“Then the singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone’s very heart. There was no sense of performance or judgment, only that the music was breath and food.” 

~Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

This has been a summer of reunions for me. At the beginning of the summer, I headed to my hometown to look into the amazing faces of those I had known since early childhood. Last week, I was in the presence of people with whom I joined voices and created beautiful music for the Ohio State Fair, for people all over the state of Ohio and for audiences of strangers as we toured Europe together for three weeks. It was a memory held, laughed filled and poignant gathering as, with one another’s help, we stitched together memorable concerts, songs and relationships. 

Singing in a choir is one of the ways in which we get to experience what it means to be a small part of something larger…to bring our individual gift and team it with others to make something greater, more beautiful than one voice can ever do alone. One person sings a note, another joins in and yet another adds to it and, Voila!, music that lifts the human soul is created. For those who have sung in choirs, you know what I mean. Even as you carry your, perhaps, tentative voice into the space, you are lifted by the energy and power of those around you, joining you, making music.  The singers look out on an audience and know that they are communicating something to them that only sound and poetry can offer. Which is why these last months, without singing, has been so tragic. To think that the very thing that has the power to heal the hurting heart can also be the thing that spreads illness seems unbearable.

I am sure that folks who participate in a team sport experience a kind of bonding that may be similar. Never having done this, I don’t know for sure, but I have seen a camaraderie build among those on teams my sons have played on. So I know it is possible. And yet, I believe, there is something special about making music together. There is always the possibility that a song with erupt in the oddest of places! And I know for a fact that spending time basically living with other singers, traveling to places that challenge and excite you, changes you and creates a place in you that will be with you forever. This is what happened this past weekend when these singers gathered again. Stories were shared, life updates were told, memories were dredged up and the bond that had been forged so many years ago was again strengthened. Our lives had at one time been joined in such a way that, even though we have not seen one another in years, was renewed. 

Reunion. Re-Union. “The act or process of being brought together again as a unified whole.” Of course, in this reunion many were missing from our ranks. Not everyone could travel to the weekend get together so perhaps we were not completely ‘unified’. But those of us who were there remembered and celebrated for the whole that we once were. The music we once made. The adventures we once shared. The hearts we once stirred.

I believe we are all hungry for a re-union. As the pandemic lingers on, we are all aching for an experience of being ‘enveloped’ in something ‘furry and resonant, coming from everyone’s very heart.’ A re-union that has ‘no sense of performance or judgment.’ Something like music…which can be both ‘breath and food.’

“If music be the food of love, play on.” says Shakespeare. So here’s to more music…more love…more re-union.