Intro: The Choir Keeps Singing
As you heard, I’m a choir director, which means that every day I intentionally stand in front of large groups of people and let them sing and breathe in my direction. Before March, that would not have sounded like a scary career, but apparently my job is now one of the most dangerous in America. I did not see that coming.
Since Zoom choirs are honestly much scarier than live ones, we spent all spring figuring out alternative ways to keep singing this fall. (This video shows some of what we tried while Rexburg was still at minimal risk.)
Imagine singing in a choir when your nearest neighbor is three meters away—maybe singing a different part! That may not sound scary to you, but it has not been easy for us. Still, we have kept trying, kept singing. We need to sing together. Shared songs equal shared hearts. They connect us in worship, at family gatherings, even on playgrounds. Group singing helps us feel part of something bigger than ourselves.
So, the BYU-Idaho choirs keep singing. You—whatever your art or discipline happens to be—are doing the same thing—maybe through much worse adversity than minor inconveniences like Zoom jitter or socially distanced singing.
American poet and author Mary Caroline Richards wrote, “All the arts we practice are apprenticeship. The big art is our life.” [1] Through the years, my students and I have learned many lessons about the big art of life by practicing the little art of music.
I’ll share a few I hope will benefit you. As I do, consider how the discipline you’re striving to master makes you a better disciple of the Master.
I: Keep Singing...God’s Song
First lesson from the choir: sing God’s song.
One of my favorite references to music in the scriptures is Alma’s famous question:
My brethren, . . . if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now? [2]
When our hearts hear the song of redeeming love, we know that, whatever happens in our telestial world, the Redeemer will ultimately redeem it and us. That joyful news should comfort all who have the gift of the Holy Ghost. Some of us, though, in an effort to “stay informed,” unintentionally wallow instead in the songs of social dysfunction the media plays 24/7. The fruits of that song are disharmony, distrust, and disillusionment, which can quickly untune us, spiritually and emotionally.
The fruit of the Lord’s song, the fruit of the Spirit, on the other hand, is “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith.” [3] Huge contrast! Listen to what Jesus promised:
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you. Not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. [4]
Assuming you would rather have the Lord’s peace than the world’s alternatives, how can you tune out the songs of social dysfunction and tune in to the song of redeeming love?
I asked that question on the discussion board this week. You answered that spending daily time in prayer, meditation, physical exercise, and quality time with family help with this. Many of you mentioned the power of uplifting music to help you feel the Savior’s love. Luke Edwards said, “To ‘tune out’ the songs of social dysfunction I try not to participate in divisive political contention, or contention of any sort, on social media.” That comment is especially appropriate today, on a particularly divisive election day in the U.S. Finally, April Davies wrote, “Singing the song of redeeming love feels like acknowledging the blessings I have in my life and not taking them for granted. I'm so incredibly blessed. I've let go of things I can't change and have chosen to be happy and do the best I can do. That has made me more open to feeling God's love and treasuring the good things in my life.” Letting go of what you can’t change and choosing happiness is terrific advice, April. Thanks to all of you for your comments.
Whether you’re watching this alone or in a group, this might be a good time to pause your device and ponder or discuss this question: What changes can I—can we—make to nurture the Savior’s song of love in our hearts or apartments, instead of the cacophony of the telestial world? Take 60 seconds or more, and write down the impressions you receive. What the Spirit tells you in this time is much more important than anything I have to say anyway. I’ll be here when you return.
II: Sing Your Voice
Each semester new students join the Collegiate Singers. Choir newbies are usually afraid of standing out. They try to blend in by imitating their neighbors. I literally yell at them—in a nice way, because I’m a nice choir teacher—"Why are you hiding your voice? I chose you because I like it. Sing your voice, not your neighbor’s.”
That’s the choir’s next lesson for the big art of life.
“Remember,” taught Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, “it is by divine design that not all the voices in God’s choir are the same. It takes variety—sopranos and altos, baritones . . . basses [and tenors]—to make rich music.” [5]
If everyone were—metaphorically speaking—sopranos, how terrible would that be? (Don’t answer that, sopranos.) Yet sometimes we’re afraid to be different. You are you, and we need the real you, because you can reach people in ways no one else can. God made you different on purpose. You can live the gospel well and be your authentic self! Just let God help you figure out where your voice fits in his choir. Lose yourself—not your personality—in his service.
