Plenary and Stephen O'Leary's memorial lesson prayer скачать в хорошем качестве

Plenary and Stephen O'Leary's memorial lesson prayer

A few days before leaving this mortal coil, Stephen O'Leary shared this deeply moving prayer of loss and remembrance after the memorial lesson at the All-California Sacred Harp Convention: “Great God! Is this our certain doom? Are we still secure? Still walking downward to the tomb and yet prepared no more!” Let us prepare. Oh god, who is both mother and father to us, be with us now as we remember those who have gone to join the choir invisible. As we mourn the loss of their voices in this our earthly choir, help us to hold them in your light, and in the womb of your love. Comfort our grief with the knowledge that though we can no longer hear their voices with ears of flesh, our friends, loved ones, and fellow singers can still be heard with the ear to the spirit as they join in our song. For though the song commands us, “let all the saints terrestrial sing with those to glory gone,” we sometimes forget that all the servants of our god in heaven and earth are one. So as we commend the bodies of our friends to the dust and their spirits to the eternal, you must give grace to hear in our song today and every day the voices of our friends, and the forte of that eternal joy in which the living and the dead will all be heard joining in praise when our tears of sorrow are transformed into tears of joy. And let everyone say and sing amen.