Celebrate

This is still a reason...

Celebrate

This is probably my favorite song I ever wrote with the incredible Danny Ray.

We were approaching the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches — UFMCC. Troy Perry started the denomination in his living room with twelve queers and an LP of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for music.

When I found MCC in 1984, it was home.
A place to learn, to worship, and to work alongside other LGBTQ+ Christian people. And I loved writing music for these special occasions. Fortunately, Danny — a world-class organist — was also a piano player, which meant I could sing this song anywhere.

The lyrics were a gift to write. The rapid-fire pace of Danny’s music allowed room for a lot of content. And we were in the middle of the AIDS crisis, with no reasonable treatment in sight.

There was gutting loss.
Grief.
Fear.
And relentless prejudice about “whose fault” the virus was.

(Babies with AIDS were often described as the innocent victims — a phrase that quietly implied that everyone else was not.)

If more people remembered the agony of that time, I could simply let the words speak for themselves. But just before this, I had finished an album in Nashville that was financed by money my first friend with AIDS left me in his will.

At that time, we didn’t even have a settled name for the illness.

First there was GRID — Gay-Related Immune Disease.
Then HTLV-III — Human T-Lymphotropic Virus Type III.
Then Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome — AIDS.
And finally, the virus itself: HIV — Human Immunodeficiency Virus.

By then, I was a Registered Nurse. And as an RN, I saw destruction that was completely unnecessary.

Meal trays left outside hospital room doors — on the floor — never reaching the patient.
Fear of bathing or even touching someone.

And derogatory notes taped onto CDC informational posters.

In the nurses’ lounge.

What made it worse was that, in those years, licensed healthcare workers were sometimes legally allowed to refuse to treat patients with AIDS. Fear had found its way not just into people’s hearts — but into hospital policy.

In the nurses’ lounge.

I was devastated. Even my peers were dangerously misinformed.

At one point, I worked eleven night shifts in a row and was allowed to sleep at the hospital — just so I could touch, bandage, and bathe people… and bring in the freaking breakfast tray.

Two people who worked those shifts with me still stand out in my memory.

One was a gay man who regularly brought in Avon brochures and called himself “the Avon Lady.”

The other was a remarkable young woman who was what they then called a thalidomide baby. Thalidomide had been prescribed for morning sickness without adequate testing, and many babies either died or were born with missing limbs.

In her case, she had one arm. The other ended at her shoulder.

I cannot begin to tell you how selflessly she used her hand, her shoulder — and sometimes, very carefully, her mouth — to change sheets or carry bath supplies to a bedside.

And yet, in spite of those dark moments — literally dark at 3 a.m. on night shift — I knew we were not as those who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13).

I knew the friends I lost were still in my future someday.

As I’ve said before here on Substack, I’ve often wondered why I seem to have been given the Gift of Faith (1 Corinthians 12:9). I experience it as exactly that — a gift. Freely given. With no strings attached.

I work to strengthen it, and I try to share it — but I never feel without it.

And I wanted to sing that.

Some of my favorite lines in this song are about loss and death:

“a hunger for the Word that hid behind a veil of tears”
“celebrate outlasting those who said we can’t belong”
“we stand as one with absent friends, knowing life that never ends”

That was my heart on display in that moment.

Danny Ray is a relentless word-and-grammar fixer, which meant I had to find the precise way to say exactly what I meant. What I wanted to say was this:

God’s call is still upon your life.
The closet door should stay open — and so should your heart.

Because there really is…
still…
reason to celebrate.

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Celebrate
© 1988 Marsha Stevens & Danny Ray

Celebrate the Vision, celebrate the Dream, celebrate the Promise,
Celebrate redeeming all those lonely angry years,
The anguish and the fears,
A hunger for the Word that hid behind a veil of tears,

Celebrate our Freedom, celebrate our Joy, celebrate Forgiveness,
Celebrate employing every Gift we had inside,
The child we could not hide,
The call of God upon a life the world believed had died,

(Chorus)
Come celebrate, celebrate!
We celebrate, celebrate!

Celebrate our Future, celebrate our Past, celebrate Believing,
Celebrate outlasting those who said we can’t belong,
We’d never sing this song,
The face of death has given Life, abundant, full and strong,

Celebrate our Maker, shatterer of Lies, who in fierce compassion
Brings into our lives a strength we never had before,
Fling wide the closet door,
We know for such a time as this God’s people are called forth,

(to Chorus)

We feel each one in heaven before us, joining us in mighty chorus,
Stand as one with absent friends, knowing life that never ends,
With the vision we create,
In the love we consecrate,
For the Savior we await
With our heads upturned to Heaven’s Gate

We Celebrate!