Let Nothing Trouble You

This song literally "dawned" on me on the morning of March 24, 2012.  I had been very concerned for my sister Donna's family back home in Illinois because my brother-in-law was receiving his first chemo treatments for metastatic lung cancer.  Due to the extreme stress on everyone, my niece Jenny was also hospitalized.  It had been a fitful night's sleep for me as I prayed for my loved ones from whom I felt so far away.  I arose before dawn and was doing some last minute research in the Catechism of the Catholic Church for a talk that Michael Vrazel and I were to give later that morning to the people who would embrace the Catholic faith at the Easter Vigil in two weeks.  The refrain seemed to jump off the page at me.  You may be familiar with these words that are taken from a quote by St. Teresa of Avila, a Doctor of the Church and mystic from the 16th century.  The descant bears similar words of comfort, but are even more ancient inasmuch as they paraphrase the Lord's final discourse on the night of the Last Supper as recorded in John 14.  

The verses came a little later, during Father's Day weekend, while on retreat in Dublin, Georgia at Green Bough with my fellow chaplain, Elaine Hoffman.  They are adapted from words I was meditating on from Parker Palmer's book, Let Your Life Speak, that my support group of hospice chaplains had been reading for discussions we would hold later in the summer.  I heard them as something I really needed to remember, but also as something I wanted to say to my niece, Jenny.  

We have so many to thank for this recording, starting with our sound engineer, fellow IHM musician, Bob Gillespie and his wife Jane, who sings on the recording.  Also recorded are my fellow hospice colleagues, Lesley Brogan and Elaine Hoffman.  Fellow IHM choir members Nimalie Stone, Julie Hiland, and Sarah Bolling can likewise be heard adding their beautiful voices.  We were directed by Jeff Bush, who is singing here along with Michael Vrazel and me.  The clarinet is beautifully played by another parish musician, IHM School's music teacher, Melissa Mecadon who is a music minister at our 11:30 Mass along with Jeff and Michael and me.  We are also grateful for Paul Tate's musicianship as he offered tremendous encouragement in the writing of this piece.  He supplied the instrumental part Melissa is playing and at his urging, we went on to write additional verses to make this piece adaptable to the seasons of Lent, for the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Anointing of the Sick and at Masses of Christian Burial, though you will not hear the additional verses in this recording.

Click below for lyrics.