"What's in your wallet?" the commercial asks. A better question might be "What's in your mind?"
I'm talking about "earworms" here - those songs that get stuck in your head, that you can't get rid of. After attending worship earlier this month, one of the songs, "We Come to Your Feast," stuck in my head for days. I couldn't get rid of it!
It's not the most profound hymn ever written: just simple words and a catchy tune. But what a blessing to have those words returning to my consciousness over and over again:
"We place upon your table a simple cup of wine:
The fruit of human labor, the gift of sun and vine;
We come to taste the presence of him we claim as Lord,
His dying and his living, his leading and his giving,
His love in cup outpoured."[1]
And it's not just catchy songs that we have in our heads. Last year, I visited a church member, just days before she died. Virginia was under hospice care; when her daughter greeted me at the door, she said her mother was unresponsive, although the family thought she could still hear them.
I went to the bedside and spoke to Virginia. No response. I was confident she didn't know who I was, and was not sure that she was even aware I was there. I spoke to her and prayed, all with no response, then began to read the Twenty-Third Psalm. Softly, another voice joined mine. Virginia, otherwise unresponsive, shared in reciting, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want."
We no longer memorize poetry or scripture the way my parents' generation did. We rely on instant access to digital media, instead. But what is in your mind? What songs do you listen to, that stick in your head and speak to you day after day? And when the time comes for you and for me to walk through the valley of the shadow of death, what words and images will be in your mind to strengthen and sustain?
[1] Michael Joncas, "We Come to Your Feast," GIA Publications, 1995.
It is the sound of beauty that swirls in my soul uninvited, unanticipated, and, I imagine, unceasingly. Nevertheless, it is always there. The "Flower Duet" from the French opera Lakmé lifts me, while leaving behind life's debris, into the world of Delibes' scene of the dense dome of white jasmine and roses clinging together near the sacred stream which runs calm and dark. The song seems at times to mirror my soul.