Why I Sing

I recently joined a choir. Yes, another one (that makes three, including the one I direct). This particular choir asks their members to write about why they sing. Throughout the season, the director reads them to the chorus, to help us get to know one another. Today was my turn, and I felt like sharing what I wrote with the wider world, because I think it may be the truest thing I’ve ever written.

The human voice, sometimes called the “sacred harp,” is the only instrument immediately crafted by the Creator, built into each and every one of us. It stands as the most stately, ornamented, expressive, colorful, and beautiful of all the instruments that man has since devised, rendering them pale in comparison. It can be tender, strong, resonant, breathy, harsh, biting, warm, effervescent—everything in its season; indeed, whatsoever things that are good, true, and beautiful in this world may be captured in the human voice.

To sing is to make audible the movements of the heart. Every human emotion, every passion, every desire finds its expression in song, soaring to the heights of Everest, plunging to the depths of Tartarus. From singing we learn unity in diversity, many voices and many parts uniting in one common purpose: to invite reflection, to bring joy, to feel sorrow, and above all, to learn love of God and our neighbors.

Thus, to sing is to join the song of all mankind since the dawn of time, adding our voices to the chorus of those who have gone before, creating the music of the spheres in joyful adoration and thankful imitation of him who created us. I sing to add my voice to that eternal song begun in ages past with the words, “Fiat lux.” I sing to give voice to my emotions, to render bare my deepest desires, to offer goodness and joy to those who hear. I sing to have fun, to make friends, to drink deeply from the fountain of life given to us in the arts. And when all is said and done, I thank God for his grace given to me, that someone such as I would be given such a gift that can then be shared with others, and pray that I may not squander or waste any of it.