All Saints Day (11/1/20)

By bertvthul - https://pixabay.com/photos/the-road-beams-path-forest-nature-815297/, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=82446002

Music and words are intrinsically linked: one describes the other. Creatives and lovers of music and poetry have known this for centuries. I would say that we all experience this powerful relationship, consciously or not. So for this week, there will be no musicological descriptors of the music you'll hear this All Saints' Sunday but rather these— words.

Harpist Alaina Bongers and flutist Rebecca Quillen bring the evocative titles "Willow Weeping in the Wind" and "Autumn Shadows" to life this Totenfest Sunday morning: a day when we remember loved ones who have passed on to the communion of saints, walking roads we can only imagine.

The Stephen Paulus choral work, "The Road Home," comes to mind after writing the preceding paragraph. The poet Michael Dennis Browne collaborated with Paulus on this cherished anthem and described the genesis of the beautiful prose: "I thought of the speaker as a persona rather than myself...I was also trying to suggest the consolation that can come to someone of faith, in times of great stress, as a result of prayer and an abiding belief in divine mercy."

Allow these words to bring you solace, and hope, during these anxious days. The music will follow...

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Tell me, where is the road
I can call my own,
That I left, that I lost
So long ago?
All these years I have wandered,
Oh when will I know
There's a way, there's a road
That will lead me home?

After wind, after rain,
When the dark is done,
As I wake from a dream
In the gold of day,
Through the air there's a calling
From far away,
There's a voice I can hear
That will lead me home.

Rise up, follow me,
Come away, is the call,
With the love in your heart
As the only song;
There is no such beauty
As where you belong;
Rise up, follow me,
I will lead you home.