Golden Gate Memorial Lesson

At Will's suggestion, I'm posting the text of the memorial lesson from the Golden Gate singing.

This is the time in the singing when we remember singers and family members who have died in the past year. It is an opportunity for all of us, and especially those of us who did not grow up singing this music, to deepen our connection with the long line of singers that has kept this tradition alive and thriving. One of the gifts of singing from The Sacred Harp is that it allows us to honor death as life’s constant companion. When we sing together, we comfort the living and rejoin our dead for a while.

285t Arnold
Come let us join our friends above
That have obtained the prize;
And on the eagle wings of love
To joy celestial rise.
Let all the saints terrest'rial sing
With those to glory gone;
For all the servants of our King
In heav'n and earth are one.

One family we dwell in Him,
One church above, beneath.
Though now divided by the stream,
The narrow stream of death.
One army of the living God,
To His command we bow;
Part of the host have crossed the flood,
And part are crossing now.
-Charles Wesley, 1759