Music in the Meetinghouse & in Our Lives

by Carol Barclay
Albany Meeting

For some of us, music has been a big part of our spiritual journey. Growing up in a family that sang hymns around the piano at home and being organist in our Methodist church from age 15, lines of hymns have come to mind more often in times of need than have scripture. Once, when driving on an icy road in Oklahoma, I seriously thought I might die. What came to my mind then was “O God Our Help in Ages Past,” which is now in our Quaker hymnal, Worship in Song, on p. 21.

One that isn’t in our hymnal because it had been previously published, but is now on Youtube and in Quaker Peter Blood and Annie Patterson’s Rise Again songbook is Susan Stark’s “Live Up to the Light,” based on a historic Quaker diary (Rise Again, p. 56). Susan was a presenter at a songwriting interest group at FGC’s 1994 Summer Session in Amherst, MA, and shared the writing of this song. We used it on occasion at our meeting in the 1990s when we had music with guitars for new member potlucks, memorial meetings, and a once a month half hour of programmed meeting with songs and a prepared message before the hour of silent waiting worship.

Another Quaker singer/songwriter, Patricia McKernon (Runkle), has five entries in our hymnal: “Holy Love” p.188, “Blessed Are We” p. 228, “Take These Hands” p. 262, “A Garden of My Own” p. 187, and “This Glorious Food” p. 49. She has three entries in Rise Again and three entries in its predecessor, Rise Up Singing. She has attended a couple of NYYM Nightingale acapella music Quaker weekends which are valued by a number of us, and has also participated at Powell House.

Our hymnal, Worship in Song, is such a rich resource. Between hymns old and new are some written specifically for Quaker history: “George Fox” 272, “Ballad of Margaret Fell” 270, “Love Was the First Motion (John Woolman)” 219, “Wear it As Long As You Can (William Penn)” 195, & “Lucretia Mott Song” 281.

Although we have not officially had music during the regular hour of worship, persons on occasion share a song meaningful to them, and there has often been worthwhile music sharing on the side. In the 1990s a group met on Saturday afternoons to sing out of Rise Up Singing books available at the meetinghouse and later, in a home on Friday nights. Some now meet on Tuesday nights.

When our hymnal came out in 1996 we started a Hymn Sing on the 4th Sunday for an hour before worship. This group met regularly until Covid. Since then, combined with our worship time changing to be an hour earlier, fewer have been willing to come sing before worship. We have yet to find a new time to meet, but some have been asking. 

I hope we can do that. Times like these can use hymns like “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind” 139 and “Holy Spirit Truth Divine” 148. Hymns can speak to so many conditions. My copy of the hymnal has people’s names written by the title of hymns they chose, or an occasion for which that hymn spoke to me. “That Cause Can Neither Be Lost Nor Stayed” 264 let me know when it was time to write my letter applying for membership at Albany Monthly Meeting. “In Heavenly Love Abiding” 200 was the last and most appropriate hymn Margallen Fichter chose at Hymn Sing before her unexpected death in 2002 at age 68, which rocked our meeting to the core. I am truly thankful for music, the universal language, and Worship in Song.