To sing is to pray twice


Rev. Amy Gopp | May 11, 2011

Amy Gopp and a Bosnian woman at mass grave site in Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Amy Gopp and a Bosnian woman at mass grave site in Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

It is said in Bosnia that “To sing is to pray twice.”

This old proverb eloquently captures the mission of Pontanima Interfaith Choir.  Our most earnest supplications have been the songs we have lifted up in the last decade.  When we could rarely find the words to utter even the briefest prayer, we relied on our songs to speak to God and the rest of the world.

War has a way of leaving us speechless.  The prayer of music gives voice to those without words.

How else in the midst of the immediate post-war context – our suffering Sarajevo under siege for so long – could we have sung the lilting lyrics of Bruckner’s Locus Iste?  “This place made of God, inestimable mystery, is irreprehensible.”

Or the sincere and simple lines of the brilliant Mokranjac’s Tebe Poem?  “We sing to You.  We bless You.  We give You thanks, Lord, and we pray to You, Our God.”

The magic of music restored not only our personal prayers, but it also became our collective appeal for peace in a land ravaged, brutalized, and far too used to bloodshed.  It was music – and only the musical prayers – that provided a reason for those from all ethno-religious backgrounds represented in Bosnia and Herzegovina to gather together twice a week.  In those early years, when adequate food was still difficult to acquire and tramway tokens unaffordable for many – even under those circumstances – music’s invitation was too seductive.  To sing again was a summons to raise one’s voice again.  To be heard again.  To pray a powerful, united prayer.  Undeniably, to sing was to live again.

I believe that it was this invitation to come together as one united voice that beckoned us forth, calling upon the very best of who we were as human beings and as lovers of Bosnia, regardless if we happened to be Orthodox, Catholic, Muslim, Jewish or Disciple of Christ.  Our encounters during rehearsals and more profoundly, after rehearsals over the ubiquitous and obligatory coffee, demanded we face the so-called “Other”—those whom you may have been fighting against you were now singing and praying with…

For me, God’s voice is the united voice of Pontanima, heard through the tenor velvet voice of my Muslim friend Miran harmonizing with the inimitable Orthodox bass voice of Dragan blending with the Catholic nun singing alto and the sweet soprano voice of Zdenka.  It is the voice of people trying to carry a tune and a message together, having to depend on each other’s different tonalities, ranges and breath while accepting each other’s quirks, pain, prejudice and profound desire to be a part of something bigger than themselves.

Amy Gopp is the executive director of Week of Compassion and a CWS board member.