Let’s sing together

August 7, 2022 • Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
Reading: Psalm 27:1-6 (The Inclusive Bible)
Rev. Jeff Wells preaching

[You can view the full worship video recording at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhRQw-qSRlo

Singing is one of the greatest pleasures of my life. I grew up in a singing and music-making family. My father started playing guitar and singing when he was a teenager and went on to play guitar in a dance band on weekends for 25 years. He was a good singer too, with a deep baritone voice. My older brother learned guitar, my younger brother played piano, and my sister had a beautiful singing voice. My mother didn’t sing, but she loved listening. So, every time we had a family gathering – a picnic, a party, a reunion, or we were on a camping trip, we always sat around and sang. I started learning guitar when I was eight years old and pretty soon I was accompanying my father and leading songs that were from the generation of my siblings and me. 

I was first a folk singer. Dylan, Ochs, Seeger, Woody Guthrie and Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, and more. Later, started learning more folk-influenced pop music like Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Simon & Garfunkel, James Taylor, et al. I grew up during the 1960s and ’70s learning the songs of the anti-Vietnam War movement, the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-Apartheid, Black liberation, women’s liberation, gay liberation, and environmental movements. They became part of my heart and soul. 

Later, I started writing songs. Of course, as a teenager, I wrote love songs. Every songwriter writes love songs! I also remember writing a song – as I traveled on a bus from Madison, Wisconsin to Tupelo, Mississippi – about stopping the Ku Klux Klan. In 1979, I wrote a song for a political concert in support of the leftists in the civil war in El Salvador. Other songs I composed through the years were about events in my life. For a couple years in the late 1990s, I participated in a singer-songwriter circle at a club in Tribeca (lower Manhattan). One of my fellow musicians was building a log cabin on land his family owned in Otsego County. I wrote a lovely song about it. 

Many passages in our scriptures encourage us to “sing a new song to God” or to “sing and shout with joy,” and so on. I believe that whenever we sing, we are singing to God. That doesn’t mean it has to be a song of praise to God or in any way a religious song – because no matter what we are singing, it is an expression of who we are, what we are experiencing and feeling. It can be sad, happy, angry, mournful, or funny. 

Singing and making music helps us to experience and express our spectrum of emotions in a way that differs from merely through thinking or speaking about them. I think of so many songs that have given courage and strength to workers fighting for a better life: 

“Solidarity Forever” or 
“Which Side Are You On? Which side are you on?” 

and so many more. Or think of all the songs that helped inspire the millions of people fighting for Black freedom: 

“We shall overcome” or 
“Ain’t gonna let nobody turn us around” or 
“Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya.” 

Whether the songs we sing are explicitly religious or not, singing songs can bring us joy, comfort, courage, peace, and so much more. In my experience, that is true especially when we sing together. I think that’s why Pete Seeger is such an important mentor and hero for me. He never wanted to be just a performer up on stage with people watching him sing. He constantly tried to get everybody to sing with him. Pete employed songs and singing to move people, make them laugh, help them become active, allow them to feel things deeply, or teach about history and social struggles.

Singing has been so important in my life that, no matter what else I was involved in, no matter what was happening to me or around me, I always wanted to make time to sing and play. And like Pete, but with much smaller audiences, I tried to use songs to help people feel things – joy, sadness, outrage, love – the whole rainbow of emotions. That’s the power of singing. 

Then, about 15 months ago, I fell and badly sprained my ring finger on my left hand. My immediate and intense fear was that I would never be able to play guitar again. You can imagine how devastating it felt. At first, I could barely bend it. Of course, I worked on it with a physical therapist, but progress was excruciatingly slow. For months, when I tried to make a fist, that finger stood apart like this (showing on camera). It got a bit better over time, but it was still not enough. If you can’t bend that finger, you can’t form guitar chords. Around nine months in, my therapist warned me that it is rare to see improvement beyond a year after such an injury. But I kept working at it – doing bending and stretching exercises 3-4 times a day. Now, a year and three months in, with just a little preparation, I can play. I’ve got a lot of practicing to do, but I can play. That has just happened in the last six weeks or so. In fact, today will be the first time I will have played in front of anyone for almost a year and a half. And we are having a sing-along today after worship, so, whether you are on-site or online, I hope you will stay and join in the singing. I have put together a songbook of some of my favorite songs. We will all be able to sing and we will take requests, so perhaps you will get a chance to sing a song that has been very important to you.

Let’s sing one together now. This song seems fitting for our community because it is sung part in Spanish and part in English. Also, I think the beautiful metaphors in this song capture the spirit of the Church of the Village. It’s called  “Somos El Barco,” which means, “We are the Boat.”

[Chorus:] 

Somos el barco, somos el mar, 
Yo navego en ti, tu navegas en mi

We are the boat, we are the sea, 
I sail in you, you sail in me 

The stream sings it to the river, the river sings it to the sea
The sea sings it to the boat that carries you and me 

[Repeat Chorus]

The boat we are sailing in was built by many hands
The sea we are sailing on, it touches every land 

[Repeat Chorus]

So, with our hopes we set the sails and face the winds once more
And with our hearts we chart the waters never sailed before 

[Repeat Chorus]

Copyright © 2022 by Jeff Wells
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