Belonging

Do you remember when I wrote the blog about Sinhala people's singing? It was in March and entitled Vindication. Well, my mother, who has always held me and my siblings to higher values, wrote to me, "Wendy, if there is problem, you need to be part of the solution. You have a beautiful voice."

Now, that same mother of mine did come to see me in Sri Lanka and actually got to hear the din herself. She was in agreement that the music was NOT what she was used to; it was not lovely, sweet hymns and vespers. However, she re-issued her challenge.

So, in acknowledgment of the challenge from my mother, and in desperate need of a sense of belonging, I joined the 5pm. Saturday night English mass church choir. The choir, on a good night, consists of about 4 nuns, a couple of teenagers, a couple of ladies my age and a teen organ player. We have no choir practice, no preparation, we just arrive at mass and we sing the number in the song book that one of the nuns announces. We sound terrible.

Today at mass, I stood in the centre of the group singing my heart out.  Despite the fact that I pronounce, when I sing, the words "vast domain and rarest" and they sing the word, "vost domain and rawrest" which throws me off, I was no longer strange to the other choir members and they were no longer strange to me. We shared a love of the mass and a love of singing and I thought we sounded good tonight. I belonged, somewhere, finally.