IN PRAISE OF PRAISE HANDS
Photo by Michelle Jimenez on Unsplash
Singing together is a crucial human activity, especially in times of crisis. Music allows us to express our lament, to offer our solidarity, to bind ourselves together as we strive toward a common goal. When we sing together, we are forced to really listen to one another. We submit our own desires and goals in order to follow the wisdom of the community together. We take risks in leadership, and make ourselves vulnerable to one another. Music expresses emotions too deep for words. There is a reason we still sing “We Shall Overcome” at protest marches, lo these 60 years after the Civil Rights Movement. There is a reason that we lean on “Amazing Grace” at funerals, even when nobody present has been to church in decades. When oceans rise, when mountains fall, when the storm shakes our inmost calm, how can we keep from singing?
And so it compounds our grief that this pandemic has robbed from us the opportunity to sing together. That when we are able to gather, masked and distanced, we cannot share our burdens by raising our voices in song. In my diocese, according to provincial health guidelines, we are allowed to have a soloist offer their musical gifts, but the congregation is forbidden to sing along. This absolutely follows scientific best practice, but no soloist, no matter how talented, is a substitute for the balm in Gilead of voices blended in harmony. Music is meant to be shared, not passively consumed.
Enter: praise hands. The practice of raising our hands in orans or a palm stretched toward the heavens is not one we find terribly common in Episcopal circles. Certainly when I first joined the fold, immediately following a sojourn among Texas evangelicals in the George W. Bush era, they were frowned upon. Praise hands evince an emotiveness that we, Frozen Chosen™ that we are, often disdain. But praise hands offer us an opportunity to participate in the music when we have not words. They allow us to express all that we wish to, had we voice to say so. They represent a silent amen that commends the work of the solo singer as a prayer on behalf of the community.
At the parish I serve, praise hands are not as looked down upon as I have previously experienced. Former Romans Catholics have held their hands open to orans when singing the Lord’s Prayer for years. African immigrants have demonstrated motions that come from their home communities, sometimes to extremely traditional hymn tunes. And when we sing the Steve Bell setting of the Sanctus, we always sway. In recent months, these small, tentative movements have morphed in bolder ones, as we lift our hands to the heavens in wordless reply. It’s not as though manual or physical acts are foreign to Anglicans either; we have long joked about our “pew aerobics” and boasted that we worship God with our whole bodies, whether standing, kneeling, bowing, or making the sign of the cross. Praise hands are merely another tool in our arsenal, no different than bowing during the Gloria patri or kneeling at the Incarnation during the Nicene Creed.
It can feel a bit performative at times — like I’m doing it for others, rather than for God. Or I can worry that I’m not doing it “right,” whatever right means in this context. Or fret about the assumptions people will make about me, now that they know I’m the sort of person who lifts my hands in song. Whenever we try something unfamiliar, or that reminds us of a past we’d rather forget, we can hesitate due to these feelings. But I am reminded of the Israelites in exile in Babylon: of Daniel and his companions who ate so differently as to give the king pause, of Mordechai, who refused to bow down before Haman. When war, plague, or exile prevent us from worshipping God in the ways we are used to, we find new ways. And no matter how people respond to them, God knows our hearts.
It’s not a replacement for singing, I know. It might not even represent your piety or churchpersonship. But in this season of making do and getting by, it is offering me an expression of the sighs too deep for words that fill me when the music starts to play. It would be such a shame if fear or shame prevented us from adding our wordless expression to the only version of the Lord’s song we can sing in this foreign land. So if you are missing the sound of voices in harmony, may I suggest lifting your hand to the heavens? Perhaps your courage will invite others to join you. Perhaps one day we will look at a congregation united not in voice, but in posture of praise, the same way we once viewed congregational song.
