Sing-Out at the Tabernacle. A Story from the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Salt Lake City, October 2015
How busy can you be preparing to attend the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Salt Lake City? So frantic that not an hour remains in the day for reading descriptions of hundreds of sessions and workshops. I had to spend my spare time on YouTube learning the songs I would be singing with the pick-up Bahá’í Choir, made up of singers from all over the world coming together for the first time to perform during the Parliament. Most of them were members of the Baha’i Faith, but not all.
At our first rehearsal on Thursday afternoon, in a meeting room at the Salt Palace Convention Center, forty-five men and women from several countries, varying singing experience, and in a wide range of races and ages, came together for the first time and jumped right into it. Thankfully, several of them had sung with our director Van Gilmer many times, on national and international tours. There were “ringers” in every section to help the rest of us along. We practiced for a solid three hours, barely taking the time to introduce ourselves.
By Friday afternoon at the Parliament, my dear friend and host, Shari Mayer and I had a few moments to leaf through the Parliament Program Book. We had time to attend one more session that day, and were taken by this title: Listen Against Hate: A Workshop on How to Listen and Stop Hate.
That sounded useful, so off we went, up two floors and down a long hallway to meet handsome young Hindu priest, Muktha Nithya Ananda, who gave us a short course on solving nagging troubles in your life that were "incomplete". The teaching being that with meditation and introspection you can discover the incomplete episodes within you, solve them, and then move on with fewer holes in your life. We learned about “Poornatva Kriya” the Science of Completion which removes the source of incompletion within us.
This was interesting, and I've read much the same in books, about figuring out what that missing piece is and then how to solve the puzzle that keeps you from moving forward. We couldn’t quite figure out afterwards how this was listening against hate, but we had never consulted with a Hindu priest before and so were content. Later that night, at another three hour choir rehearsal, a little missing piece of my childhood came sneaking back to bother me.
In third grade, when I was still the new girl in a small town Oregon school, the music teacher had auditions for her district-wide children's choir. We each were to sing the opening lines of Home on the Range, which I did in a very high soprano voice, and was promptly selected, the only girl in my class who was.
It was probably not a good idea for the new girl in school to have a special red dress to wear, and rehearsals to attend, and days when she got to leave class to perform for the Rotary or the Lions Club and the Women's Club. My classmates didn't like it. Not one bit.
Years later, in Junior High, I chose chorus as my arts class. Seventh Grade was when the three local elementary schools came together in one Junior High School and we met all the other kids in town who were our age for the first time.
During that very first chorus class, while singing with the sopranos, I noticed some of the other girls making fun of me. Apparently, I opened my mouth too widely to sing, after having been taught that in the special choir. This was seen as funny and silly and the other girls mimicked me by opening their mouths wider and wider to sing, all the while giggling and pointing.
What could I do, that's the way I sang? To be fair, I probably was a lot louder than the other girls as well. They were always finding something to tease me about anyway, so why make a fuss. I sang with this school chorus throughout 7th and 8th grade until my poor working mother, sick of missing school concerts, told me to pick one or the other, band or chorus. I chose to play the flute in the school band and continued to play instrumental music for many years afterwards. Since 8th grade, 1971, I've never been a regular member of a chorus again. Oh sure, I sang here or there a bit, occasionally with a Bahá’í choir, and always happily in an audience, but not on a regular basis. Eighth grade, that was more than forty years ago.
People have always complimented me on my singing voice. Occasionally I was asked to fill out the choir at the church where my husband played the pipe organ. (Yes, I married a church organist.) But, because of this and that, I have never participated in the Choral Festival at the Bahá’í House of Worship in Wilmette held over the Memorial Day weekend for the last nine years, and I've never sung with it’s music director, Van Gilmer.
When I heard that Van was directing a Bahá’í Choir at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Salt Lake City, a deep desire grew within me. Humbly, I asked Van if I could participate and I eagerly practiced all the music he sent.
The Bahá’í Choir performed three times, at the Salt Palace Gathering Place at lunchtime, in the Salt Lake Mormon Tabernacle for the Concert of Sacred Song, and at Westminster College, also in Salt Lake City, for a special event. One of our songs was from the African-American tradition "I Opened My Mouth to the Lord" and Van taught us how to sing that song with a very wide-opened expressive “mouuuuth.” It felt wonderful, just wonderful to open my mouth as wide as it could be and sing.
The Concert of Sacred Song at the Tabernacle was just one of the delightful performance spaces at the Parliament. I don’t know exactly what I expected at this event, but not the many opportunities to sing and dance that were presented throughout those five days. At this evening event, hosted by the Salt Lake Interfaith Roundtable there were drummers from Burundi, bagpipers representing the Protestant faiths, Indian and Cambodia dancers, the Sikh Kirtan, a children’s interfaith choir, Japanese drummers, and a group of Sufi Dervish dances, the Bahá’í Choir, and several other performing groups and musicians.
You know, in gospel music, there are times during a performance to be very restrained and quiet, and other times when you put all your heart and soul into it and SING OUT. There is a verse from the Bahá’í Writings which has been set to music that says “O SON OF BEING! Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee. Know this, O servant.”
This verse, set to music, is what the Bahá’í Choir performed at the Tabernacle, sung a cappella, without any instruments, singing out with our whole selves, the whole choir, completely unrestrained: "Love me! Love me that I may love thee!" The audience responded with cheers.
Singing, with my mouth wide open, on that stage, was the best experience I've had in a long, long, time. And it felt good. I felt complete. That little girl who was teased for opening her mouth to sing, well that missing piece was filled by our performance at the Mormon Salt Lake Tabernacle. Who would have thought that could ever happen to me at that time, in that place, with that song?
Enjoy this video from a friend in the audience at the Tabernacle. It was incredible to be on that stage and sing that song to that audience. A gift from the universe for sure.
The text of this piece of music comes from the Hidden Words of Baha’u’llah:
“O SON OF BEING! Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee. Know this, O servant.”
