Sometimes while cleaning house--usually while scrubbing the floors--I sing, but not on purpose. I often don't realize I've started singing until a word or a phrase or a note trips me up. Usually what I sing are old hymns like Amazing Grace, How Great Thou Art, and It Is Well with My Soul. Whatever my position has been on belief or unbelief, these are the songs I cannot help but sing when I clean my house. These are the songs I forget I know until I hear them from my own mouth. I could sing them half asleep. I could sing them far away from anyone or anything. I have them by heart.
Often while walking in my neighborhood, no matter what else I have had on my mind, I hear in my head the beginning of the final Amen from Handel's Messiah. The "Amen" has, somehow, and for no reason I can discern, become my most familiar walking song. I don't have it by heart; it all falls apart in the middle. But the pieces are with me often.
When I visit the Art Institute, I tend to visit the same galleries over and over. I notice when my ladies (Jean Bellegambe's St. Catherine and St. Barbara) are away or repositioned. I keep forgetting to look up all the ladies in the triptych depicting the Virgin and Child with Saints. I haven't got them by heart, either; I can call up the mood of each painting at will, but I cannot call up the details.
I want to fill my mind, my mouth, and my eyes with such images and words and ideas that will be with me always so that when I am alone or lonely or badly provisioned, I will have within myself beautiful things to sustain me. I want to practice kindness and honor so frequently that when the stakes are high, it still does not occur to me to waver.
*title taken from Casey N. Cep's "Your Kindness is Good for You"
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