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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with the Rev Canon Dr Jennifer Smith.

Good Morning.

If, on a Wednesday morning like today you ask someone who went to church last Sunday what the sermon was about, it’s quite possible that they will have to put some effort into remembering. It’s not that they weren’t listening, but spoken words fade unless they are particularly shocking, like Jesus saying ‘Love your enemies’ or ‘blessed are the meek.’

But ask someone who went to church last Sunday what the hymns were, and we are much more likely to remember, and an eager Methodist like me, might even begin to sing, which can be embarrassing!

Why does the memory of song persist in us where the memory of speech fades? Sometimes, even long after someone living with dementia has lost the memory of speech, they will remember song. All over the world, folk use song to pass necessary information and bring people together: a football or rugby crowd is just an audience until it begins to sing; even now we still make new songs. We buy and sell them, and borrow their words to express our emotions, especially when we are heartbroken, or in love.

Singing can be political as well, or subversive: enslaved people in the nineteenth century southern United States shared news about escape routes by singing. A work song like the spiritual ‘Follow the drinking gourd…’ taught folk to use the constellation known as the ‘big dipper’ to find the north star and navigate by it to freedom.

So my prayer today borrows the a verse from one of Charles Wesley’s most well-known hymns: Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heaven to earth come down, fix in us thy humble dwelling, all thy faithful mercies crown. Jesu, thou art all compassion, pure, unbounded love thou art; visit us with thy salvation, enter every trembling heart.

Amen.