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" Every Thursday from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., the Haines A Cappella Women&amp;#039;s Choir gathers at our town&amp;#039;s museum for practice. We are two dozen women (give or take a handful) who didn&amp;#039;t all know each other when we began meeting two years ago. Even though our Alaska town is small, people tend to come and go. The other women and I stand in a circle or sit on folding chairs and learn new songs and sing old ones, surrounded by woven Chilkat Indian blankets and other displays that illustrate our town&amp;#039;s history\u2014much of which has been written by (and nearly all of it preserved by) women. Native Tlingit women wove the distinctive dance robes. Our community is named for Francina Haines, a Presbyterian missionary. Another woman, Elisabeth Sheldon Hakkinen, founded the museum. Our choir director, Nancy, works at the museum part-time, when she&amp;#039;s not giving piano lessons in her living room, and she thought it would be a nice rehearsal space. We are among friends here, past and present.   We don&amp;#039;t so much rehearse as learn songs and sing together for the fun of it. We sing hymns and madrigals and show tunes. (And in truth, we are sometimes asked to perform at local events.) There is something both sacred and playful about raising collective voices in song.   There were only about 15 of us at practice the other night. Some women were busy with swim meet preparations, others tended sick children, and a few of us were out of town. My friend Susie had just had her baby, so hers was the best excuse.   Susie had only been with the choir a few weeks before her dramatic engagement a year and a half ago. She was volunteer-DJing on the afternoon country music show of the local radio station when her boyfriend, Geoff, walked into the studio while she was on the air and asked her to marry him. I ran to my kitchen radio and turned it up to hear her reply. She stammered, &amp;quot;Yes, yes!&amp;quot; And then played a wildly inappropriate song for such a tender moment. She must have already cued up the bluegrass ballad about a Civil War hero who died drunk in a muddy ditch.   That night at choir practice we cheered when Susie arrived, and sang her the John McCutcheon birthday song, replacing some of the lyrics to make it about marriage.   Several months after the wedding, when Susie announced she was expecting, we all sang the McCutcheon tune again, modifying it for the latest news. The larger Susie got, the more we talked names, mostly with country music connections, like Loretta, Dolly or Tammy. But Susie called her baby girl Patience Josephine.   When little P.J. is old enough to come to rehearsal with her mom like some of the other kids do with theirs, she will certainly recognize &amp;quot;Dona Nobis Pacem&amp;quot; (grant us peace). We begin each rehearsal with the comforting round, all of us looking forward to that moment when the everyday busyness of life stops and we begin, our voices harmonizing in the now-familiar Latin prayer. A kind of peace really does settle on us\u2014teachers, pastors&amp;#039; wives (there are two), a librarian, a hospice administrator, an environmental scientist, stay-athome moms, a newspaper receptionist, a volunteer undertaker, even a modern-day Chilkat blanket weaver.   But before we sang &amp;quot;Dona Nobis Pacem&amp;quot; the other night, Nancy told us she had something ambitious for us. Nancy always has &amp;quot;something ambitious&amp;quot; for us\u2014from the German folk song &amp;quot;Vom Gebirge Well auf Well&amp;quot; to a jazzy arrangement of &amp;quot;The Star-Spangled Banner.&amp;quot; (We keep the National Anthem polished for high school basketball games.)   When she said she wanted to change how we sang our favorite song, the swim team coach spoke for all of us when she said, &amp;quot;Now? I was getting used to it.&amp;quot;   &amp;quot;Then it&amp;#039;s time to change,&amp;quot; Nancy said in her firm-but-pleasant lyrical choir director voice. &amp;quot;We don&amp;#039;t want to get stuck in a rut.&amp;quot;   The new arrangement changed the round so that the altos and sopranos sang in a different order. It was confusing enough that it required us to read the music again, but it did sound better.   Nancy said we could improve it even more by controlling our breath. &amp;quot;This is a perfect opportunity to practice staggered breathing,&amp;quot; was how she put it. It was harder than it looked. I was a little dizzy. &amp;quot;Remember to exhale,&amp;quot; Nancy said, &amp;quot;otherwise you&amp;#039;ll hyperventilate. It&amp;#039;s not intuitive. It takes practice to blend.&amp;quot;   She demonstrated how to quickly sniff the extra breath through our noses and expel it gently as we sang. I could feel the music vibrating in my bones, but I couldn&amp;#039;t hear my own voice or the separate voices around me. We breathed and sang in a new voice. And then I heard it, this new whole so much greater than the sum of its parts: harmony.   But there wasn&amp;#039;t time to ponder lofty thoughts about choir and life. Nancy was looking at her watch and shuffling through her binder, and saying that there was still work to do, even though we weren&amp;#039;t practicing for anything special. In this, choir is sometimes too much like life.   &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s sing &amp;#039;Hope,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Nancy said, peering over her reading glasses and tooting her tuner.   Nancy had set Emily Dickinson&amp;#039;s poem &amp;quot;Hope is the thing with feathers that perches on the soul&amp;quot; to an old Irish hymn. It was one of the first songs we learned, and because of that, and perhaps providentially, the first we ever performed, at a choir member&amp;#039;s memorial service a few months after our inception.   But it is also a lovely sentiment to sing to a new mother and her baby. Really, what goes better with Hope than Patience? Thinking about this changed what had been a sad tune to a happy one, and did the same for my heart.   I could sing by myself anytime. I could take a bath and yodel in the tub instead of going to choir practice. I could croon along in my kitchen to the country songs Susie plays on the radio. But it is better by far to stand in that circle of women and blend my breath and voice, my whole being, with all of theirs until we are singing the same song. It&amp;#039;s as close as I may ever get to understanding what the psalmist meant when he wrote that God loves a joyful noise. \uF020\uF020   Heather Lende is a contributing editor to Woman&amp;#039;s Day and author of Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs. Read her blog at HeatherLende.com.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/life/real-women/a5628/life-lessons-from-the-choir-116340/>