How can I keep from singing?

2020, as we all know has been a very unusual year.  That we all know.

For some families with school-aged children, the pandemic has thrust children into remote learning, or parents and children into a decision to educate at home, without the thinking and preparation that many homeschooling parents were able to take ahead of making the plunge.  The upcoming school year will likely also be a very strange one.

For our family and our homeschool journey, our greatest loss this year has also been the source of many tender mercies. And through it all, we’ve been compelled to keep singing.

We already educated at home, so for us, the changes in that aspect of life were far less disruptive than for most families, except in one area.  We sing.  It is part of what defines us, calms us, and completes us. Among the losses we felt:

• We could no longer have choir practice for our neighbors in our home on Sunday mornings (I’m the choir director for our congregation).
• Our teenagers’ weekly voice lessons abruptly stopped.
• Their vocal recital, and then the spring choir concert for which they had been preparing was delayed, and then indefinitely postponed.
• The auditioned choir that two of our teens relied upon for their most significant social outlet outside our home stopped holding in person rehearsals, and then their annual tour – the centerpiece of our summer plan was canceled.

The tender mercies that need to be named as a counterpoint to the losses are also many.  Here’s just a few of them:

Just in Time

The high school honors choir into which our daughter was accepted in January (one of only 4 vocalists from our state, and one of only 150 choir members from 5 states) still attended the weeklong American Choral Directors Association conference in Salt Lake City in early March, and they sang and sang – 9 hours a day for 3 days, and then they performed in the historic Salt Lake Tabernacle, just prior to the stay-at-home orders and travel restrictions were enacted that would have made it impossible to gather – just a week later.  The ACDA experience was glorious – and became the last performance and rehearsal most of these amazing youth would experience for the rest of their school year.

Of the eight pieces they performed, all were my favorite, but one had lyrics that have stayed in our thoughts ever since. Here’s a peek at their performance of HERE at the Tabernacle.

HERE – by composer Joshua Rist, performed by the Western Region ACDA High School Honors Choir, March 2020

It is a  wonder, in hindsight, how profound the lyrics to this song were to soon become for all of us.  Grieving losses brought on by events and circumstances outside of our control, pulsing questions centered in our dreams and doubts, finding questions we must live in and live out…standing barefoot before a burning bush, all asking – ‘Who are you? Who will you be?’

A veil of distractions, a cataract of our design, lifted by the morning light on the shore of a heavenly ocean, telling us who we are, and who we are to be – even in the midst of a global pandemic.  The Gospel answers the question of who we are and who we are to be, and it beckons to us to ‘open the door’ – where we can begin to understand the destiny of the person that God means for us to become. Educating at home is a perfect opportunity to reassure and affirm the answer to this question in such an unsettled time.

Love at Home

While singing in other venues has been put on hold, singing in our home, especially on Sunday, has increased.  We have ‘obscure hymn’ singing, sometimes several in a row as part of our home worship service, and our daughter has had an opportunity to send a video solo to be used as part of a Zoom fireside for Easter.  Music often rings in bedrooms or accompanies working together.  It is a sweet sound to this Mom’s ears, and brings a sweet spirit into our home every time it happens.

How can I keep from singing?

We found out at the beginning of May that the 10-day summer choir fireside tour was canceled that would have taken us all to the Statue of Liberty in New York City, to Plymouth Massachusetts for a celebration of the 400th Landing of the Mayflower (on which our ancestor William Bradford first arrived in North America in 1620), to Sharon Vermont (birthplace of Joseph Smith), Palmyra New York and Niagara Falls, and several other cities.  The same week of this cancellation, with that significant  disappointment ringing in our ears, I also heard another sound around the house.

One of our sons decided to audition for a virtual choir project with BYU Vocal Point, remaking their classic ‘Nearer My God to Thee’.  Our son had also auditioned and made it into the Heritage Youth Chorus in January 2020 with his sister (whose summer tour was now canceled), but he had never actually had the opportunity to perform in front of a live audience with the choir, or to perform a solo either.  His had also lost his weekly vocal lessons to the pandemic, which along with his diligent practice, had brought him so far in such a short period of time.  Rather than being consumed by the weight of disappointment, this idea to shift his efforts to this virtual choir was purely his.  He used the Latin we had learned in 2019 in our homeschool, and a practice track, and he practiced – constantly.  I do not know how many takes he did for his singing on video, but it was a lot.  In the hour before the audition window was to close, we uploaded his video and with a prayer, let it go.

This week, the virtual choir video was released, and there he is, seventh from the left on the front row of vocalists, singing his heart out.

In this time without traditional choir singing, our son had decided to pivot and move forward, doing his best and leaving the rest to God. He knows who he is, who he wants to become and that he has a message to share with his voice.  This knowledge is more important to him and to us as his parents than any academic achievement he may have (although he will have many of those too).

As June came, the missed 2020 tour dates passed and then as the anniversary of the 2019 tour that had inspired our son came, he posted the following on his social media:

Tender Mercies – A New Song

In a sweet conclusion to a difficult choir year, this week has included two days with a new and different song.  On Tuesday, we sat with masks on to hear the last of a series of group voice lessons – accomplished by a brave and creative music educator for whom we are very thankful.  Twenty young people at all stages of their own vocal journey braved the stage and lights to perform the solo they had each prepared for a masked audience, unable to see the broad smiles under the cloth.

Then today, for the first time in nearly six months, the members of the Heritage Youth Choir to which our teens belong met in person (masks on and distanced from one another in a large recreation hall) to rehearse for an actual in person performance of the program they had prepared to sing on tour.  They have just four hours over two days together to get ready, but working through any obstacle in their way, they will sing, and give joyful praise to the One whose song of redemption and healing rings in their hearts.  Among the pieces they will perform is ‘How Can I Keep from Singing’.

Music has been our tender mercy in 2020.  What is yours?