“If I cannot fly, let me sing.”
Stephen Sondheim
“Sing, then. Sing, indeed, with shoulders back, and head up so that song might go to the roof and beyond to the sky. Mass on mass of tone, with a hard edge, and rich with quality, every single note a carpet of colour woven from basso profundo, and basso, and baritone, and alto, and tenor, and soprano, and also mezzo, and contralto, singing and singing, until life and all things living are become a song.
Richard Llewellyn
(a tiny wren lifts his song skyward / Julie Cook / 2015)
Sing!
I want to sing!
I want to lift my voice to the Heavens!
I want to stand upon the roof top and shout my song to you!
I want you to hear me oh God of Heaven!
If I am not soon to let it out, everything within me will explode.
Yet I don’t know how to sing.
I don’t know how to make a pretty note.
Pitch is but a key quite off.
And Harmony is all but hidden.
There is no reading of music nor playing of sweet melodies.
How is there to be song if the sounds can’t be woven and spun?
Adoration and Praise
Lamentation and Sorrow
Exultation and Triumph
Meditation and Contemplation
How may such a lowly one express such mysteries to You?
How may prayer flow aloft carried only by the wind?
I will simply open my mouth
I will merely let the sound fall out
The Spirit Divine is who will carry my tune to You.
A Holy bearer of holy song will gently sing my song to you. . .
O what a miracle
O what a miracle is the presence of the divine heart
which foretold all creation.
With God’s gaze upon the face of man,
whom He formed,
He saw His entire works,
reflected in that same human form.
O what a miracle is this inspiration
by which humanity was awakened.
Hildegard von Bingen
translated from Latin to English by Norma Gentile
cookiecrumbstoliveby 