I didn’t really intend to take last week off blogging–but my week at NPM (the National Association of Pastoral Musicians conference, for those non-liturgy geeks among my readership) ended up giving me lots to think and pray about, but not a lot of time to write about it.

My catchup list is getting pretty epic, so I’m thinking it may be time for a summer blogging break for the remainder of July. I hate to do it, but I’m thinking a lot about spiritual-emotional health right now and I think this is the right call. So I will see you all back in a couple of weeks!

There’s a perennial debate among pastoral musicians about the appropriateness or not-appropriateness of singing patriotic music on the Sunday of a big national holiday. (Perhaps I should call it thrice-yearly, since it comes up Memorial Day, Labor Day, and of course, the Fourth.)

In the Catholic Church, the intent is for the readings, the prayers, the homily, and the music all to tie together to focus on a unified whole, and the readings never, ever lend themselves to American patriotism, because our allegiance is supposed to be to God.

Plus, a lot of people, myself included, look around at our country and can’t help seeing all the ways in which it is broken, how far it is from the Kingdom of God. The hysterical, fact-ignoring, inflammatory posturing coming from both sides of the aisle, the eagerness with which we follow suit, rarely (if ever) stopping to think through “what’s the rest of this story?” before hitting “share.” Police officers killing unarmed black men. People shooting up night clubs. Babies dying before they’re even born.

Frankly, we’re a mess.

For years, it has made me wince to sing patriotic songs at church. It’s felt like giving yourself a medal for, I don’t know, only kicking your little brother nine times instead of ten.

Last Wednesday, our choir, on a skeleton crew, put together “America the Beautiful” for the recessional at Mass, as directed. It was beautiful. We started in 4-part harmony a cappella, brought the piano in softly on verse 2, and built to a glorious end. I realized I knew all the words to every verse by heart. And as I sang/conducted them, it occurred to me:

This song is America as we believe she can be.

Souls confirmed in self-control. The heroes who love mercy more than life. Brotherhood from sea to shining sea.

This is what we are sometimes, and what we are meant to be always.

Yesterday morning, there were about 800 people at Mass, singing their hearts out on that song. For once, almost no one left. We sang four verses of a closing hymn, and everyone stayed to sing it.

And I realized: it’s okay to sing-pray these words over our assemblies. It’s okay to remind us of the vision of our best selves, of everything we’re called to be. Maybe it’s even part of what we need to make the real change happen.

Yes, God: mend our every flaw, till all success be nobleness and every gain divine.

Photo by ikewinski, via Flickr

It’s quarter after ten at night when I get home from my “girls’ night” to find Alex on babysitting duty because Christian got called in to work while I was gone—of all nights, the one night when I didn’t realize my rarely-used emergency mobile phone had run out of power.

I send him downstairs to bed and start closing things up around the house, but the quiet from the deck draws me outside, and I catch my breath, because the woods is alive.

We don’t see too many fireflies anymore. Only one other summer since we’ve lived here have we had anything like the light display going on in my back yard tonight, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t like this. It’s like Magic Kingdom lighting up the castle with sparkles. Or walking past a Christmas tree from a distance.

I hurry back inside. “Alex,” I say. “Grab your glasses and come up here.” His room, too, faces the woods, but I have a feeling that the view from the basement isn’t quite the same as the one from the deck.

We stand out there for a few minutes, surveying the magical array. There must be thousands of them, some of them in the yard, streaking for longer periods of time, others right at the edge of the trees, some illuminating tiny swaths of the foliage for a fleeting moment. A shimmering tapestry. Breathtaking.

Image by ikewinski, via Flickr

It’s unusually cool for June, although the neighbors to either side haven’t figured it out yet; their air conditioners are still running, filling the night with the only obnoxiousness to be had, since the wind is out of the north and for once, we can’t hear I-70. I have a blanket around my shoulders, but Alex is in his shorts and t-shirt. When I offer to share, he’s more than willing. We pull two chairs together and sit down, and suddenly we’re talking. About school, and stars, and fireflies, and fidget spinners, and seeing Rudolph’s light in the sky, and God, and Alex’s earliest memory, and stars again, and fireflies again. The neighbors’ air conditioners trade back and forth, trying to outlast us, but at last they both give up and true quiet falls.

The undulating light display wanes and waxes, wanes and waxes. Wanes and waxes, but less convincingly. It’s getting late. We’re all winding down, even the fireflies. If Christian was home, we’d both have been in bed long before. But I think Alex and I both know we’ve stumbled into one of those gift moments, the ones you can’t plan or anticipate, you just have to accept them when they come.

I reach over and stroke his cheek once, still so soft. It won’t be too much longer before the peach fuzz will start, and then the stubble will overtake for good the little boy I can’t quite remember anymore, except for that visceral longing to brush my lips against cheeks as silky-soft as his once were. I could never get enough of kissing him as a baby.

“I love you,” I say quietly.

“I love you, too,” he murmurs. And we both go quiet, looking at the stars. His head drops back on the deck chair; I hear his glasses squish against the fabric, but neither of us wants the moment to end, even though it’s well past eleven. The wind whispers in cottonwood and sycamore.

Then the west neighbors’ air conditioner kicks on, and I know that’s my sign. We get up and head inside, but the buzz lingers. This is one of those nights I’ll always remember. A firefly night.