One of my favourite memories growing up was one day, while at Mass, hearing my mom sing “Be Not Afraid.” We were at mass by ourselves. My brother and Dad had opted to stay home. I want to say I was around eight or nine at the time. There I was sitting next to my mom in the pew, fidgeting, bored as hell, waiting to go home, and during communion, “Be Not Afraid” starts up. I’m not a good judge of singing. Sure, I can tell when people are bad or off key, but if they sound fairly reasonable, I have to ask The Wife or somebody near me, are they any good? A music professor tried to teach to me sing once, but discovered that I was tone deaf. So there’s that. So I don’t know if my mom can sing. All I know is that is wasn’t terrible. So she falls in into that grey area for me.
Mom was really belting out the song. Her eyes closed, head raised high, her small hands clutched in prayer. I mean she was really into it. I’d heard my mom sing before, little parts here and there, but never a song. Not like this.
I once read a story about this actor - some accounts say it was Richard Burton attending a priest’s 50th-anniversary celebration, others say it was some great Shakespearean actor back in the 1600’s - either way, this actor is asked, by this priest to recite the Twenty-third Psalm. Sure, the actor says, but makes one request of the priest. That the priest does the same after his perfomrance. The humble old priest says okay. He’ll do it. Of course, the actor is so good, so trained, so polished, he knocks it out of the park. The crowd goes wild with applause. Then the humble, feeble old priest gets up and recites the psalm too. He does it by heart and by some accounts fumbles through it. Nowhere near the actor’s polish. The priest sits down to silence, but there’s not a dry eye in the place. Some in the attendance sit in stunned awe by the priest’s recitation. Someone leans over to the actor and asks “why did they applaud your performance, but more moved by the priests?”
“Because I know the psalm,” the actor says, then points to the priest “but that priest there, he knows the Shepard.”
That’s how I felt hearing my mom sing that day. She was giving Jesus all she’s got. Mom knows the Shepard. Anytime they sing that I mass now, I almost lose it, because I think of Mom and Jesus. And I remember what it was like to hear my Mom’s voice, singing to the Lord with my childhood ears.
This came to mind when I started thinking about “my voice.” I’ve been dabbling with writing for some twenty-some-odd years. And I don’t know my own voice. My own style. I think that’s partly why I wanted to write a blog and post every day. It’s a discovery process. It’s a concentrated effort in finding my own voice.
So bear with me for a while as I wade through this very, glutton for punishment, process. Because someday, if nothing else, I want people to say about my writing what they said about that priest, “he knew the Shepard” and how I think about my mom singing that song. He spoke from the heart, left it all on the page, and damn it wasn’t good.