The Voice of Angels

The other night I was driving home from dinner with friends and listening to a CD that I had dug out of a massive box of junk that somehow had made the move (and 7 months of habitation) without having been opened. It's not a CD I listen to often, the older I get, the less music I've found myself listening to, as my brain gets too busy to enjoy it (it's one of the hallmarks of my anxiety issue).

The second-to-last song came on, and I nearly had to pull over to listen to it. The song, "Who Will Be the Real Hero?" in and of itself is a rather forgettable song. Easy to sing along to, just sappy enough to make you feel warm and fuzzy. But it wasn't the song that nearly stopped me in my 65 mph tracks headed northbound in The Frontier. It was the memories that came flooding back.

The majority of my high school was a member of a single, locally prominent religion. As a result, the majority of students, during their "elective" period, took religion, offered across the street from campus. Because of the large number of students enrolled in the religion program, they had a council of a dozen or so seniors each year, who planned activities, peer involvement events and traveled to all the local congregations throughout the school year to speak during a church service.

I had the privilege of serving with some of the most incredible people on that council my senior year. Throughout the year, we tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to learn a hymn, which we could perform mid-way through our Sunday program when we visited local congregations. To say it was horrible is probably a little strong, but I'm not so sure I could call it "good" - we had a handful of musically-inclined people and a lot more not-so-musically-inclined people. But we tried. And getting a group of high school seniors to sing for a religious service period is kind of it's own miracle, so no one really complained.

However, the Sunday before graduation each year, the religion department held its own graduation, honoring students who had completed 3 and 4 years of elective religious study (another miracle). It was tradition for the council to sing. This meant we had to do something more complicated that the hymn we had lovingly tried to sing through the year - and it probably had to sound better.

We practiced. There was wailing and gnashing of teeth. At the same time there was some (details now forgotten) drama among the ranks, causing even more stress than normal. Whispers of "this is never going to sound good at all" swirled through the group, as everyone (musically-inclined and not) wished for another option to show our dedication and appreciation.

The night of the event came. During our last rehearsal, we could barely be heard 3/4 of the way back in the congregation - and that was without any people filling their seats yet. We stumbled. We groaned. We sounded ... okay. But no one who wasn't lying (or our parents) was going to come up and tell us that we had contributed to the spirit of the meeting.

Immediately following the rehearsal, we gathered in prayer. Someone pleaded that we would be able to sound good and bring a good spirit. Then the graduation began, we took our seats and forgot about anything more than our individual tasks.

As we stood to sing, something changed. Something palpable settled down on us. When we opened our mouths, it wasn't our voices at all, but the voices of angels that reached out into the congregation. Our hearts filled with an amazing sense of love and peace.

When the night was over, we were met with astonished exclamations - from parents and our advisor (who had heard our woeful musical attempts enough to know it wasn't actually us singing) to random relatives and members of the audience, stunned by such a performance by an otherwise obviously rag tag group of teenagers.

The song we sang: "Who Will Be The Real Hero."

More than anything, hearing the song again, for the first time in years, brought back what happened AFTER the song had been sung and the crowds had departed. It brought back a memory I'm not sure I'd thought of since that night ... Of a crowd of teens, who had loved, struggled, learned and grown together for an entire year, who had just experienced a miracle. Of hugs and tears and wonder. Of disbelief, of faith, of hope and anticipation. A memory of clinging together in awe over the small miracle, in sadness that our time as a family of sorts was over, in hope that the goodness would remain in each of us.

I haven't seen the majority of that group in more than a decade, though I often wonder what they're up to. It was nice to have a quiet moment to remember such a significant point in time, when I was surrounded by incredible people, whose voices sounded like angels.