I am lucky to sing in a wonderful church choir at St. Paul's - K Street Episcopal Church in Washington, DC. We sing enough music to fill a concert, every Sunday, all year. Although I've been singing my whole life -- sacred music in particular -- I'm constantly amazed at how little of this music I've sung before. There are new composers, new pieces, every week.
Last Sunday, we sang an anthem by Timothy Hagy (b. 1958) with a text by Eleanor Roosevelt. It was called, simply enough, "A Prayer of Eleanor Roosevelt." I don't know more than what's commonly known about Eleanor Roosevelt: her strength, her resilience in the face of all her husband's weaknesses and challenges; her travels, her independence of mind.
But this: she wrote prayers, too. Hagy, the composer, set it beautifully and simply, without accompaniment, so that the words were made prominent. In this season of Lent where (sometimes confounding) scripture abounds, Eleanor's words spoke to me with immediacy. Here they are:
A Prayer of Eleanor Roosevelt
Our Father, who hast set a restlessness in our hearts and made us seekers after that which we can never fully find, forbid us to be satisfied with what we make of life. Draw us from base content and set our eyes on far off goals. Keep us at tasks too hard for us that we may be driven to thee for strength.
Deliver us from fretfulness and self-pitying; make us sure of the good we cannot see and of the hidden good in the world Open our eyes to simple beauty all around us and our hearts to the loveliness men hide from us because we do not try to understand them. Save us from ourselves and show us a vision of the world made new.
Just putting that out there . . . it all speaks to me.
