You Are My Sunshine, My Only Sunshine

Among the privileges afforded those of us who work in houses of worship is the opportunity to be involved in the crucial times of peoples' lives. We are usually there for the turning points and pivotal moments. When children are baptized, when couples are married, when illness leads to hospitalization, and when life comes to an end we are there.

There is a lot about church work that calls to mind the old adage about seeing sausage being made. The day-to-day work of committee meetings, decision making, choir rehearsals, calendar planning, and most of all budgeting can lead one to renege on a commitment to the sausage business.

Holy moments are privileges, though. It is part of our human nature to muse about the existence of a higher power, and to imagine that we somehow possess a level of understanding about that creating and sustaining entity. But the holy moments, when we know as surely as our baby has been safely born that there is something greater than ourselves, lead us beyond the musings of human nature, to a place of faith and confidence. We don't really know very much about God's God-ness, but at those times we know that God is enough and that we are not.

Two wonderful members of our church passed away this week. Both had faced long struggles, and had inspired their family and friends with their faithful and valiant spirits. I was discussing one of these people today with a member of the choir who had gone to visit her recently. She had suffered a string of debilitating strokes, and couldn't speak clearly. Her husband remained by her side and tried to interpret, and it was evident that her thoughts were clear even though she couldn't express them through speech.

The visitor had instinctively started to sing. Holding the hand of the suffering woman, she sang,

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.

The woman's eyes lit a little brighter and her mouth began to move.

You make me happy when skies are gray.

She began to phonate. The pitches were clear and the words were coming.

You'll never know, dear, how much I love you.

Communicating for the first time in a long time, with the old familiar feeling that what she was thinking was actually coming out clearly through her mouth.

Please don't take my sunshine away.

This simple childhood song gave a dying patient one last opportunity to express herself with clarity and meaning, a skill that had otherwise been lost. She requested through her gestures and her eyes that they sing it over and over. She didn't want to lose the moment.

Singing goes with a holy moment. Those of us who are privileged to share in these moments would do well to remember that just as God's God-ness is inexpressible, music's power to express is unexplainable. This true story is a fitting metaphor for the power of music to enable us to express what we most need to communicate. And when we can't communicate at all, it is a great gift to spend one more verse expressing ourselves clearly.