Coda: What I Can Still Sing

I do not know if I can still sing the old song of redeeming love in the way I was once asked to sing it. 0

The old song carried too many claims: priesthood authority, restored certainty, prophetic confidence, history I cannot defend, and a culture that made honest uncertainty feel like spiritual failure. I cannot sing it as if nothing has changed. But I can still sing something. 0

I can still be grateful for beauty I did not invent. I can still stand in awe before a world too large for my explanations. I can still have tenderness toward the young missionary who wanted to be good and did not know how much he was overstating. I can still have affection for ordinary believers trying to make life less lonely. I can still be angry at dishonesty. I can still tell the truth about what was lost without pretending the loss itself proves anything. 0

I can still recognize the pull of family, the seriousness of children, the danger of appetite, the difficulty of freedom, the need for forgiveness, the usefulness of ritual, and the desire to make life sacred without pretending. If there is a song left for me, it is not the old song of certainty and not the thin song of having outgrown everything. It is a song of reconstruction: less triumphant, more truthful, willing to leave some notes unresolved, and able to let hope and not knowing share the same breath. 0

It is mine in a way the old song never fully was, and for now that is enough. 0