There aren’t very many hymns that literally move me to tears – but “God be with you ’til we meet again” is one such hymn for me – and it always gets me crying. Every. Single Time. Interestingly enough, it’s not a hymn I ever sang in my childhood because it wasn’t in any of our Lutheran hymnals back then. I actually first encountered it in high school when playing organ for First Baptist Church in Atlantic, Iowa. This hymn would be used on quite a few occasions when a family in the congregation was about to move away or for other departures that they wanted to commemorate in some special way.
The hymn only took on profound personal meaning for me towards the end of my graduate school experience in Lincoln, Nebraska. During my two years there, I was the organist for Southwood Lutheran Church, a large and incredibly vibrant congregation that I grew to love. The organ itself was at the back of the sanctuary, and most of the congregation would end up filing past me both during the prelude and postlude. Almost every Sunday during the postlude, at least one child (and usually more) would plop down right next to me on the organ bench and watch me play, ask me questions, etc. It was incredibly fun but also a tremendously moving experience for me because I had never been so far away from home (about 500 miles or so) and and the strong connection I felt with these youngsters helped make this church feel like a second family for me.
On my last Sunday at Southwood, the final hymn of the service was “God be with you ’til me meet again,” preceded by some very kind words from Pastor Hanselman. And as the congregation rose and began to sing this hymn, one by one the little kids streamed back to the organ and surrounded me there. Most of them were crying- and I was crying, too. (At the time it felt like an entirely spontaneous gesture on the part of these kids. In retrospect, I suspect that maybe it was more by design. Or perhaps one parent sent his or her kids back, and others followed suit. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that it was one of those absolutely incredible moments when the whole rest of the world just winked out of existence; all I could think about was the words of that hymn and these precious little kids sitting on either side of me.) That was in the spring of 1984, over thirty years ago, but it still resonates in my soul as though it were this morning.
I reconnected with that hymn when my beloved mentor from Luther College, Weston Noble, came to Carthage to be our Guest Conductor in Residence for the Carthage Choir. Needless to say, the students really fell in love with him, and it was imperative that they have a chance to express their feelings to him as a choir. Towards that end, I secretly arranged “God be with you ’til we meet again,” since I knew that it was the tradition closing piece for every concert of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, an ensemble that Mr. Noble held in high esteem and which he had actually conducted on several recent occasions. The students in the choir learned it in secret and surprised Mr. Noble with it at Commencement – and it proved to be a lovely tribute that I think meant a lot to him. And as Mr. Noble returned to Carthage for several years thereafter to conduct on subsequent spring choral concerts, that arrangement would be dusted off and sung for him as a thank you and goodbye. This year was the final incarnation of the Weston Noble Alumni Choir, and I wish with all my heart that I had come forward to the folks in charge and suggested that this hymn be sung at some point- but I didn’t want it to seem like I was trying to sneak myself into the spotlight or needlessly complicating the delicate arrangements that had already been made. But when I close my eyes and imagine all 137 of us singing that hymn to Mr. Noble, I get a big lump in my throat all over again.
This past Sunday at Holy Communion, “God be with you” was our final hymn. I chose it mostly because of that morning’s Godspeed rite for Laura Hermanns, whose dad was my beloved friend Walter – a former pastor at Holy Communion. Laura is about to leave for a year-long service experience in faraway Rwanda, and at one point in the service Pastor Laura Fladten took Laura down the center aisle of the church and then asked the entire congregation present to physically enfold her as she led them in prayer. It was a stunningly moving moment. The hymn “God be with you” seemed like the perfect way to complete that gesture of farewell. As it turns out, the hymn also took on a second layer of meaning for me because my voice student Nick Huff visited that day in order to sing “Panis Angelicus”- mere days before departing for Rochester, NY to begin graduate studies at Eastman School of Music. As I sat there playing that hymn and trying to sing it along with the congregation, I found myself filled to bursting with so many memories of dear ones now gone …. of difficult farewells …. and especially those heart-rending moments when I had sung this song in years gone by – with those youngsters in Lincoln, with the Carthage Choir for Mr. Noble, and now for these most recent goodbyes. One might think that such farewells might grow easier with time, but I don’t think they do- at least not for me. Yes, one comes to realize with time that there is a cycle of life which inevitably includes farewells. It is almost as though they provide our lives with life-giving circulation, much like the circulation of blood through our bloodstream. (Imagine life without them. If nothing or nobody ever departed, our lives would grow so emotionally crowded – to the point where nothing or nobody would mean anything to us.) But with time, one also begins to realize that farewells mark how fragile and finite our lives are …. which is also what makes life so incredibly precious.
Which is why the tears I shed as I sing that hymn are not so much tears of sadness but rather tears of gratitude. . . for Laura, for Nick, for Mr. Noble, those little children at Southwood Lutheran Church, and for everyone else who has a place in my heart- those still with me …. and those departed or about to depart.
(Pictured above: This was the moment at Holy Communion this past Sunday morning when the congregation literally enfolded Laura Hermanns as Pastor Laura Fladten let us in prayer.)