Music plays many roles in our lives, but the one emphasized in today’s service is that music has always been one of the ways people carry home with them. We may leave places behind – whether by choice, necessity, or force – but the songs we sang in the various homes of our lives remain. Music can remind us where we came from, with memories, language, faith, and atmosphere.

The piano music for this service brings together two ideas: song as a source of expression and community, and music as a vessel for heritage, memory, displacement, and belonging.

The prelude began with a gentle cover of Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land, with occasional new harmonies that help us hear the song a little differently.  Instead of the rousing version we are used to, it becomes more reflective.  Are we living as if this land belongs to everyone?  Who has been welcomed, and who has been left out?  If imagined through through the lens of immigration and refuge, the song becomes a statement of a shared home, but also a dream that we fervently wish will be true someday: that “home” might be generous enough to include all who seek safety, dignity, and a place to belong.

Following This Land is Your Land, I played Paul Simon’s American Tune, a song based on Johann Sebastian Bach’s hymn O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden (“O Sacred Head Now Wounded”). It is weary and searching as it refers to uncertainty and struggle when in the United States, far from home.  While not particularly uplifting view of life in America, it offers a glimpse of hope in its final phrase.

Many are familiar with Joe Raposo’s Sing from the Carpenters’ rendition, but not everyone knows that this beloved song was originally created for Sesame Street.  Raposo was a renowned composer employed by Jim Hensen who also penned the Sesame Street theme and songs “C is for Cookie” and “It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green”.  He was also the child of Portuguese immigrants, a fact which gives new depth to this beautiful children’s song.  Singing is one of the oldest ways to preserve identity, pass on memory, and join a new community without erasing where one came from, and singing with others does a great deal to help us find a sense of belonging.

The postlude, Make Your Own Kind of Music, was made famous by Cass Elliot (a.k.a. Mama Cass, Elliot’s less preferred nickname).  All four of Elliot’s grandparents were Russian-Jewish immigrants. This top forty hit’s message – to keep singing your own song even if others do not immediately understand it – aligns strongly with experiences of displacement and belonging.  Immigrants, refugees, and their descendants often live between cultures as they treasure inherited stories, accents, customs, music, and memories while trying to make a home in a new place. The lesson from this song applies to both music and the world in general: one’s unique voice is not only not something that should be hidden in order to belong but is something that helps enrich the larger community.