Fellowship of Saints
The Story
What does one do when the places that once felt like home become a foreign country? Where does one flee when the sanctuaries you once thought safe burn to the ground?
I don’t know what you’re to do and where you’re to run. I only know that I’ve panted hard and looked for open spaces to breathe and longed for a safe asylum and watched cities of refuge become war zones.
This song is a bit of a discursive journal scrawl written aboard an airplane. I can’t tell you all the roads I ran down that led to this reflection. All I can say is that those roads ended with the runner cold and very nearly lifeless and fellow travelers stirred in the night and tended the fires of their faith and blew gentle on the embers of my own. They covered me with the mercy of their prayers when my own prayers were nothing more than ritual and routine and sheer discipline.
And in that fellowship of saints I came to know Jesus sweet and gentle and inexplicably kind.
As Aragorn said of Merry in the third of J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved Lord of the Rings trilogy, “His grief he will not forget; but it will not darken his heart, it will teach him wisdom” (1). May our wounds teach us wisdom. May we keep our own fires ablaze for those weak and wandering. May we cover in prayer those cold with doubt and disillusion.
May we be the body of Christ (Ephesians 4, I Corinthians 12:25-26).
The song
I have walked through narrow places
I have traveled valleys deep
I have longed for open spaces
Where my winded lungs could breath
And the cities all sequestered
From the searing heat of war
Could no longer serve as refuge
For the broken, battle-torn
All in vain I’ve sought asylum
For some holy halidom
Where my fissured flesh could gather
Round my shredded, shattered soul
I have turned to fallen people
Often they fallen short
I have suffered disillusion
By these casualties of war
I have doubted every promise
Every word assuring grace
I have questioned every comfort
Every line and every phrase
Of the hymns passed through the ages
And the songs I’ve always sung
And I’ve demanded reasons
From a God I thought was wrong
Oh, but I’ve been given answers
Though they weren’t the ones I sought
My wounds have taught me wisdom
In these battles I have fought
I’ve been freely offered sanctum
Though from sources all unknown
And I’ve been rendered refuge
In a city far from home
I’ve been carried in my weakness
By those whose steps matched mine
I’ve been covered in the darkness
By their prayers throughout the night
I have taken peace and courage
From the faith that they possessed
I’ve found comfort for my loneliness
In this Fellowship of Saints
Words by Merilee Barnard, assisted by Bryan Shields II and Gareth Nickerson © February 2019.
Music by Jacenda Eckelbarger and Merilee Barnard © 2019.
(1) Tolkien, J. R. R. (1955). The Return of the King. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. p. 879