Longing for the song of hope

If you are the sort of person who listens to your instincts and tries to follow where they lead you, you may occasionally find yourself in surprising places doing surprising things. I say this up front as a sort of apology, because one of the surprising things I have been doing lately is (I am somewhat embarrassed to say) watching American Idol.

Last night I figured out why -- or perhaps, given the human psyche, I just found something I could use as an excuse for this bizarre compulsion. I mean, it's not that I haven't watched the show before. But I don't remember actually choosing to do that, or looking forward to it; it was more that it happened to be on, or I was just looking for some downtime and turned to the TV for that.

I knew when I turned on the TV last night that I would not be watching again tonight. Because last night was the male singers and tonight was the female singers, none of whom interest me. So we've established that something was pulling me to the males. But each of the guys' performances, while acceptable -- and fun, in many cases, because they were doing music of the 70's -- was basically just adequate, and I found myself thinking, well, this is the last time I'll watch this show.

I kept leaving the set to "do stuff" -- checking email, medicating the cat, walking the dog -- all the while with this sense of waiting for something. And it turns out that what I was waiting for was the last performance of the night, a song sung by a 16-year-old boy named David Archuleta. I knew from previous performances that I liked his voice, but my first thought when he started to sing was, oh, no, not this song: it was John Lennon's Imagine, never one of my favorites.

Apparently time constraints meant that David could only sing one verse of the song, and he later explained that he had chosen the third verse because he really liked the message. Well, I guess by the time Lennon got to the third verse I had already tuned him out, because its message was totally fresh and wonderful to me. And David sang it as if lit from within, with (and I hesitate to say this because it sounds so trite) the voice of an angel.

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one.

My cynical brain kicks in here and says things like "what are you thinking? This is so hokey!" and "You're such a throwback, this is just some autonomic reflex; you're just longing for the optimism of your youth." But there is no denying that my heart was deeply stirred, and there was a quickening within. And I found myself listening, not just to David, and John Lennon's song, but to the cheers of the crowd -- which was obviously just as touched and moved as I was.

What I heard is the same thing I hear from the folks who have been going to certain political rallies these days: I think I heard the sound of hope, waking up from a long sleep. It's a sound that brings tears to my eyes, the same tears we all cry at weddings, or at the first cry of a newborn child.

I think we all long for that sound, and that something inside us rejoices when we hear it. But the fact is that most of us sit protected from it, behind the bars of cynicism. Because hope so often brings disappointment, and good intentions so often pave the road to pain. But how lovely to hear, that in spite of all that, hope still sings its longing for oneness. And how encouraging to know hope has a voice that can be heard above the crowd.

I can't wait to hear it sing again.

... and if you want to hear David, he's on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUffD7IFAXQ&feature=related