Singing together is inspirational — and aspirational

I was visiting in the Westwood 2nd Ward in Los Angeles a few weeks ago, a Mormon village I have been visiting off and on for years whenever I visit my cousins.

In the middle of the meeting, to my surprise, all the women of the ward got up from the benches and walked up into the steep choir loft in this decidedly unusual building.

The congregation of men and children felt a little sparse — but the choir loft was packed.

The choir of women proceeded to sing "As Sisters in Zion," one of the most beautiful hymns in the hymnbook (No. 309) — partly because of the words, which come from a wonderful poem by handcart pioneer Emily H. Woodmansee, and partly because of Janice Kapp Perry's lilting, almost Gaelic melody.

In Karen Lynn Davidson's book "Our Latter-day Hymns: The Stories and the Messages," you can read about this hymn — Woodmansee's life was fascinating indeed. (It is quoted online here.)

The poem was originally much longer — we sing only three of the stanzas in our hymnbook. (There is one of the others that I wish we could add as a fourth verse — but that's the subject of my next column.)

In the Westwood 2nd Ward, the women filled the chapel with song.

Some in the choir were excellent singers, most were average, and some could barely carry a tune, I'm sure, because in every ward the gift of musical talent is unevenly bestowed.

Yet they all opened their mouths and sang, joining their voices with others to make music that not one of them had the power to create on their own.

Only a few weeks before, the choir leader had done the same thing with the men of the ward. She had rehearsed with them several times during a portion of the priesthood-meeting hour, and then they all sang from the choir loft — to mighty effect, I am told.

Last Sunday was stake conference in Greensboro, N.C., and in the weeks leading up to it, young men and young women practiced two numbers to sing as a youth choir. One was from the Primary songbook, Janice Kapp Perry's beautiful duet "Love Is Spoken Here."

The other was, you guessed it, "As Sisters in Zion," joined as a medley with yet another great Janice Kapp Perry song, "We'll Bring the World His Truth" ("The Army of Helaman").

When a handful of our young men and women showed up to practice for this choir at 6:30 on our ward's activity night, for various reasons it happened that I was the only experienced conductor present.