Water and Sleep

At ol' Ricks College, in the Collegiate Singers, we once performed an arrangement of Hark I Hear the Harps Eternal, a 19th-century Southern song with a good tempo for rocking a chair, or maybe rowing a boat:

Hark, I hear the harps eternal

Ringing on the farther shore,

As I near those swollen waters

With their deep and solemn roar.

And my soul, though stained with sorrow,

Fading as the light of day,

Passes swiftly o’er those waters,

To the city far away.

Souls have crossed before me, saintly,

To that land of perfect rest;

And I hear them singing faintly

In the mansions of the blest.

Hallelujah, hallelujah,
Hallelujah, praise the lamb!
Hallelujah, hallelujah,
Glory to the great I AM!

The song is about, on one level, crossing over; as in crossing over to the afterlife. I can't relate to that meaning yet, on a personal level, though I suppose I will someday. But I used to hum this tune as I did baptisms for the dead--I like the baptismal image of water, like to think that this song might be sung from the point of view of one waiting for on the other side for the ordinance to be performed for them. More recently, I've come to think of these crossing the waters in the song as crossing over into sleep, and I sing this to DB quite often. Some of these old hymns are so rich--this one touches me on rather a mystical level.

Other waters: my parents came to visit this week, and we went to Laguna Beach on Thursday, to one of our favorite places for tidepools. It was so windy and cold--high wave advisories and all--we didn't think we'd have any fun. But the huge waves had brought in all sorts of beautiful shells and creatures--live clams and barnacles and brittle stars, sea urchins and spiny hermit crabs that played peek-a-boo with Dangerboy, made him belly laugh. I took this tidepool picture of a tiny shell like a cornucopia filled with pieces of tinier shells and sea dust. It was like a tidepool within a tidepool--makes you wonder how far down it goes? (Is it turtles all the way?) (Does anyone know that joke?)

The top picture is The Tetons: Snake River by Ansel Adams. Love the photograph--love the place.