God, beyond our dreams, you have stirred in us a memory,
you have placed your powerful spirit in the hearts of humankind.
All around us, we have known you; all creation lives to hold you,
In our living and our dying we are bringing you to birth.

God, beyond all names, you have made us in your image,
we are like you, we reflect you, we are woman, we are man.
All around us, we have known you; all creation lives to hold you,
In our living and our dying we are bringing you to birth.

God, beyond all words, all creation tells your story,
you have shaken with our laughter, you have trembled with our tears.
All around us, we have known you; all creation lives to hold you,
In our living and our dying we are bringing you to birth.

God, beyond all time, you are laboring within us;
we are moving, we are changing, in your spirit ever new.
All around us, we have known you; all creation lives to hold you,
In our living and our dying we are bringing you to birth.

God of tender care, you have cradled us in goodness,
you have mothered us in wholeness, you have loved us into birth.
All around us, we have known you; all creation lives to hold you,
In our living and our dying we are bringing you to birth.
--Bernadette Farrell


These are lyrics to a song I sang at our Saturday night service. Sunday morning was the Christmas cantata presented by the choir, so we decided to do music and poetry on Saturday night, in lieu of a sermon.

I don’t normally sing by myself. I have a good voice in terms of carrying a tune. It has a pleasant enough quality to it. And if songs become familiar enough to me, I can usually sing them in the right key without hearing them beforehand. Especially ’80s pop songs; that’s my stupid human trick. (Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand…)

But, I wish I’d had more training. I sang in college with several ensembles, and I took lessons my last semester. I wish I’d started earlier. I have very little vibrato. It’s not a very strong instrument. My range is a little too low for soprano, a little too high for alto. My secret dream ambition has shifted over my life; in my younger childhood, I wanted to be a pop star like Olivia Newton-John! (Maybe this dates me.) These days my secret dream is to be a Broadway diva a la Bernadette Peters. I guess the secret’s out now. But of course, I don’t near have the voice for it. I can hear in my head what I wish my voice sounded like, but it’s just not there. My voice is too simple—not much character.

And yet!

And yet my voice is the right texture to, say, cant a psalm, or do a musical benediction, or sing something such that the words really come through (see the aforementioned song).

In other words, my voice is just right as a pastor’s voice.

Isn’t that cool?

I did drama in high school and college. I’m not a great actress, at all. There are certain parts I would never be able to play, because I don’t really inhabit a character, I am always playing variations of myself. Even in high school, I so admired the people who would do dramatic interpretation—taking on several different characters at once. Myself, I always stuck to prose/poetry interpretation, which is where it seemed the second-rate actors went, people who couldn’t hack it in dramatic interp. I also did Original Oratory, which was what people did who liked public speaking but couldn’t handle the pressure-cooker of debate or the nerve-wracking, seat-of-the-pants nature of impromptu or extemporaneous speaking. (I did those as well, but badly.)

And yet, it turns out that my set of skills is just right to be a biblical storyteller—to evoke the different characters in a story, not to “play” them; to connect with the listeners around the images and symbols of the story; all while fundamentally remaining me, the preacher. And need I tell you that Original Oratory involves delivering a pre-written speech of 10 minutes or so? Does this not sound like sermon-writing 101?

I think this is cool, but also pretty “duh,” really—of course we gravitate to vocations in which our particular gifts can be used. Otherwise it’s a pretty tedious existence. The point is, I'd never seen these aspects of myself as gifts, but as limitations. I had written off certain aspects of myself as “not measuring up”—“I wish my voice were better”; “I wish I could cry on stage like so-and-so.” And so it seems that what we might deem limitations or weaknesses in ourselves can be re-configured as strengths in some other area of life.

And of course, these experiences all occurred way before ministry was on the horizon. In fact if you’d told me in high school that Original Oratory was preparing me for sermon-writing someday, I would have run the other way!

What a thing this is.

And so I sing with conviction,
God, beyond all time, you are laboring within us;
we are moving, we are changing, in your spirit ever new.
All around us, we have known you; all creation lives to hold you,
In our living and our dying we are bringing you to birth.