For the Beauty of the Earth

It’s called music-evoked autobiographical memory, because everything has a name. But this phenomenon that takes place in our brain when we hear certain songs from past events is quite something. 

When I listen to the song “Shine On”, I’m transported back to a rural road in Texas. It was a couple of years after graduating college, during my commute to my first job in public relations, when I heard the debut album from this little band called NeedToBreathe. I’ve owned every album since.

If you want to see a monkey make a grown woman cry, you can simply play for me the movie Curious George: A Very Monkey Christmas. When I catch a snippet of music from this delightful movie, which was played on repeat year-round during my kids’ toddler years, the nostalgic ache in my heart is so loud it almost drowns out the catchy tunes.

Then there are those Amy Grant and DC Talk songs that take me straight back to my scrunchy-wearing, big-banged childhood. And the Coldplay, Destiny’s Child, Third Day, and Goo Goo Dolls songs that transport me to the land of lockers, note-passing, and slumber parties. 

But it was, ironically, during a movie at a theater in middle school that I first heard a hymn that has stuck with me for years. It often plays on repeat through the stereo of my mind while my eyes feast on the surrounding beauty of any given outdoor rendezvous. 

During the scene in the 1994 version of Little Woman when Meg gets married, the hymn “For the Beauty of the Earth” was sung. Now, this 1864 song by Folliott S. Pierpoint has been around a lot longer than the March girls. Well, the little women of the big-screen that is. Louisa May Alcott, serendipitously brought the March sisters to life on paper just four years after this hymn was born. But I’ll always think of that outdoor wedding scene when I hear it, when I play it on the piano, and when I see its lyrics on one of my favorite dish towels gifted to me by a friend. 

I see the music notes each time the shadows of clouds dance in patterns across a mountain range.

I see the lyrics in the grandness of a large tree that has been standing tall for hundreds of years. 

I see the poetry as I watch a red salamander in no hurry, a black bear from a safe distance, and the intricate details of a spider’s web. 

I breathe in the rich melody when I smell the sweet fragrance of rhododendrons, the earthy aroma of damp dirt, and the comforting scent of a campfire. 

I feel the rhythmic beat in the warmth of the sunshine, the tickle of raindrops, and the taste of salt from a hiking-induced sweat. 

I hear the harmony in the silence of a sparkling night sky, in the orchestra of crickets and choir of birds, and in the applause of leafy hands as the wind passes through the trees. 

It’s in those moments when I realize that, although probably not acquainted with the four little women and their love lives, the earth around me is very much familiar with this hymn.

For the beauty of the earth,

For the glory of the skies,

For the love which from our birth

Over and around us lies.

Lord of all, to Thee we raise

This, our hymn of grateful praise.

Now, someone needs to convince NeedToBreathe to produce a version of this beautiful hymn. I can just hear it now; the roar of trees’ leafy applause.

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