Following the Stations of the Cross with the Sacred Harp

Here is a wonderful and ambitious post of a Sacred Harp singing Friend who has chosen a Sacred Harp song for each of the fourteen Stations of the Cross. (He turns out to be Mennonite, actually.) My thanks to him. (I also notice that he, too, directed readers to Garry Wills' column cited in my previous post.)

The Stations were not part of my Lutheran upbringing or of my current life as a Friend, so I'm not qualified to know the deeper meanings of each stage or how well the songs he picked matches the traditional mood or lesson of each stage.

But to me the songs each have a quirky kind of appropriateness that I love. Like singing "David's Lamentation" ("Oh my son, oh my son . . .") for the stage "Jesus meets his mother." And "A Cross for Me" for where Simon of Cyrene is made to carry Jesus's cross ("Must Jesus bear the cross alone, And all the world go free? No, there's a cross for ev'ryone, And there's a cross for me").

One of the bad things about Sacred Harp is that it's really hard when you want to sing these songs and you're alone; I want to call up some friends to get together and sing them together on Friday night. Maybe I will.

In any event, I look forward to singing Easter Anthem on Sunday.