I will sing with the Spirit

I will sing with the Spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also (I Corinthians 14:15)

Our choir sang John Rutter’s setting of this text, the motto of the Royal School of Church Music, at the November Evensong. In deciding whether to post it, I scanned YouTube, which claims “about 10,700 results” for this title. There is the version by Rutter’s own choir, the Cambridge Singers, another by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and what must be hundreds or thousands more from every part of the world, choirs large and small, professional and amateur. Here are a few that I enjoyed from the first couple of pages of results :

A girls’ choir from Jatipon, West Java, Indonesia.

Another girls’ choir (with nine members), from Ontario, Canada.

And yet another girls’ choir, this one in a performance that appears to be part of what won the choir a gold medal at a choral festival. It is a place that I cannot figure out where it is, or even what language is on the banner behind them. In many respects, this is my favorite version, even more than our own choir.

On a much larger scale, this performance is with a large festival choir and orchestra, I think in South Africa. It is a place named Kapstadt, and there is a city by that name there, and the wonderful ethnic mix of choir and orchestra could be South African. Thanks be to God; I remember the days when such a choir would have been impossible in that country. “Hope changes everything.”

The above performances are all in English; here is one in the language Malagasy, from the island of Madagascar, in a gorgeous church.

What these five choirs from around the world have in common is the beautiful and intense Connection with which they sing.

I think that we also sang with Connection, and I don’t find anything quite like our version, which is posted here, although (as usual) it is audio only; the photo is of our combined choirs from last year.

I write this essay as a reminder that what we do in our little corner of the Midwest is a very small part of the Song. It is sung everywhere, and unites us across cultures, ethnic backgrounds, language, and time. It is thus a sign of hope. Things will not always be as they are now; someday "they will beat their swords into plowshares," as we heard in the Advent lessons this morning.