This weekend I’ll be headed to Camp Calumet in NH to help lead our women’s retreat. As I prepare for retreats, one of my favorite tasks is readying the playlist…background music for prayer, quiet time, contemplation, stretching, driving, what-have-you.
As I was doing that task this week, I came across the work of one of my favorite musicians, Fran McKendree. Fran was a Massachusetts native who in his early years of his life as a musician, formed the band McKendree Spring, one manager called, “one of the best unknown bands in the world.”
Fran found his way into the Episcopal church and I met him on retreat in North Carolina about 10-12 years ago. Fran’s music helped make that Advent retreat one of the most sacred retreats I’d ever attended. It wasn’t because his voice was all that great. It wasn’t because his guitar playing was spectacular or his melodies were particularly intricate. Many of his songs had just a couple of lines: “Watch, O watch, the night has come. Be still my soul and pray.”
As Fran played and sang, it was simple and honest. And that prayer was enough. I didn’t need any more than those few words. And in the years since, I would often play them on repeat. “Watch, O watch, the night has come. Be still my soul and pray.”
Fran died of cancer in 2021, and as I listen to my playlist for the retreat, I’m once again saddened that there will be no new retreats, no new music from him.
When artists and musicians, poets and dancers die, the loss of what they might have yet created stings doesn’t it?
(If you’d like to hear Fran, here’s a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNzrbxocuBU )
In Christ,
Pastor Jen