Wild Life

A hymn festival is a distinctively Lutheran invention creating a conversation between music and community. Sharing songs from every time in history and every cultural community, we learn melody, words, and rhythms not necessarily our own. In the spoken dialog we are encouraged to explore thoughts and ideas not familiar to us. Together, we are transported into the creativity and spiritual expression of our sisters and brothers across the globe.

As we sing, ponder, and pray, our hearts align with the grand design of our Architect Creator. When we open to a world of beauty, we are filled with awe and humbled to the core of our being. Is there a greater worship we can offer?

Wild Life, a Hymn Festival, invites us to blend our one small voice with the voices of Eternity – the artists, cultures, earth forms, and opportunities that God spun into existence because we are loved.

Lorraine S. Brugh is the Frederick J. Kruse Endowed Chair in Church Music. Professor Brugh helped lead the development of the ELCA's Evangelical Lutheran Worship and is co-author of The Sunday Assembly, published in 2008 to help church leaders incorporate the hymnal's materials into worship.

Learn more about Deacon Kate Adelman on our spiritual director’s page: “As a lifelong Lutheran, I have chosen to dedicate what skills I have been given to the furthering of spiritual freedom. The gift of music continues to be the connecting point with other spiritual traditions, becoming the common language through which to exchange ideas, speak of holy things, and share our people’s deepest desires.”

“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.”
— 1 Corinthians 12:12