This week we welcome back our guest blogger,  Tacoma Symphony Chorus alto Claudia Finseth.  Claudia is a gifted freelance writer whose articles are featured periodically in The News Tribune and other publications. 

Light.  Light.  Light.  Shed a little light on me.  Let me feel its warmth.  Let me see its truth.  Let it fill me on up.  Let it shine on out.  Light, precious light.  Let it shine.

Here at the end of a long, long cold winter we are so ready for the season of light and the warmth it brings!  Tacoma Symphony Chorus will shed a little light in song on June 11th at Urban Grace Church in our last concert of the season.

Director Geoffrey Boers has put together a program that celebrates the light by setting up the contrast with the darkness.  Winter teaches us to love spring.  Cold nudges us to love warmth.  Loneliness creates in us desire for friendship and community.  War and strife make us long for peace and justice, and peace and justice are at the very heart of the light.

Oh, the lows of the dark.  We’ll find them in the lyrics:  Now the world outside is such a cold and bitter place.  Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.  If I had stopped to listen once or twice; if I had closed my mouth and opened my eyes; if I had cooled my head and warmed my heart, I’d not be on this road tonight.

Oh the joy of the light.  We’ll hear it in the lyrics:  When I look at open gates and see a garden full of life, of good health, and smiles of glowing faces, it ignites my spirit and I have never been more excited to be alive . . .

O let us recognize that there are ties between us, all men and women living on the earth.  Ties of hope and love, of sister and brotherhood.  That we are bound together, we are bound and we are bound.

Light, light, light.  We’ll feel it in the music.  We’ll feel it dawn in John Rutter’s Requiem.  We’ll feel it blossom with James Taylor.  We’ll feel it rock the house as it is expressed in the music of Moses Hogan and U2 and Latin and African rhythms.

Teach me to see the beauty in the world through my own eyes.  I think on the things that made me laugh, made me dance, made me sing.  I think on the things that made me grow into a being full of pride.  Full of light.

Oh, yeah, shed a little light on me.  Bring it on up!  Send it on out.  Pass it along. This little light of mine; I’m gonna let it shine.