An important note here: the singers I teach still need to apply their vocal training. Simply singing in their own voice isn’t success; learning to sing beautifully in their own voice is. Likewise, our spiritual goal isn’t simply to be “authentic.” There’s nothing desirable about being authentically selfish or racist, for example. If that’s you, then “You do you” is not the best advice. God invites you to “Do the best you,” the most Christlike version of you, that you can become. Now, that looks different for introverts and extroverts, men and women, Africans and Americans, but the common themes for all of us include having faith in Christ, repenting, and keeping covenants.
Elder Holland taught:
We live in a mortal world with many songs we cannot or do not yet sing. But I plead with each one of us to stay permanently and faithfully in the choir, where we will be able to savor forever that most precious anthem of all—“the song of redeeming love.” Fortunately, the seats for this particular number are limitless. There is room for those who speak different languages, celebrate diverse cultures, and live in a host of locations. . . . There is room for those who once had questions regarding their faith and room for those who still do. There is room for those with differing sexual attractions. In short, there is a place for everyone who loves God and honors His commandments . . . . There is room in this choir for all who wish to be there. [6]
If you’re a recent convert near the beginning of your gospel journey, there is room for you too! Sing what you know of the gospel melody. It’s okay that you don’t know it all yet. And to you who meet students that don’t look, speak, or act like the kids you are used to hanging out with: Nobody—including you—lives the Gospel perfectly. Just as you need grace when you miss notes, they need it too, from you. Often, new converts already sing the most important themes, like loving God and loving their fellow men, beautifully, maybe better than you. Look past the marks and habits they may still carry of their former lives, and love them. Get to know them. Learn from them, and enjoy the strands of melody they bring with them to the gospel symphony.
Again, before I go on, I invite you to pause and ponder or discuss the ideas I’ve shared and write down any impressions that come. What is the Spirit teaching you about finding your own unique place, or helping someone else who is culturally different from you, to feel comfortable “singing their own voice” as they sit next to you in the Lord’s choir? I’ll wait until you come back.
III: Sing Together/Keep Singing When It’s Hard
I’ll consider the next two lessons without transition: sing together, and keep singing when the music is hard. Both come from the annual BYU-Idaho Christmas show. Maybe you’ve seen one.
The shows have featured guest soloists like David Archuleta, Santino Fontana, and Lexi Walker, along with hundreds of student musicians, dancers, and backstage technicians. Planning and conducting the intricate choreography of all these performers is one of the most challenging and rewarding things I do here. A successful show is almost as astonishing to me as landing a rocket on Mars. It’s a miracle it succeeds every year. It’s a real team effort, much bigger than any one person could achieve alone.
Soloists, in fact, who can pull off a one-person show are extremely rare, in music and in life. They sing, and the world listens. Jesus was the ultimate soloist; there was nothing any mortal could do to help Him complete the Atonement. But He still invites us to join in His work. Moses, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, and Joseph Smith were other great soloists whose beautiful melodies still make a difference in the harmony of our world.
The rest of us are not soloists on that grand scale, and we don’t need to be. The Lord doesn’t need us to personally right all the world’s wrongs or do every good thing. He just needs us to play the few notes He puts on our music stand today. When we do, we’ll realize we’re a small but important part of a rich worldwide symphony.
Let’s look backstage now at the BYU-Idaho Christmas show. Though we try to make it look easy to the audience, the process of creating the show is complex and messy—especially the week of the show, “tech week.” That’s when we pull everyone together for the first time. It’s barely controlled chaos. I’ve done enough of them now to trust the process, trust my colleagues, and trust the Lord. I know it will work out—eventually. But during the first technical rehearsal we just look at each other and say, “What were we thinking? Why do we put ourselves through this every year?” It feels like flying a jumbo jet that’s always about to crash.
So it is in the big art of life.
Life is messy and hard. Even before we’ve mastered the notes on our music stand, it seems, the Lord is giving us another page to stretch us. When life seems really messy, which it often does in this crazy winding-up scene we call “the last days,” it can feel hard to trust that the Conductor knows what He’s doing. Our world can feel like a jumbo jet about to crash, and the pilot is sleeping.
