Deep in my soul, I cried

I am wrapping up my nice little stay here in lovely LSA Adder, or T1, or Camp Cupcake, whatever you want to call it. Tomorrow I fly to Baghdad International Airport, where I will hopefully have VIP housing for Thursday night (notice that I am flying on a day which I once swore I would never travel on: Thanksgiving -- although the crowds here are nothing like the crowds in America: we tend to wear Personal Protection Equipment as we move around the country). Friday I catch a charter from BIAP to Dubai, and I will probably be in Dubai for a couple of days. I can't wait to go see the Duty Free at Dubai International Airport. It is ACRES and ACRES of some of the best tax-free discount shopping in the world, and I am not making this up. Other airports can pretend that their duty-free is fairly nice, but Dubai sets the standard as far as I can tell.

It's been a fun two weeks. The students have been good, the presentations have been excellent, I have had a chance to sleep in late every now and then (something that escaped me when I was at Camp Victory in May/June/July earlier this year). There's also something nice about having a day off every week. Most of the Big Defense Contractor employees have to work 84 hours a week: that's 7 12-hour days for you non-math majors like my wife, The Lovely One. Of course, my daughter the Math Genius could have given you that equation in about 4 seconds. Did I mention that she WON the Math Olympiad for the whole freaking School District in the Big City last year? I am a proud dad.

The Lovely One did a very lovely thing this week: she sent me an email which had been sent to her, and in it was a link to the website of the Church we used to attend before we transferred to the FigNation up north from where we live (The Cathedral Church of Saint Matthew). This Church has a dynamite music program, and I was lucky enough to be a part of its choir for the better part of 7 years. Anyway, I cruised on over to the website, clicked on the "Listen to the Choir" link, and I was transported, spiritually, to the concert we gave in November of 2004. As I sat and listened to some surprisingly well-recorded hymns, with organ, and horn quartet accompaniement, I recalled the moments with exquisite clarity. I can visualize where I was standing. I recall our Organist/Choirmaster improvising his intros to some well-known and much-loved hymns (it was the Festival of Hymns, after all ...). And as I cued up the last hymn we sang that night (it was the first one listed on the web page because for some reason the webmaster listed them alphabetically rather than in order performed; this is heresy, like making a CD of "Dark Side of the Moon" and ordering the songs alphabetically: it renders the effect of P. Floyd's music inert; it is meant to be played in a certain order; I did the right and proper thing, and played them into my headphones, sitting in my office in Tallil, Iraq, in the order in which we sang them), I recalled why "Abide with me" is my all-time, number one, no questions asked favorite hymn. Even though it makes me sob like a baby. The chord progressions, the tenor lines, all contribute to a greatness, a swelling of heart and soul and body. I had what I like to call a God moment, when it really doesn't matter that I am in Iraq, or that the US may or may not have good reasons for being here, because in the end it doesn't matter anyway: what matters is that I was IN THE MOMENT, and I was present to it, and I was enjoying it, and I was wallowing in it. We have sung this hymn several times in my chorister life, and each time we sang it, there must have been something going on in my life, or it was the occasion in which we sang it (I recall a celebration we did at the Church many years ago for World Aids Day; a lot of friends from the Diocese were there, and as we sang this hymn, processing out at the end of the service, I could not see my hymnbook anymore because my eyes had welled up with water, my throat had thickened, I was stumbling down the aisle in my purple robe and white cotta; I think it was because I was thinking of the friends I saw no more), I just cannot make it all the way through without getting all verklempt.

And I do not want to hear from my really musical friends who don't like this hymn because it is "maudlin" or "mawkish". I don't care, and you can't change my mind, so don't try. This hymn was sung at the wedding of George VI, and at the wedding of his daughter, Elizabeth (now Queen E~ II). So there.

At the Festival, we sang this hymn with standard organ accompaniement on verse 1. Verse 2: cue the horn quartet. By verse 3 (horn descant) I could barely make it through the words. And verse 4 -- starting with a very piano organ which fades to nothingness -- ends up being a cappela, with the choir spread out around the aisles of the nave of the Church. And as a I sat in my dark office in Tallil, late at night, with nothing going on except this hymn, and this moment, I experienced all over again the feelings I had the night that I sang it at the Festival of Hymns. And deep in my soul, I cried.

The text of the song, written by Henry Francis Lyte, 1847
The tune, "Eventide" by William Henry Monk, 1861

Abide with me: fast falls the eventide;
the darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide:
when other helpers fail and comforts flee,
help of the helpless, O abide with me.

I need thy presence every passing hour;
what but thy grace can foil the tempter's power?
Who, like thyself, my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.

I fear no foe, with thee at hand to bless;
ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Where is death's dark sting? where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if thou abide with me.

Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes;
shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies;
heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee;
in life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.