Morning Prayers: Senior Talks 2025
By Ari Cheriyan '25
University Choir Secretary
Memorial Church of Harvard University
(The following is a transcript of the service audio, April 30, 2025)
So, my inspired text today is an excerpt from Psalm 139, which was the responsive reading for today, so you've already heard the full thing, but I'll repeat some of it now. "O Lord, you have searched me out and known me. Where can I go from your Spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest ends of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me. And your right hand shall hold me fast. If I say surely the darkness shall cover me and light around me become night, even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you."
When I first encountered this psalm about two years ago, I think also at a reading in a Morning Prayers, this part stood out to me. The psalmist is on the move and looking for a place to feel hidden, unseen, and safe, but God won't let him run away. God sees right through him and finds him. And instead of feeling afraid of being transparent in this way, the psalmist praises God, and he opens up.
It's been many services with UChoir since then, but I still remember this passage. My friend calls it sticky semantics. What words remain stuck to you, and what does it mean about you? I think this passage has stayed in my head because at the beginning of college, I empathized a lot with the psalmist. When I needed to feel safe, I also looked for places to hide. It's part of why I joined a choir in college, where I felt accepted into something larger than myself, but also where I took comfort in no longer being there as an individual. And in some ways, the only safety that I knew was through absence, and I felt I didn't know how to stop wanting that.
But throughout my four years in choir, something changed. Specifically, I think back to an experience I had over spring break last year. I was staying on campus, exhausted from work, and overwhelmingly and namelessly anxious. At the time, I couldn't put words to what I was feeling, just that I was searching for a way to get out of my head, and that I wanted to be as far as possible from my stress and the things weighing on me. So, I took a walk, and reflexively, I ended up here, inside the church at Appleton Chapel, which was empty, because it was the middle of the day on a weekday over spring break. But the door was open, so I went in. Appleton Chapel is a place I've come to many times. Through choir, I've counted, and I've been on time to 280 Morning Prayer services, and I've also been tardy, late to eight, so, sorry.
Over three years, I've been here at sunrise, and also late at night, reading music by candlelight. But that spring was the first time I entered the chapel by myself, without a row of choristers following me and around me. I was alone and here in a way that I had never been before. I listened to my footsteps and breath echo. And more than ever, I was aware of the space of the chapel, which was resonant with sound when there was a choir, but it was empty now, as if waiting and wanting. I felt completely exposed. And after sitting here for a while, I felt more honest with myself too, because what on earth was I doing back here in this space when there was not even choir? But coming back here felt deeply human. And, after some time, I left. I'm not sure I felt completely better, but I felt less alone. People returned to campus eventually, and daily and weekly services resumed.
Why had I come back here? What had I been looking for at Appleton Chapel instinctively? It was one of the first times when, even though I wanted safety, I hadn't retreated inwards. I had wanted to be known here and to know myself. And I think I returned here because UChoir was the place where I was shaped into wanting that. Through choir, despite not expecting to, I feel visible, and individual, and needed. Sometimes I even feel painfully transparent when I enter a measure early or cut off late. But over the past four years, I have also been cared for by so many people here, from the choir secretaries before me to the first years now. Some of you are in the audience today, so thank you so much. And I've learned that it's an openness to encounter and a shared searching out and knowing that allows us to care for each other. So, to accept all that, I've needed to grow in courage, too.
That day, the act of entering the chapel, seeking shelter, also changed my reason for coming back here every morning, because living in our world, courage is something that I need to find over and over again. When we seek safety or a sanctuary, our natural instinct is to hide away. But the most important thing that a sheltering place can give us is courage, to be seen and present in the face of fear, to remain vulnerable and transparent instead of guarded against others, to let yourself be held fast by someone or some people who know you. This is what choir has been for me these past four years, and to be honest, I don't know how to leave that behind. I will miss Carols, Complines, Ed's hard pats, and even his glares, and I will dearly miss seeing everyone and singing with you every day.
But another worry is this; that what if, when I leave choir, I lose the part of myself that learned to be braver than I am? For an answer, I go back to Psalm 139, a few verses after our psalter ends the reading. After the psalmist flees and after God finds him, he writes, "I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." As I think of moving on, I take comfort in knowing that few things can separate you from something or someone that shaped and made you. Allow something to change you and to shelter you, and it will be with you. Let us praise. Gracious God, as we leave here today, we ask for your presence by our side. In knowing us, give us the strength to open our hearts, no matter where we go. In your name we pray, amen.