I'll Fly Away
An essay yesterday on Geranium Farm, Barbara Crafton reportedly having finished her book and resuming her writing, stirred my memory and touched my heart. In this instance the song more than her writing, but both really, her writing brilliant, almost uniquely so, and I’m glad she’s back.
The song was “I’ll Fly Away” (A E Brumley, 1929). I’m not sure, we may have sung it as teenagers at Camp Weed, Carrabelle, Florida in those 1950s days that someone trying to be poetic might call halcyon, like cool spring mornings and warm, sunny afternoons of peace before the First World War; setting aside, overlooking or completely forgetting the bad and remembering only the good; a sign of a healthy mind perhaps.
But the song. Maybe I used to hear it on radio or watch it on Sunday morning b&w television in earlier days, not sure. Guitar is okay, but for best it wants a rinky-tink piano, at least one fiddle, for sure a banjo, and one or more singers with a nasal twang:
I'll Fly Away
Some glad morning when this life is over,
I'll fly away.
To a home on God's celestial shore,
I'll fly away.
I'll fly away, O Glory,
I'll fly away.
When I die, Hallelujah, bye and bye,
I'll fly away.
When the shadows of this life are gone,
I'll fly away.
Like a bird from prison bars has flown
I'll fly away. (chorus)
Just a few more weary days and then,
I'll fly away.
To a land where joy shall never end,
I'll fly away. (chorus)
What it brings to my mind personally is a period of several months sometime between 1984 and 1998 when we changed the schedule at the church I was serving from early service and late service to a Sunday morning of three worship services that turned out to be enormous fun. The parish was a congregation of traditional-minded, conservative Episcopalians. The Episcopal Church at large was growing beyond them at the time I arrived, and in fact my Pennsylvania bishop had sent me to a near-week-long charismatic renewal conference in North Carolina, in response to what he knew about my “worship spirituality” and clearly hoping for me to grow beyond my own 18th century stodge, that had eclipsed the Church of England to the Wesleys! Which, as it turned out, did happen: the conference was so moving and the songs so uplifting that when I returned home enchanted, my supervising rector remarked disapprovingly, “When you left to drive down there you couldn’t even spell ‘charismatic renewal’ and now you are one,” adding, “I don’t want this in my parish.”
But I digress, which is part of my nature whether speaking or writing. Within a year of that confrontation I’d transferred from Pennsylvania to accept a call to a church in the Florida Panhandle.
The church grew. It wasn’t because of me, it was because the little town began having a renaissance of sorts, transitioning from a shabby century-old fishing village into a trendy tourist boutique. Still no traffic light quite yet, but real estate prices skyrocketing, A&P closing, the hotel renovated, a motel built on the outskirts of town, new people moving in. We got our share of them including because there was no Lutheran, Presbyterian, or Unitarian Church there; and they were not old-fashioned, conservative Southerners but people from all over. With several co-conspirators, we decided to change our Sunday morning schedule, hoping to welcome the evolving demographic: from the standard Episcopal two-services to a three-service schedule of customary Early Service with ancient liturgy, no sermon, no music; midmorning a contemporary Family Service with mixed music including a leadership group up front in the sanctuary with piano or keyboard, guitars, bass, maybe a violin &c, I don't remember what all; and late morning traditional Choral Eucharist at eleven.
As it turned out, the early service continued as always, six or a half-dozen old-timers. The contemporary family service was packed with happy worshipers including not only newcomers but our children, teens and young people, couples and families. The Choral Eucharist, in which traditionalist Episcopalians and my own favorite, including our beautiful and loyal choir were invested, and for which they planned, practiced and worked hard, struggled to have a half-dozen worshipers, and all the months we ran the experiment, never had as many as a dozen. After a few months, I discussed with my co-con group and, in large part to bring back our dis-spirited traditionalists, despite George's protest that we hadn't given the new schedule a long enough trial, we changed Sunday morning back to two services.
What prompts my memory this morning is precisely The Song. The first or second Sunday of the new schedule, choir members of longstanding faithfulness were waiting outside the front door as the family service full house led by the worship music group up front in the sanctuary raised the roof with “I’ll Fly Away” as closing hymn. I stood outside the front door watching as those waiting listened and shook their heads, and I heard one fume, “‘I’ll Fly Away,’ not in my church.”
We Episcopalians have, or had, no, have an odd snobbery about hymns that Good Music is preferable to songs people love to sing. I no longer watch this, but used to notice that for some reason this seemed especially so among those who came to us from church traditions with more evangelical (read Good Old Baptist) hymns, perhaps as though they'd left their blue-collar roots to move up into high society and wouldn't look back. Even, looking back sixty-five years, we may have sung “I’ll Fly Away” around evening Campfire but we would never have sung "such" in morning chapel and, God in Heaven Forbid never, ever on Sunday MP or HC. But I remember it fondly, lovingly that morning in my own First Church that is still so dear to my heart.
