What makes your soul rise?
Mama kept two stacks of vinyl records tucked inside the coffee table. She liked to listen to music while she studied for nursing school, or when she had friends over for a beer. Mama wasn’t an avid vinyl collector; she bought whatever was popular at the time: The Ballad of the Green Berets. Elvis and Johnny Cash. Boots Randolph. Floyd Cramer. And that startling one by Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass Band, featuring model Dolores Erickson draped in whipped cream.
But the record I remember best was one Mama had of Mahalia Jackson. Mahalia was not well known among my peers. We grew up listening to the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Carly Simon, Janis Joplin, Joan Baez and before that, very early on the King family and the Lennon Sisters.
And, of course, Elvis. There was always Elvis.
But whenever I had a chore to do, and Mama was away, I’d put Mahalia’s vinyl on the console stereo and turn the volume all the up to blast-the-neighbors-loud and set about doing my work. It didn’t matter to me that it was May and that Jackson’s recording was a collection of Christmas songs.
I played the same song over and over and over again, anyway — Go Tell it on the Mountain.
This may explain why I can’t stay on a task for more than 3 minutes. The only way to replay a song in those days was to walk over to the console and move the needle back to the groove between songs and turn the player back on.
It certainly explains a lot about the quality of my homework in those days.
I have never ever tired of listening to Mahalia sing. Not like I have with Joan Baez or Carly Simon. Sorry girls.
Pastor’s sermon today reminded me of just how much I loved Mahalia. Not because of anything in particular he said but because of everything he said. He was telling the Christmas story and that got me to thinking how difficult it must be to get up in front of a church every Christmas for some 30 years or better and try to find a new way to make such a well-known story sound new again. How do you keep people from tiring of it?
If I’ve ever heard the Christmas story told in a way that made me want to shout, the way Mahalia’s singing does, I can’t recall it. A reporter once said to Mahalia that she didn’t believe in God but that when Mahalia sang about God it gave her goose bumps. Mahalia responded that what the reporter was experiencing wasn’t goose bumps, rather it was her soul speaking to her.
I think I knew from an early age that listening to Mahalia ministered to me.
I’ve never heard a sermon preached about Christmas that speaks to me the way Mahalia singing Peace on Earth does.
What about you? Is there a particular sermon, story or song that ministers to your soul the message of the newborn Christ? Something that makes the goose bumps appear and your soul rise?
Boots Randolph, Carly Simon, Christmas story, Elvis, Go Tell it on the Mountain, Herb Alpert, Janis Joplin, Jesus, Joan Baez, Mahalia Jackson, Peace on Earth, Silent Night, vinyl records
I was listening to a sermon the other day and the pastor said that when God granted you eternal life He did not just grant you a ticket to heaven – He gave you Jesus.
He said that the moment you believed God birthed the life of His Son in you.
I got goose bumps and I cannot stop thinking about it.
He went on to say that we will stand before God and give an account for what we did with that life in us and explained that by the power of God through the Holy Spirit we ought to be doing things off the charts.
It may not be a story of the newborn Christ yet a story of new birth in me because of Him.
For me it has always been the song “O Holy Night”. The words talk about “the soul felt His worth”. I cry everytime I hear that song, it makes no difference who is singing it, but of course hearing my own Mom sing it at a Christmas Eve service is the very best of all!
On Veterans Day ‘97 I listened to Kammie McCleary McCreadie (I doubt I have spelled one of her names correctly since each has a zillion variants), a former Donut Dolly, speak at the Women’s Memorial. She asked that anyone who had spent Christmas in Vietnam join her in singing “O Holy Night”. Since I served in Asia Minor, not SE Asia, I didn’t fit the description. But I sang for my friends who did spend Christmas in Vietnam and who will never again sing on this earth. No singing of anything related to Christmas has ever matched those few verses on that day.
Second favorite piece: “The First Noel” done by, of all people, Crash Test Dummies. A few years back, somebody choreographed and performed a figure skating routine to it. I’ve never heard it or seen it done better.
Here’s the link to CTD singing the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdP9qKxvWh0&feature=related
Thanks! Gotta love them Canadians! Still wish I could see it to the figure skating piece, though.