Sunny Side Up: We all need a kindly chorus
By Kathleen Gibson
Prof. That’s what my fellow college students and I called our cheerful music professor. Elderly, bespectacled, wise.
The kindly Dr. Taylor came to mind the other day. I found myself humming, then singing the hymn he and I sang as a duet during a college chapel service. One of his favourites, he told me. It included these words, in old fashioned King James English, echoing Isaiah 26:3. “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee. When the shadows come and darkness falls, he giveth inward peace…”
As my vocal coach, Prof Taylor often encouraged my singing. But I never expected he’d want to sing with me. In the music studio, perhaps, but not in public. His affirmation boosted my confidence and spurred me forward. All these decades later, his words and actions still warm me.
Human beings, at least most of us, seem wired for affirmation. No social media ‘like’ can compare with the confidence that rises when another person takes time and thought to let us know they value or appreciate us or something we do or have done. Cheerleaders on the sidelines of our lives. People who believe in us. A “kindly chorus” as the character Ralph Rackstraw calls it in Act 1 of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore.
Such was the wiry blue-haired woman from the church of my childhood who predicted I’d be a “good Preacher’s wife” one day. (I was still a child and that was the last thing I hoped for.) And my Grade 4 teacher, Miss Budnick. (We still keep in touch, sixty years later.) Also, the friend who drove for three hours just to spur me to keep writing. My family. Editors, friends, co-workers, bosses, pastors…too many carriers of kindness to list.
(Remembering all those people got me wondering. Who have I encouraged lately, either in words or action? And how many people’s lists, if they made them, would include my name? How can I do better this week, as a member of someone else’s ‘kindly chorus’?)
"I know the value of a kindly chorus…” Ralph says. Then he adds “…but choruses yield little consolation when we have pain, and sorrow, too, before us!" He was right. Even though praise and encouragement can lift us, eventually “shadows fall and darkness comes,” to us all and we experience periods when physical or emotional pain lays us so low that even a kindly chorus can’t help.
Enter the God of resurrection. Our Father in Heaven, who promises perfect peace to those whose faith in him is firm. Enter Jesus, whose sacrifice offers eternal life, who loves and believes in us when others stop; who knows our name when others forget, who reminds us of our eternal worth when we feel worthless. Someone who, from before our birth, will always be our biggest cheerleader.
Dear old Prof knew all that. And though his encouragement had value for me then, I’ve come to understand the infinitely greater value of the faith he lived and the God he loved.
You can reach me at sunnysideup.press@gmail.com
Kathleen Gibson