SINGING

Warren Bolon

It was barely dawn on a winter morning at Fort Polk, Louisiana, known among draftees at that time as "Little Vietnam." We were in the early days of army basic training, and it was the morning of a long forced march in full field gear. I was to learn one reason they call it boot camp.

Early in the march, blisters developed on my feet. Pain was a big challenge. So was fatigue. Guys were dropping out from exhaustion. I was probably cursing my still fairly new boots. I wish I could say I prayed deeply, but thoughts of any kind were hard to come by. All I could do was sing.

So while the trainees around me were counting cadence or singing "I wanna be an airborne Ranger ..." I sang, in cadence, a hymn I'd learned as a little child. It was a way of reaching out to an infinite power that, instinctively, I knew was right there with me, with all of us.

The hymn's text is a poem by Mary Baker Eddy called " 'Feed My Sheep.' " The first verse is:

Shepherd, show me how to go
O'er the hillside steep,
How to gather, how to sow,—
How to feed Thy sheep;
I will listen for Thy voice,
Lest my footsteps stray;
I will follow and rejoice
All the rugged way.

(Poems, p. 14)

As I sang I felt sustained by this simple message of the divine Shepherd's love "All the rugged way." It was an almost involuntary sense of being cared for by shepherding Love. It took my thought off my feet and my boots. I knew that I'd be able to finish the march. The blisters soon drained, skin quickly hardened over the next few days, and I was able to continue training with no discomfort.

In looking back I find that hymn's second verse especially pointed. It begins,

Thou wilt bind the stubborn will,
Wound the callous breast,
Make self-righteousness be still,
Break earth's stupid rest.

The same message that assured me the needed toughness, as calluses, would develop on my soles, has also whispered to me when I've needed the loving Shepherd's beneficent wounding of callused, self-centered thoughts. Such as the selfish concerns that sometimes are associated with my choral singing—nervousness, fear of failure, or basking in praise.

Not all singing is prayer, of course. Motives make the difference. Singing that seeks God's love and help is prayer, and it's a healing prayer, as I learned on that forced march. Singing that glorifies the divine source of all melodies and harmony is also prayer. It happens in practice and in performance.

Once when our group sang the closing passage of Franz Joseph Haydn's The Creation, it was as though there was one voice singing us, God's instrument. Singing is praying, when the singer is a clear prism to a light not his own.

Warren Bolon
Guildhall, Vermont

I knew that I'd be able to finish the march.

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TURNING MOURNING INTO DANCING

October 2, 2000

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