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The first time I can remember singing from a hymnal was in 1972. It was the year between high-school graduation and college, the year I got my first full-time job. That year my mother's health began to fail, and my world shifted on its axis as I started to follow Jesus. That was the year I began to attend Glad Tidings, a plain concrete bunker of a church, whose colored windows reminded me more of ashtray glass than cathedrals.

Glad Tidings was a Pentecostal church, but of the reserved variety. Their Azusa Street brethren might whoop and dance. Let other congregations swoon in ecstasy, ravished by the Spirit, or speak in the mysterious languages of men and angels. Not the folks at Glad Tidings. It's not that they didn't believe in such things. They were convinced that God had the power to interrupt the service at any moment. He might send them all into a fit of shouting that lasted for days. Indeed, they prayed for such things to occur. But they never acted as if they actually expected he would.

Most of the time, or so it seemed, God respected their suburban sensibilities and kept a polite distance. But every so often the Spirit would stir the congregation the way the angel stirred the waters of Bethesda, and one or two voices would cry "Glory" or "Amen." They were always the same voices, of course. They never made this declaration at any volume that would disturb our decorum. But it was loud enough for all of us to hear. Just loud enough to let the rest of us know there was glory afoot.

Glad Tidings was less self-conscious about singing. Three or four times during the service, the entire congregation reached for the old red hymnals in the pew racks and gave voice to their faith. The dog-eared hymnal pages were illuminated by the penciled scrawls and stick figures of bored children. The stanzas below those hieroglyphics depicted the pilgrim life of Jesus' followers as one of wandering and weariness, tears and tarrying.

We were passing through the valley.
We were camped on the banks of the river.
We were sinking deep in sin.

The hymn writers helped us get our bearings by pointing to the milestones along the way.

We were at Bethel with Jacob.
We were drinking water from the rock with Moses.
We were in the Garden with Jesus.

I wouldn't describe the melodies of those old hymns as pretty. They seemed strange to me, as archaic as the shape-note harmonies of the Sacred Harp, from which many of them were hewn. They exuded a kind of musty charm for me, the way my grandmother's house did with its ancient wood and iron stove. Something about them reminded me of the songs my father and uncles sang after they had drunk too much beer. Songs with titles like "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" and "On the Road to Mandalay." Those hymns rolled along with a rhythm that was so predictable, you didn't need to know the words or the melody to sing them. If you knew one hymn, it seemed, you knew them all. And if you didn't know it, you had only to wait a stanza or two to sing it like you knew it.

The songs we had sung the night before at the Lost Coin Coffee House were different from the hymns we sang in church. The Lost Coin was located in the Sunday school building just across the parking lot from Glad Tidings. At the Lost Coin, we worshiped God with campfire rounds led by a gangly guitar player named Mike who prayed daily for the salvation of Bob Dylan and George Harrison. The songs we sang at the Lost Coin were simpler, based on a handful of chords and a seemingly endless repetition of the chorus. We didn't mind. If anything, their simplicity made them even easier to sing than the old gospel songs. We sang them with enthusiasm. We clapped. We stomped. We sang in antiphonal rounds. We mirrored the meaning of the words with hand gestures. If someone had taken the words of Psalm 119 and fit them to the tune of "Bingo" ("There was a farmer had a dog and Bingo was his name-o"), we would have sung it. All 176 verses.

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March 2011, Vol. 55, No. 3

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