you are the light of the world

Near the end of the beautiful and--for me at least--terribly and fundamentally moving Vespers we held at Reflection Pond at the culmination of the huge four-day reunion, on the evening of September 1, 2001, we all sang Dan Fogelberg's "Gambler (Let It Shine)." One of the themes of the Vespers was light - let it shine; we have made it shine for others; we can be, at our best, the light of the world - and this seemed the perfect way to conclude--or nearly conclude, for Halbe Brown's final speech before his retirement was to come next.

As we introduced the song, everyone gathered held lit candles. There were more than 400 people seated in rows of chairs facing the pond on the gently sloping lawn on the north or Biscuit Lodge side of the pond...as I say, facing the pond. It just happened that the moon was full that weekend, at its fullest on this evening. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and it was very cool (in the low 50s when we began at 8:30 PM)--and, as it happened (could we have planned this? no!), the moon rose over Wildcat, just in front of us, about halfway through the ceremony.

Peter Jones and several others made a videotape of this program - as well as of several other events held that weekend, including the beautiful In Memoriam service held on Sunday morning at the Old Wawayanda Chapel (now called "the outdoor chapel") up the hill from the dining hall. I should at some point transfer parts of the VHS-format videotape to a digital file (in part to preserve it) but for now I've copied the audio only of certain parts.

Here then is the audio (downloadable mp3 file - right-click and its yours for your IPod) of this song, sung by, among others, "Van" & Kate van Baren, Michele Palamidy (on guitar--the chords), Janet Miller (and her husband Byron Stier - who also picked a nice bridging solo on his guitar), myself, and several others.

The filming of the event was a stop-and-start thing, and so the audio of the song is cut off several times; sorry about that.

At the end, as we all sang Let it shine, the camera pans the 400 Frost Valleyites singing the darkness, holding their candles, bathed by moonlight, tears streaming down faces, arms around each other, close together, singing as one. What a sight. If you listen closely to the audio recording, you can perhaps hear the great emotional all-as-one chorus of everyone singing at that point.

Of all the things I've ever seen, done, sang, witnessed, enacted, etc., in all my years at Frost Valley, this scene--not just this song but the Vespers as a whole, that night, that end-of-an-era night--is surely one of the two or three most profoundly affecting moments.

So here's that mp3 file. Enjoy.

There's a light in the depths of your darkness
There's a calm in the eye of every storm
There's a light in the depths of your darkness
Let it shine
O let it shine
Let it shine
O Let it shine
Let it shine....