Be Still, My Soul

Here's a video Tamie posted to her blog this summer when she lost her grandmother, and I think of it now in our situation. I love this hymn, and it's especially peaceful and grounding set against images of imprisonment, inhumanity, and sorrow. It hearkens to some movies we've watched recently from the seclusion of our little bedroom, including "The Lives of Others," "Babel," and "Black Snake Moan."

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Take Me by Don Chaffer

“Old ain’t a word that I’m fond of,” he said.
“And these days I’ve begun to lose count.”
Mumbling she rolls in her wheelchair, and says,
“I’m afraid that they’ve closed my account.”

There’s a blur that occurs in the line of their life
That decays the whole notion of sense
And they call to the past, insisting that it last,
While they’re climbing down reality’s fence

Singing with me
Take me
Take me
Write my name in the most Holy Tome
And when it’s my time
To assume the sublime,
Take me to my promised home

And their hands aren’t gnarled, they’re in love with the earth
And they’re dying to go there again
We say the essence of life is strong in our youth,
Slowly buried under wrinkles of skin

But there’s God in the way that life comes to an end,
In the way that it draws to a close,
In the saying of soul to the house of the skin,
You’re too weak now to really oppose