The Blessing

Dozens of UK Christian churches sang “The Blessing” over their country this week, engaging in a common religious practice of the Christian church for twenty centuries (and many thousands of years prior in Judaism), singing songs of gratefulness to God and songs of blessing “over” their homeland. They gave this gift to everyone via the global internet and demonstrated a love for others through the gift and voice they have, sharing across multiple types of churches, ethnic backgrounds of people, and parts of the United Kingdom. I received it as intended - over my many friends across the Atlantic, and doubly, as a applied blessing to my own homeland, the United States of America.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUtll3mNj5UA lot of “United" in that first paragraph, and I stay focused on that word today in the wake of understandable grief-turned-anger over remnants of hundreds of years (since time began?) of demonstrated negligence and certainly violence against peoples. This week, as the nation boils here in the farther West, music is still and also needed. Painful music, assertive music, healing music, and frustrated music.Many are united in the music of absolute grief over another senseless and very public murder, as am I. I could quote “People Get Ready” or “What’s Going On?” or something from the Stax catalog from here in Memphis, but it would ring hollow - instead I work for justice through Visible Music College weekly and I invoke today “The Blessing” with a powerful “May His favor be upon you, and a thousand generations, and their children, and their children.”Music is important.