Let the Singing Rise
Written with love from Sarah,
and the Holy One who Kept Singing Beside Her
when the Silence Was Loudest
2025
Let the Singing Rise
When the walls are built of fear,
I lift my voice for you—
Let the singing rise.
When the night shudders with sirens,
I hold my children closer, singing old hymns in the dark—
Let the singing rise.
When the empire stamps boots into the tender fields of our becoming—
Let the singing rise.
Not as denial.
Not as silence.
Not as forgetting.
Let the singing rise— A stubborn seed of joy they could not starve out.
Our drumbeat: the song of our blood still moving,
Even when the stones grow heavy.
Our rhythm: the whispered names of beloved ones,
Carried across border, barricade, bullet, and bruise.
We do not sing because we are unafraid.
We sing because fear does not own us.
Let the singing rise.
We do not rise because we are untouched.
We rise because we are together.
We rise because mercy has more muscle than hate ever dreamed.
Let the singing rise.
Because the Holy One—
Flame at our back, wing at our throat—
Never left us.
Eleison.
We are not the empire’s victims.
We are ember-keepers, drum-callers, songbearers,
Poets and prophets,
Tired mothers who laugh in the face of nightfall
And sing louder because we know
Dawn has already been planted inside us.
My hope is my defiance.
Our joy is our banner.
And no force on earth can unplant
The promise of this Spring.
We are the ones singing flowers into the world—
Let the singing rise.
The song is already rising—
Let yourself hear it.
Let the circle be unbroken—
It will be, when you take the hand offered beside you.
So come, beloved one—
Sing.
Raise your voices, even if they shake.
Especially when you shake—
Let the singing rise.
Lift the bowl of tears and pour them out
As a river that births green spring,
A rainbow riot of flowers,
Pushing up through the cracks in the concrete.
Let the singing rise.
With the stubborn resilience of a grapevine—
Let it climb the walls.
Tumble uncontrolled over fences and falsehoods.
Let it crack the silence.
Let Love carry the children home.
Let us rise singing— Still here.
We are not finished.
We are not alone.
We are the Kyrie Eleison—
The hymn making the dark holy.
Kyrie Eleison.
Kyrie Eleison.
Kyrie Eleison.
Eleison.