Just a memory, remembering. Thanks, Geranium Farm, Barbara.
DThos+
But the song. Maybe I used to hear it on radio or watch it on Sunday morning b&w television in earlier days, not sure. Guitar is okay, but for best it wants a rinky-tink piano, at least one fiddle, for sure a banjo, and one or more singers with a nasal twang:
I'll Fly Away
Some glad morning when this life is over,
I'll fly away.
To a home on God's celestial shore,
I'll fly away.
I'll fly away, O Glory,
I'll fly away.
When I die, Hallelujah, bye and bye,
I'll fly away.
When the shadows of this life are gone,
I'll fly away.
Like a bird from prison bars has flown
I'll fly away. (chorus)
Just a few more weary days and then,
I'll fly away.
To a land where joy shall never end,
I'll fly away. (chorus)
What it brings to my mind personally is a period of several months sometime between 1984 and 1998 when we changed the schedule at the church I was serving from early service and late service to a Sunday morning of three worship services that turned out to be enormous fun. The parish was a congregation of traditional-minded, conservative Episcopalians. The Episcopal Church at large was growing beyond them at the time I arrived, and in fact my Pennsylvania bishop had sent me to a near-week-long charismatic renewal conference in North Carolina, in response to what he knew about my “worship spirituality” and clearly hoping for me to grow beyond my own 18th century stodge, that had eclipsed the Church of England to the Wesleys! Which, as it turned out, did happen: the conference was so moving and the songs so uplifting that when I returned home enchanted, my supervising rector remarked disapprovingly, “When you left to drive down there you couldn’t even spell ‘charismatic renewal’ and now you are one,” adding, “I don’t want this in my parish.”
But I digress, which is part of my nature whether speaking or writing. Within a year of that confrontation I’d transferred from Pennsylvania to accept a call to a church in the Florida Panhandle.
The church grew. It wasn’t because of me, it was because the little town began having a renaissance of sorts, transitioning from a shabby century-old fishing village into a trendy tourist boutique. Still no traffic light quite yet, but real estate prices skyrocketing, A&P closing, the hotel renovated, a motel built on the outskirts of town, new people moving in. We got our share of them including because there was no Lutheran, Presbyterian, or Unitarian Church there; and they were not old-fashioned, conservative Southerners but people from all over. With several co-conspirators, we decided to change our Sunday morning schedule, hoping to welcome the evolving demographic: from the standard Episcopal two-services to a three-service schedule of customary Early Service with ancient liturgy, no sermon, no music; midmorning a contemporary Family Service with mixed music including a leadership group up front in the sanctuary with piano or keyboard, guitars, bass, maybe a violin &c, I don't remember what all; and late morning traditional Choral Eucharist at eleven.
As it turned out, the early service continued as always, six or a half-dozen old-timers. The contemporary family service was packed with happy worshipers including not only newcomers but our children, teens and young people, couples and families. The Choral Eucharist, in which traditionalist Episcopalians and my own favorite, including our beautiful and loyal choir were invested, and for which they planned, practiced and worked hard, struggled to have a half-dozen worshipers, and all the months we ran the experiment, never had as many as a dozen. After a few months, I discussed with my co-con group and, in large part to bring back our dis-spirited traditionalists, despite George's protest that we hadn't given the new schedule a long enough trial, we changed Sunday morning back to two services.
What prompts my memory this morning is precisely The Song. The first or second Sunday of the new schedule, choir members of longstanding faithfulness were waiting outside the front door as the family service full house led by the worship music group up front in the sanctuary raised the roof with “I’ll Fly Away” as closing hymn. I stood outside the front door watching as those waiting listened and shook their heads, and I heard one fume, “‘I’ll Fly Away,’ not in my church.”
We Episcopalians have, or had, no, have an odd snobbery about hymns that Good Music is preferable to songs people love to sing. I no longer watch this, but used to notice that for some reason this seemed especially so among those who came to us from church traditions with more evangelical (read Good Old Baptist) hymns, perhaps as though they'd left their blue-collar roots to move up into high society and wouldn't look back. Even, looking back sixty-five years, we may have sung “I’ll Fly Away” around evening Campfire but we would never have sung "such" in morning chapel and, God in Heaven Forbid never, ever on Sunday MP or HC. But I remember it fondly, lovingly that morning in my own First Church that is still so dear to my heart.
Just a memory, remembering. Thanks, Geranium Farm, Barbara.
DThos+