O love

This morning in church there was a special Celtic music service featuring Irish melodies and instruments, spare and beautiful. I like to think the music poured forth and seeped into a deep part of me that is somehow bound to those Celtic Howells, Rouths, Gormans of generations past who traveled to this country long ago. That might explain my easy tears. But I think many people, of diverse descents, have the same emotional response to the unaccompanied Celtic flute.

And we began with Come thou font of every blessing, and we ended with a dignified (when are they otherwise?) bagpipe player leading us in Amazing Grace. Both those hymns were nap time favorites when our children were tiny. Frances would request "Amay" as a baby, and even though Mike and I sang it a thousand times, it never lost its power for me. Once I listened to Ralph Stanley sing it on the Diane Rehm Show with Gabriel in the backseat and nearly broke down in sobs at a stoplight. 

But really, I've always been a crier in church. Throw a bagpipe in and I'm a goner. 

There was one more hymn today that hit me hard. The first lines are

O love, how deep, how broad, how high,

how passing thought and fantasy

It's about God's love for us, but it also captures how I felt standing in the pew, carrying Gabriel so he could get a good view of the bagpipe, trying to keep my tears at bay so I could sing those dear words. I knew love before I became a parent. But there is something about the love I feel for my children that yes passes thought and fantasy. It is something underneath, around, above, and through my rational self. It makes no sense. The mysterious, hazy edges of the emotional experience of motherhood have helped me imagine what God's love for creation might be like. But it is too big and scary to conceive, a love that boundless, so I tend to stay a few paces away.

Spiritual temerity aside, what a joy it is to see one's children off and running in the world! I am grateful for the view I've been enjoying these days, blurred by tears or otherwise.