Let the Lower Lights…

Thanks to a link on The Lower Lights fan-mail announcement I received today, I found this gem of a video you should take a listen to and thank the Heavens above for the beauty of music and its power to change and move and heal us all:

Secret Prayer from The Lower Lights on Vimeo.

A selection from the The Lower Lights’ debut record, available now — http://thelowerlights.bandcamp.com/

Maybe it’s the southern roots in my granddaddy’s family tree, or something about the way a soulful, mournful gospel song just moves me… no… transports me, but I can not get enough of the old gospels, and I love hearing something again for the first-time through artistic interpretation.

I may have been a Southern Baptist in a previous life.

I don’t even know where I first heard about The Lower Lights, a musical group whose mission is to revive old hymns that deserve better attention.

I know they played a rooftop concert in Provo a while ago that I almost attended. I know Justin Hackworth seems to photograph their shows in hauntingly beautiful ways that earthly words just can’t comprehend — and lighten my mind with my own memories of dimly-red darkrooms and make my nose twinge with faint reminiscence of acidic stop bath.

Soon, you can see them in concert, and they have an album out that you should seriously check into.

I do remember that I immediately recognized their name from an unsung song in the back of Mormon Hymnals, “Brightly Beams Our Father’s Mercy” to which the chorus begins with the name they chose at their title:

Let the lower lights be burning;
Send a gleam across the wave.
Some poor fainting, struggling seaman
You may rescue, you may save.

Secret Prayer Lyrics

Thoughtfully

There is an hour of peace and rest,
Unmarred by earthly care;
’Tis when before the Lord I go
And kneel in secret prayer.

[Chorus]
May my heart be turned to pray,
Pray in secret day by day,
That this boon to mortals giv’n
May unite my soul with heav’n.

The straight and narrow way to heav’n,
Where angels bright and fair
Are singing to God’s praise, is found
Thru constant secret prayer.

When sailing on life’s stormy sea,
’Mid billows of despair,
’Tis solace to my soul to know
God hears my secret prayer.

When thorns are strewn along my path,
And foes my feet ensnare,
My Savior to my aid will come,
If sought in secret prayer.

Text: Hans Henry Petersen, 1835–1909

See Matthew 6:6