So, it was hot in the Sonoran Desert today. As in 106 degrees hot.
Important to note not because I’m whining. Rather notable because, by the end of singing our last song in rehearsal tonight, I was covered in goosebumps.
Nah, you say. How is that possible?
Well, maybe it’s magic. I don’t know. I’m never sure how to explain it. It may be from the angel wings flapping around us! It is surely divine, however it happens. There is this unquantifiable and indescribable shimmer, a kind of vibrational healing that occurs when we sing from our hearts, with intentions of love and healing.
To begin the rehearsal, Melissa and I admitted we felt tired and had icky heat-related headaches. We let ourselves be on the floor horizontally, to rest a bit and have fun with stream of consciousness singing, for the cooling humor of it. Somehow, we stumbled into a pretty gnarly rendition of “King of the Road” when a stranger walked into the Chapel and could easily have thought we were nuts. She was looking for a hospice meeting, one that had occurred last week. So as fate would have it, she is a hospice volunteer who offers body work to patients in their homes. She had just come from working with a 27 year old woman dying from cancer.
This is not an everyday task, that just anybody does, you know?
Naturally, Melissa and I sat up and asked this kind stranger, who we later learned has the name Jane, if she would like to receive a song or two. We could see she might be willing. “Now?” she asked. “Yes, now,” we replied.
She paused for a split second and exclaimed, “I would absolutely love that!” And we quickly made her a place to become comfortably horizontal on the floor herself. She readily claimed it. We chatted for a few moments, she mentioned something about angels. We instantly knew the song to begin: So Many Angels. She softened into receiving. When we checked in with her a few songs later she was comfortable, kind of glowing in a giddiness about this shift in experience and ‘turning off her mind’ in order to only BE and receive. Something so simple! And yet, so rare. Such an unexpected gift. For all three of us.
Forty-five minutes later, with quite a few songs covered, we three were strangers no more. We felt connected and known in a peaceful way that makes words feel flimsy.
A huge gift for Melissa and I came in hearing Jane’s unabashed joy and account of how she felt: “like angels were all around her” and a palpable sense of vibrational healing. She noticed very early on how different it was to hear voices coming from human hearts so near her (we were sitting on the floor on either side of her), unlike hearing music from an electronic source. She told us how “intimate, earthy and feminine” the experience felt – all at once – likely because our voices are untrained and soft, coming from a place that is like a mother singing her child a soft lullaby.
I’m barely doing this exchange any justice, although I’m trying so readers can get a glimpse. Singing in Threshold Choir is a total joy unlike any other in my life. Pure and simple. When we have these encounters, these wordlessly intimate and graceful times with people living and dying, I feel like we all come to a deep and nourishing well. It has sparkling water and we don’t just stand there looking at it longingly. We take long, deliciously satisfying gulps of our sense of our humanity, of our connectedness and our innate loving natures.
Like Jane said when she slowly stood up after receiving our songs, “I feel REFRESHED! I feel renewed and full of love.”
Yep. Melissa and I did, too! Thank you, Jane, for missing your meeting last week and showing up this week instead. We couldn’t be happier you found us.
P.S. Here is a tack-on gift for our readers. Try letting yourself be soft and receive a threshold choir song in this video. (Go ahead, turn it up and lay yourself down on the floor, even!) Perhaps you’ll have a small taste of the feeling I try to convey in this post.
Singing at Life's Thresholds 