If you feel that way today, be patient. Trust the Lord, trust His process, even when it feels messy. We only see a few notes at a time; as Conductor and Composer, He sees the whole score—the full plan of salvation, all of its parts, and how they harmonize in the end. What sounds dissonant today will resolve tomorrow in beautiful harmonies we couldn’t have anticipated. It will work out—eventually.
My Story
Finally, how do we “keep singing” when we can’t see the Conductor or feel His presence? Bear with me as I tell you a difficult personal story.
In 2009, after a spiritually powerful performance tour with the choir, I suffered a massive crisis of faith, triggered by something I read that raised questions I couldn’t answer. What I read isn’t important; I’ll just say, it was convincing enough to destroy some weak links in what I thought was a secure testimony. I have since called this the problem of plastic parts. You know how things you buy are only as strong as the plastic parts the manufacturers put in intentionally so your item breaks right after the warranty expires? That’s a topic for another day, but it sums up the problem with my faith: it was built with too many plastic parts, meaning, even in my 40s, without realizing it, key parts of my testimony were still based on opinions of men, including my own youthful attempts to reconcile my understanding of science and the gospel. When those plastic parts failed, the whole machine fell apart. I went into a deep spiritual funk that lasted three years. I was seldom happy, my family suffered; I doubted the reality of my soul, even the existence of God.
At this moment of spiritual crisis, I realized, I had felt the Spirit and knew I had, including many times on the choir tour that year. I also recalled times in my younger life when I had unmistakably seen God’s hand, answering prayers and honoring priesthood blessings in miraculous ways that couldn’t be explained away no matter how hard my tortured mind tried.
Even in my pain, I remembered that God knew me personally, exactly as Brother Michael Lewis taught us so beautifully last week. I knew He knew my name. Through an experience too sacred to share here, I knew He even knew my phone number. Even if I couldn’t “feel so now,” I had heard and sung the song of redeeming love, and it was not imaginary.
I realized then that to be truly intellectually honest, I couldn’t dismiss my own storehouse of spiritual memories, even though I couldn’t yet answer a few hard questions. That thought—those memories—made me push the pause button and say, “Wait. Let’s give this a fair trial.”
And so I began to rewrite my song—starting with “I Am a Child of God”—which at that moment was all I felt I knew for certain. I began to build a new foundation for my faith, this time without the plastic parts.
I still believe in miracles, but not in every second-hand miracle story I’m told. I’m rebuilding my faith on the smaller but more solid blocks of daily, authentic, personal experiences with God that nobody can take away from me. Claims of “indisputable evidence” against the Church or its leaders have also lost their power to faze me. I’m imperfect, so what if my leaders are too? I’ve met many of them, including President Russell M. Nelson. They are good people, serving the Lord the best they know how, just as I am. Their mistakes, real or imagined, have nothing to do with my personal quest to learn the Lord’s song and sing my part.
Examples of Faithful Singers
So keep singing, especially when the music gets hard. History and the scriptures are full of stories of ordinary people who became extraordinary by doing just that. This school is full of them. Just look around. You’ll see them. You are not alone.
I see the prophet Mormon and his son Moroni at the end of the great Nephite civilization, nothing they could do to stop its fall. And yet, Mormon wrote to Moroni,
And now, my beloved son, notwithstanding their hardness, let us labor diligently; . . . for we have a labor to perform whilst in this tabernacle of clay, that we may conquer the enemy of all righteousness, and rest our souls in the kingdom of God. [7]
They didn’t quit singing the song of redeeming love, even when nobody listened or sang with them.
I see my choir friends, some struggling with physical and mental illnesses or faith crises. They keep singing anyway. To you who struggle, to you who question your worth or place in the Lord’s choir: There is a place for you here. Sing His song. Let the music you sing in His service, especially the challenging passages, help you discover and perfect your true, beautiful voice. No, it’s not easy. But don’t you give up. Jesus Christ, who wrote the song of redeeming love and sang it all the way to the cross, still sings it and knows perfectly how to teach you to sing it. Keep singing His song; He will sing it with you.
Since I’m a musician, I’ll conclude with a video clip of music I hope captures these ideas. May our voices inspire you to keep singing.
In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Notes
[1] Mary Caroline Richards.
[2] Alma 5:26; emphasis added.
[3] Galatians 5:22.
[4] John 14:27; emphasis added.
[5] Jeffrey R. Holland, “Songs Sung and Unsung,” Ensign, May 2017.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Moroni 9:6.