The train sped through lush countryside, fields promising harvests, backyards strewn with bicycles, swimming pools and childrens’ toys. I was heading home to London from a rich experience of three days of singing with my friends. For many, many years I have been a member of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada. These friends enrich me with new hymn texts, melodies, and sheer joy.
We are a group of congregational song practitioners who live from the stance that the holy act of singing together shapes faith, heals brokenness, transforms lives, and renews peace. The Society’s mission is to encourage, promote and enliven congregational singing in the United States and Canada.
Gathered in Montreal, this month at McGill University, we renewed friendships, made new ones, told stories of congregational perseverance through the years of covid, laughed together and praised God for the gift song.
Image: Unsplash/David Beale
About 230 of us sang through three evening hymn festivals, attended various sectionals of our choice, and began each day with sung prayer in multiple languages.
Inspired by Indigenous presenters such as Kenny Wallace, who presently lives among the Munsee Delaware nation, who shared gospel songs that helped him claim his original heritage of Choctaw. And Jonathan Maracle, from Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory near Belleville, Ontario who shared his songs rich with cultural roots of the First Nations people of North America. His mission is that of healing through song.
Both engaged us in a deeper understanding of how land, and language offer solid roots for claiming one’s inner freedom.
So many of the presentations this year opened our hearts to further ways of living inclusively, praying inclusively, and gathering inclusively.
-Sister Loretta Manzara, csj
You may wish to check out this promotional video:
Images: Unsplash//Michael Maasen
