Someday soon I'm going to write about my time as a practicing pagan (essentially) and how I found my way back to church. Really. I promise. But today I want to share with you a moment of pure grace that we received in worship this morning. Names are changed because I didn't ask for permission to share them.
Katherine is in her 80s and living with dementia. She has good days and bad days and is still living at home with her husband, Lloyd, who cares for her despite his own cancer treatments. They are at church faithfully. Katherine told me she sings in the choir, but we've been having "pick up" choirs over the summer and I didn't remember her singing in the choir last spring.
At any rate, in addition to the music the pick up choir has been providing during the service, there has been a soloist each week during the offertory. Last week Katherine told me that this week she was going to sing Rogers and Hammerstein's "You'll Never Walk Alone" from Carousel. She didn't practice before the service, though other choir members told me that this was something that made everyone cry.
At the proper time she got up from her pew and slowly climbed the two steps to the chancel. She stood erect, but with a sense of relaxation. And she began to sing.
Her voice is ruined with 80+ years of living. But it is ruined in the way a great cloister or ancient temple may be ruined, with enough loveliness remaining that you can imagine how magnificent it once was. She has a rich soprano without a hint of breathiness or of that vibrato so many sopranos develop in our elder years. Dementia has not stolen those words, tied to music to anchor them in memory. She sang confidently, and with great artistry.
Having walked the path of dementia with my father over the past few years I was also struck by the power of that particular song in these particular circumstances. One of the miseries of dementia is the way it isolates patients, stealing the memories of relationships and often stealing the ability to relate to others, hiding words and confusing emotions. And this lovely woman was singing a battle hymn against that isolation and confusion,
"When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark.
At the end of the storm is a golden sky,
And the sweet silver song of a lark.
Walk on through the wind, walk on through the rain,
Though your dreams be tossed and blown.
Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart, and you'll never walk alone,
You'll never walk alone."
She couldn't hit the highest note, but she found the octave unerringly, then returned to the final phrase. There was a moment of silence, like the smallest inhaled gasp of grace, then applause.
If she can believe it, maybe the rest of us can, too.
