At General Assembly, a music leader gave a heartfelt plea for us to be more creative in our use of imagery in music. “Standing on the Side of Love,” she said, is a wonderful song but unintentionally hurtful to those who cannot stand. She urged us to be more poetic. For example, she suggested that sitting is a powerful image for taking a strong position. This is true, but does not resolve the problem she raised, since there are people who cannot sit.
I have given this a lot of thought in the past, and where it has led me has been to songs that have no metaphor whatsoever, including the “dead metaphors” that characterize so much of our language (e.g., in “I have given this a lot of thought,” the verb “give” is a dead metaphor). I have considered some of the most basic metaphors we use in our hymns and other songs and who is excluded by them, and I must differ with the speaker’s confidence that we will be able to find, create, or rework lyrics that include everyone.
Vision imagery leaves some people out; some people cannot see.
Hearing imagery leaves some people out; some people cannot hear. (I have always liked “From All the Fret and Fever of the Day” for its use of deafness as a positive attribute, calling on us to be “deaf to all confusing outer din.” But it goes on to say, “Intently listen to the voice within.”)
If we want to be sensitive to those who cannot speak, we should avoid imagery about raising our voices in speech or song. Songwriters love to urge us to sing, but some people can’t voice any sounds, so all imagery of singing should be avoided.
Many people cannot have children or grandchildren, and are grieved by that. We should avoid phrases like “for the children of our children” (“Circle Round for Freedom”).
Some people cannot walk, march, or run a race, and replacing those words with “go” is no help. Some people cannot go anywhere. They live their entire lives hooked to machinery in a bed. “Come and go with me to that land” is no more sensitive to such folks than “We are marching in the light of God.”
In fact, we should avoid journey imagery.
About all that is left to us, the only attributes that apply to every living human being, are that we breathe and our hearts beat. Not without assistance, in some cases, so “Just as long as my heart beats” (Hymn #6) is probably a painful phrase for some to hear, but we could use those images without actually excluding anyone.
The other avenue still open to us is to skip imagery about human beings altogether. In the same service in which this issue was raised, we sang the rousing hymn,
Ain’t you got a right
Aint you got a right
Ain’t you got a right
To the tree of life?
No problems there, in the chorus. The verses were chock-full of imagery such as people on a journey, though.
The fact is that we would have a very short list indeed if we really eradicated all songs that refer to abilities that some of us lack. I suggest that instead of walling ourselves into that corner, we take a different approach. From my own experiences I find that the language makes little difference if we do two things.
First, we use a wide variety of images to portray human experience. They won’t all fit mine, but because we’re using a variety, many of them will, and it will be okay.
Second, and by far the more important: we make our communities places that welcome and celebrate all people, regardless of their abilities in all of these areas. In my experience, songs touch on a nerve of mine when the nerve has already been stomped on by the community. When the community practices justice on all these points, and many songs reflect my experience, the occasional use of imagery that might otherwise seem exclusive just seems irrelevant. Being one of the temporarily able-bodied, I can only extrapolate from my other identities to imagine how I would feel–how I will feel–when I am unable to walk, or talk, or hear, so please correct me if I am missing something.
By the way, the best music-and-sensitivity advice I heard all week came from Fred Small, who led a workshop on songleading and advised us not to identify the origin of a song only in the case of “minority” music, but in all cases (or none). As he pointed out, when we say “This song is from the African-American tradition,” but we don’t say of the next one, “This song is from the Irish tradition,” we imply that Irish is the norm and African-American is a special case. Amen.
Sermons in Stones 
7 comments
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June 27, 2012 at 6:07 pm
Joy W
For what it’s worth, I totally agree with you. I actually got into a disagreement about this with my pre-law advisor. She thought I was being dishonest or trying to obscure my identity as a person with a disability when I wrote about my experience “marching” at a social justice rally and linked it to my desire to study law. But I think we all use common language of our mainstream culture even if isn’t totally precise. As far as I’m concerned, I marched even if it wasn’t on two feet. I talk about walking home from work even though I didn’t physically walk there. Some of my friends with visual impairments will say, “I haven’t seen you in a while,” even though they’ve never actually seen me. I respect that language is powerful and can make people feel excluded, but I also think there has to be some sort of common sense in play. When I sense that people are censoring their language in an effort to be super inclusive (e.g., handi-capable), that also makes me self-conscious. As long as people treat me with respect generally, I have enough stores of good faith saved up that I can deal with whatever language they use (though “wheelchair-bound” and “confined to a wheelchair” still bother me).
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June 28, 2012 at 5:55 am
Amy Zucker Morgenstern
You have an extraordinary amount of good faith stored up in general, Joy! But yes, I’m glad to hear that works for you. I promise never to refer to anyone as “confined to a wheelchair” (ugh!) or “handi-capable” (giggle!).
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July 2, 2012 at 1:51 am
Kimc
When we sing “for the children of our children” I always take it as our communal children — the children of our society, rather than my personal children. I don’t know if other people, especially other childless people, take it that way, but this is one person’s perception, for what it’s worth…. I agree, and when we sing, “Come walk in rain with me,” I take it as an invitation to everyone, including those who can’t walk. The speaker at GA seemed to want us to replace lyrics like that with ones that didn’t use words like “walk,” hence this post. –AZM
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July 7, 2012 at 5:47 pm
davidmglasgow
Oh, how I wish we could gently lead every GA attendee through this thought process! We humans ALWAYS use metaphor to speak about transcendence—and metaphor is NEVER complete. The best we can hope to do is spend as much time talking about the elephant’s tail as we do about its ears….
I’ll be reflecting on this post a lot as I prepare for GA 2013 in Louisville!
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July 20, 2012 at 9:03 pm
Bailey Whiteman (Chorus Director)
I agree with others, this post is great and has given me lots to ponder. Thanks for posting all your music thoughts from GA 2012. I love hearing from these music directors and other passionate musicians! I’d love to hear your thoughts. –AZM
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January 9, 2013 at 12:40 am
More music thoughts after General Assembly « Sermons in Stones
[…] wrote about inclusive lyrics and their limits a few days ago. Some further thoughts on music, based on the vibrant music at General Assembly (GA) […]
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July 22, 2016 at 8:41 pm
Regina
I agree with the general sentiment of this piece that we need not eliminate every instance of walking, marching, journeying, seeing, etc and would also bring up one other form of song. As a physically disabled person lyrics about bringing the blind to see and having the lame walk again still bug me.They connote that the only good thing that can happen to someone who is disabled is for them to become non-disabled. And through becoming able-bodied these people (we) will be more connected to the divine. [If it’s true that the only way the only way the blind can come closer to the divine is by being granted sight than why do we close our eyes to meditate?]
One option is to avoid hymns that suggest disability means inferiority.
I think there is another option of singing and writing an equal number of hymns that say something positive about disability and talking about both the positives and hardships of disability at the same time. I appreciated your parenthetical point “(I have always liked “From All the Fret and Fever of the Day” for its use of deafness as a positive attribute, calling on us to be “deaf to all confusing outer din.” But it goes on to say, “Intently listen to the voice within.”)”. I like this option because ultimately what’s hard about ableism in cultural contexts is of there being a monolithic view of what it means to be disabled leaving little room for people who are disabled to find disability both empowering and painful as well as a source of spiritual strength and a way to connect to other people. And I think that’s some cultural change work that can happen in religious services.
What’s sometimes hard for me when instances of walking, marching etc. come up is that it’s an indication that the worship service leaders haven’t thought about ableism and are less likely to understand or minister well to me. So it is less about eliminating words or songs and more about talking about and acknowledging ableism in its complexity..
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