Song As Prayer — A Lower School Reflection

Below is the weekly chaplain's newsletter called 'Table Talk' that I write for the Lower School division of Holy Innocents' Episcopal School.

(Student Singing by 1st grader)

Before Thursday, September's chapel theme had been 'ways of praying without words.' Under the inspiration of the paper artist Alice Ball, we explored art as prayer and we learned to pray with our eyes and hands. We also discovered what it means to pray with nature by taking spiritual walks. Using the parable of the Good Samaritan, we discovered that faithfully showing kindness and helping those in need is also a way to pray.

 (5th graders assist in acting out the Good Samaritan during chapel)

In preparation for Rosh Hashanah – the celebration of the Jewish new year—special chapel guest Rabbi Brad Levenberg, our neighbor from Temple Sinai, showed us the tradition of blowing the shofar. A shofar is a horn from a ram or another horned animal. To sound in the new year and wake people up to showing one another God’s goodness and peace, rabbis around the world raise their shofars and make sounds of praise. 

(Rabbi Brad Levenberg of Temple Sinai blows the shofar)

This week, we shifted our attention to using songs as prayer. 

Praising God using music is one of the oldest, most common forms of prayer. During Thursday’s chapel, 1st grader Jay McKown and his teacher, Ms. Betts, helped me retell the story from the book of Acts where the apostles Paul and Silas are beaten and imprisoned for trying to share God’s love in a town that wasn’t interested in hearing good news.

Although they were in pain and in jail, Paul and Silas didn’t blame God for their situation and they didn’t give up, either. To remind themselves of God’s ever-present love and goodness, they began to sing. I asked Jay what song he’d sing in that situation and he began singing ‘Sanctuary’ (a Lower School favorite that we sing each week before reading from scripture). Once he started, rest of the school joined in and sang with him.

Paul and Silas’ song of love was contagious, too, and the other prisoners became a choir. After an unforeseeable turn of events, the earthquake of song ends up melting their jailor’s hopeless heart, and he takes Paul and Silas back to his house where he tends their wounds, shares a meal with them, and, united in God’s love, they become friends.

This week’s Chapel Challenge is to answer these three questions:

What would you have sung if you were Paul or Silas?

Do you have songs that help you recognize God’s love and goodness?

What’s a good song you can share with others to pass on God’s love or to lift them up when they’re feeling lonesome or sad?

If I were Paul or Silas I would have sung ‘I Need You To Survive’, a gospel favorite by Hezekiah Walker. I hear God’s love and goodness in Marvin Gaye’s ‘God Is Love,’ Sufjan Steven’s ‘Impossible Soul,’ Beethoven’s 9^th symphony, ‘Dive’ by Tycho, ‘A Love Supreme’ by Coltrane, ‘Seasons of Love’ from Rent, ‘Boy 1904’ by Jonsi and Alex, ‘Spem in Alium Nanquam Habui’ by the Choir of King’s College, ‘Afterlife’ by Arcade Fire, and countless other songs.

Try sharing your Chapel Challenge answers with your family, your spiritual friends, and/or with me. Listen for God in music and lyrics, and remember the words from Psalm 146 that we say together each week in chapel:

Hallelujah

Praise the Lord, O my soul!

I will praise the Lord as long as I live;

I will sing praises to my God.

With Love and Prayers,

Chaplain Timothy

(More 1st grade art)

P.S.

October is National Bullying Prevention Month, and as we move into a new month we are transitioning from the chapel theme of prayer to that of preventing bullying.

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