Lift Every Voice and Sing

By Rev. Elizabeth Rechter, Executive Director

One of the significant losses experienced during our global pandemic is that of communal singing. In feeling this loss, we recognize the gift we may have sometimes taken for granted. While many have done their best to keep us singing together, they often include the refrain, “Make sure you are muted!” I have been amazed at the tremendous effort some have taken to splice together prerecorded voices in order to create a virtual choir we can hear through our computers. It’s a beautiful bridge created by great love. Still, it is not the same.

To be together in person and hear our voices blend and rise in song is one of the great gifts of being human.

It was Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th century mystic and choral composer, who believed we are given two voices - one for singing, and one for speaking - for a reason. Our singing voice, she said, was for the purpose of praising God. This voice didn’t have to be. We could have been speaking creatures only. Singing incarnates something unique. Singing engages the whole body, all the cells. Singing comes from a different place in us. And when we join our voices as one, we are a new creation all together.

Common refrains I hear when I encourage singing are, “I can’t sing. I am not a singer. I can’t carry a tune, I am tone deaf.” While these may be true, everyone has two voices. How we judge our voices is another topic. We know what happens in our bodies when we sing, as well as when music is allowed to flow through our listening hearts. I love to hear of the deep feelings experienced by those who cautiously have ventured out to church services and concert halls to hear and make live music.

In some cultures, the unborn are given a song, and it is sung to them in the womb and at their birth. It is meant to accompany them through their life, and is sung to them at their death, at their burial, and whenever they are remembered by the living. I wonder if you have been given a song.

Recently, I came across an initiative that is bringing to the U.S. Congress H.R.301, which would amend title 36, creating a national hymn. It would not, of course, replace the national anthem, but create this new category. The proposed hymn is Lift Every Voice and Sing, often referred to as the Black National Anthem. Those proposing this believe it may serve as a song to unite in a time of great division - a song for our life.

The song’s lyrics were written by James Weldon Johnson. His brother, John, set the poem to music and performed the song to commemorate Abraham Lincoln’s birthday in 1900. It became a civil rights anthem adopted by the Civil Rights Movement and the NAACP.

I don’t remember the first time I was part of singing this hymn in community, but each time, I have felt the presence of holiness, whether in an ecumenical or interfaith service, at the celebration of the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., or at other celebrations of unity among diverse communities. Gathering and singing this hymn together releases its power. It opens us to feel and to own our common history: the grief, the injury, the human hope for freedom; and to commit ourselves to the work still to be done.

As I recall the times I had the privilege of uniting my voice with others in this hymn, no one ever said, “I can’t sing.” We sing, fragile vessels that we are, lifting our voices together, praying for our common life.

Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won

Stony the road we trod
Bitter the chastening rod
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died
Yet with a steady beat
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered

Out from the gloomy past till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast

God of our weary years
God of our silent tears
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way
Thou who has by Thy might Led us into the light
Keep us forever in the path, we pray

Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee
Shadowed beneath Thy hand
May we forever stand
True to our God
True to our native land

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: R.m. Carter / J.r. Johnson / J.w. Johnson

Blessings for keeping forever in the Path,

Elizabeth+