Last Sunday I was leading worship, as I am asked to do now and then, and I had an embarrassing lapse. It was not the worst thing that has happened to me as a worship leader—I once tripped and fell on the steps up to the pulpit—and it was not even the lapse that I was expecting and trying to avoid, but I’m wondering about it now.

Tripping and falling, in fact, was very much on my mind because I had done that the day before, at the farmers market, right in front of the Salvation Army Santa, who picked me up and fussed over me until I was sure I could limp to my car. But I had sprained my ankle. Since that happened on Saturday it was late to think about getting a substitute to lead worship the next day. I thought I could manage somehow, maybe lead from the floor rather than the platform, although I really did not want to call attention to my injury–not so much out of pride as to avoid distracting explanations.

With the full RICE treatment Saturday afternoon and evening—rest, ice, compression, elevation—I was able to walk slowly and mount a few steps on Sunday, and I didn’t have to explain anything.

And then, during the confession, I lost my voice.

It was a momentary thing, but not a short moment. It may have seemed like a throat problem, a cold, or not enough warmup to my voice. (After I sat down a friend brought me a cough drop.) But it was more like a spasm. It has happened to me before. Public speaking doesn’t make me nervous but it involves a certain elevated tension, which keeps me focused in the moment but now and then causes my throat to seize up as I speak a little louder than normal.

So much for keeping the focus off myself and my disabilities.

I reported this incident to my spiritual director yesterday, on a wry “for what it’s worth” note. She was curious about what I was reading when I lost my voice. Was there something in the text that caused my throat to seize?

I brought out the hymnal, Voices Together, number 894. In Mennonite practice, “confession” usually means confession of sin rather than confession of faith (one of those cases where a word carries opposite meanings). I had chosen the reading because it seemed especially appropriate to the events of the day. It begins:

O Prince of Peace,

From peace that is no peace,

From the grip of all that is evil,

From a violent righteousness,

Deliver us.

From paralysis of will,

From lies and misnaming,

From terror of truth,

Deliver us. . . .

My voice went into paralysis on “lies and misnaming.” It took several tries, a drink of water, and a deep breath to get back to “from terror of truth.”

Make of this what you will. This is what I am making of it, as I reflect: Maybe I lost my voice because what I have to say cannot begin to address the enormity of what we face: the violence, the lies and misnaming, the violent righteousness. I feel the paralysis. I feel the futility of words in the face of evil. I know I don’t have the words. Maybe I have not been writing because I don’t have anything to say on the level of what needs to be said.

I don’t know. I will continue to write about my life and, as sometimes happens, write my life—that is, form my intentions as I write and then carry them out. So I am hereby declaring my intention to move beyond paralysis even though my voice may blank out on me from time to time.

A voice doesn’t have to be “one, crying in the wilderness.” Time comes to join voices and speak for those who have no voice.

Two days after my voice lapse my husband and I were on a Zoom with 850 of our fellow Mennonites yearning to speak out against the unfolding genocide in Gaza. Knowing full well the pain and loss on both sides, as well as the enormous disproportionality of suffering at this moment, inflicted by weapons supplied by our tax dollars, we are organizing public calls for a ceasefire. You don’t have to be Mennonite to join us at Mennonite Action.