <\/em>That is the part I am astonished to think I ignored for so many busy years! Attention is<\/em> prayer, implies Mary Oliver in \u201cA Summer\u2019s Day.\u201d<\/em> And my attention has been scattered far and wide for much of my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Until very recently, I had been going through what was, for me, an unusually long period of depression fed by advanced age, some health uncertainties, and discouraging fatigue. I was not in a good place physically or emotionally. But then in our Bible Study on Monday, November 13, we read James 5:13-18, in which James urges his followers, in all circumstances, to pray. Was I getting a message?<\/em> I asked myself. Then Tuesday, at my Emotions Anonymous meeting, we read Step 11, which is concerned with the importance of prayer and meditation in our daily lives, and I\u2019m thinking I need to sit up and pay attention! Finally, Wednesday, on NPR\u2019s \u201cAll Things Considered,\u201d I heard interviewed a trio of musicians who had written a song which they hope will become an anthem for the cause of reversing global warming, much as \u201cWe Shall Overcome\u201d became an anthem for Civil Rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I searched YouTube for the song, \u201cWon\u2019t Give Up,\u201d the joint creation of Pattie Gonia, Quinn Christopherson, and Yo-Yo Ma, and found it uplifting. After a few more days\u2019 search, I found the lyrics, a search I undertook because some of them were unclear on the video. And for the next several days I began my day by listening again to the song, singing along, and thinking as I did, \u201cI won\u2019t give up on me<\/em>, either!\u201d It was just the spiritual nourishment I needed to begin moving through my days with more energy and determination. Determination also to keep my morning ritual. If not the song, then silence and \u201ctuning in\u201d to that feeling of connection, because I have come to believe it is in connecting with each other\u2013both the living, the dead, and all of creation\u2013that we find holiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I do not believe there is a Power beyond ourselves which does what we cannot do for ourselves, but I have<\/em> come to believe that there is a Source who connects us to each other, if we connect with Them, a source which can guide us to do good things and comfort us when we fail to do them. One Sunday, at the beginning of our Silence, Mendelssohn\u2019s contralto solo from the Elijah<\/em> came to mind. \u201cO, Rest in the Lord,\u201d but with these words: \u201cO, rest in the Silence. Wait patiently for Love, and They will bring thee thy heart\u2019s desire, O, rest in the Silence. Wait patiently for Love.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n My longest period of depression has given way to my longest period of daily meditation, of experiencing the holiness of connection with whatever Spirits abound in our daily lives. And since I began this essay with the lyrics of the hymn which began my long ago search for the holy, I will end with the song which had a role in persuading me to not give up on myself. Drag Queen Pattie Gonia said it was conceived as a requiem for a melting Alaskan glacier, but in the process of creating it, the trio chose to also infuse the lyrics with hope for a dying planet and all its inhabitants:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. We\u2019ll I\u2019m not, I\u2019m not gonna say goodbye. I won\u2019t see you on the other side. Even when I feel tired, I won\u2019t stop.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n You and I, made up of the same things. Nature running in our veins. Even when I feel tired, I won\u2019t stop trying.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve seen the sun shine before all this gray. Always find light still, the breaking of day.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n (Chorus): I won’t give up for a minute, Never giving up on you, Never giving up on you.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I won’t give up for a minute, Never giving up on you, Never giving up on you.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 — cello, glacier speaking \u2013<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Well we\u2019re caught, Caught up in the fire of time. How do we stay strong, stay kind?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n We don\u2019t have to say goodbye. Don\u2019t say goodbye. I saw you burning Up in the night.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ll always keep searching, Searching for light.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I won’t give up for a minute, Never giving up on you. Never giving up on you. (3x)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I won\u2019t give up. Never giving up on you, Never giving up on you.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2014 cello to end \u2014<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have come to believe that there is a Source who connects us to each other<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1559,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-december-2023-2023"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1557"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1562,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1557\/revisions\/1562"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}