I should be paying attention, and most of the time I do intently listen to our pastor’s message but we just sang one of my favorites: “I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses. And the voice I hear, falling on my ear…” Though surrounded by friends and my children, the voice that is “falling on my ear” is my father’s. For a moment I am absorbed in another warm spring morning in the church of my youth. I remember staring out the windows watching birds, trying to sit still and yawning, wondering how much longer until we leave.
“…the Son of God discloses…”
Dad sang all the verses of that song without looking in the hymnal. I remember the bonus feeling he put into it, and that he’d wipe the corner of his eye. In the car going home, he hummed along while I sang the words, the ones I could remember. I knew the chorus real well. It was there that he told me with a funny sound in his voice that it had been his father’s favorite hymn. Dad must have felt what I’m feeling now, my entire being centered on a moment in time, this connection through a song that bridges time and transcends death.
“And He walks with me and he talks with me. And He tells me I am His own. And the joy we share as we tarry there…”
Though regular churchgoers, my father and mother loved their Saturday nights out. However, a night out dancing was no excuse to miss church.
As we got older, our family settled into a new routine. Church became an option for my brothers, and Mom stayed at home to cook brunch while Dad and I attended worship service. Afterward, we all gathered for the five-course meal she cooked. So Sunday mornings – not because we had a dynamic minister I was too young to appreciate nor that his message might have benefited my character – I attended worship service because church was important to my dad.
“He speaks and the sound of His voice is so sweet the birds hush their singing. And the melody that He gave to me…”
Now I find myself staring at another church window after singing that song and ache to once again smell his Old Spice and look at his profile, his skin morning-shower-shiny-clean, his red hair combed and fluffed the way men do when they start to lose it. Though it’s been years since his death, I am surprised by a sudden prickle of tears, that there are sprinkles of moments like this charged with grief. A part of me hopes that these moments never entirely go away.
Baby Boomers, rebellious lot that we were, argued loud and heartily about going to church when we got older, despite what the Bible says and how we were raised. Gathering with other believers is clearly in the Good Book. “God is, after all, everywhere around, is He not?” we challenged. As we collectively migrated far from our homes of birth, though, many of us felt a tug to return to church, join a church family and share a renewed sense of faith, but what better reason but that we’d become parents.
Like anyone else, there have been rough times in my life, times that, by his example my father taught me to depend on God to get me through. And perhaps, like my father’s example and his father before him, my children learned to depend on an anchor that will be with them no matter where they go or when I no longer can be with them. By responding to my need to be there, I discovered that nugget of a tradition I didn’t realize existed. And perhaps on a warm spring morning, surrounded by their family and friends, when they are grown, my children will stop short while singing, “…within my heart is ringing…” – and golden chord will slip through that poignant moment and, once again, reunite the spirit of our generations through a song.