All is for Joy

by Sally Campbell
Morningside Meeting

I have read that Herbert Hoover’s mother was read out of meeting because she sang her father’s favorite hymn at his memorial meeting. Fortunately there was another Quaker meeting in West Branch, Iowa, that took her in.

I am so glad that Quakers have let go of the prohibition of singing which they thought would distract people from proper worship. Instead, we have embraced it as a wonderful way to share the truths we are given.  

At the FGC Gathering in 1982 I found myself saying to God “I will be faithful to You;” and then one night as I was praying I heard the words “All is for Joy.” Those words changed my life, for they did not seem to come from me or anything I had ever been taught. I frequently went to the noon sings that Peter and Annie Blood Patterson led and was wearing a t-shirt with a winking Quaker on it and the words “Hug a Friend”. This was the first song that came to me. Before the end of the week I also heard the first verse of “More beautiful than Song is the Spirit”.

Among the songs that have come to me since then are two songs about songs, “Song from the Silence” and “Give us this Day a Gentle Song”. Here are the lyrics:

Give Us This Day a Gentle Song

Give us this day a gentle song 

with the power to cast out our fears

And loving hands to hold us fast 

as we heal through laughter and tears

There are songs that are sung on the mountaintops 

and songs from the valleys below

But the songs that are singing in our own hearts 

are the ones we’re to hear and to know.

Join hands with the joyous singers so high 

and the sorrowful singers so low

Let us each sing the song that is in our own heart. 

Feel the peace and the harmony grow. 

So Friends, let us sing as we are led to in meeting and out as we go cheerfully over the world greeting that of God in all.