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When I Say Hymn I mean breaker-crashed gunwales, yes, John Newton’s near-shipwreck conversion, and, of course, “Amazing Grace,” but as Janis Joplin screaked it, her voice full throated and grainy bending the phrasing. And it’s two young men, homeless on a suburban church pew, one high or getting there, the other striking matches, each small flame tossed toward a pile of gasoline-soaked hymnals, and how the day after the fire we sang over the sanctuary’s ashy smolder. And it’s the photo tucked in my mother’s Bible, the one she snapped circa : Pearl’s mouth wailing, the stage set ablaze by the fiery coal of her heart that Summer of Love. Sundays, having passed out the night before, Mom would sing  a wretch like me tuneless but extra loud, raise her Bible when the preacher’s tongue cast our sins away. How we burned then, bright as when we first believed.  ...

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