I grew up in the church. A little brown one in a vale, actually (iykyk). The family church was originally a little white wooden building that was pieced together by my grandfather and his siblings and cousins and elders. Now it’s a brown brick building surrounded by pine trees. The community has remained tightly knit for several generations, and by the time my brother and I came along the church membership was primarily composed of our cousins.

Genetically, we’re Scots-Irish. At some point our ancestors came over to the Virginia area and sort of settled in, then they took a land grant for some acreage in deep south Mississippi and moved again. Had they not moved the second time, I’d have grown up in Appalachia. Truthfully, a lot of our family culture reminds me of that I’ve seen from Appalachia. In particular, we’re very musical. I don’t remember a gathering that was without music. Church, parties, dinners, or just visiting with family and friends – music was playing or discussed or both. Sometimes we’d sing together, too. Music is as much a part of our community as the pine trees surrounding the homes, and when we sing together I hear the roots we came from loud and clear.

The little brown church was no exception to the music rule. I grew up thinking it was standard to have a church service primarily focused on the music. We’d kick everything off with a song, then sing a few more. Then a few people would talk for a little while and we’d start singing again. On Sunday nights we’d even gather around the piano after the service for more singing. On Wednesdays we’d circle up amongst the pews, hold hands, and sing Blest Be the Tie before we went home.

We always sang it slowly and quietly, and depending on how many people were there (usually around 20 if it was busy), we’d have layered harmonies. It was a capella and raw and reverent. A reminder that at the end of the day, after all the other songs and all the other words we’d heard, community was what mattered. We’d sing through the verses, squeeze each other’s hands, then hug everyone goodbye and chat our way to our cars.

When I was in middle school, I started going to a bigger church in the town I went to school in. There wasn’t as much music, but my friends were there. They didn’t gather around the piano to sing after Sunday night service, and there was no circled up Blest Be the Tie on Wednesdays, but we had a youth group and lock-ins and summer camp. It was good. It was warm and comfortable. It was different, though.

When I was in college, a lot changed. I took religion studies classes, I met people from different backgrounds, I was curious and I researched, questioned, discussed. When I went home on weekends and for holidays, I was back in the little family church, gathering around the piano and circling up to sing Blest Be the Tie. It was always a comfort being able to end up back there.

After college, even more changed. I moved to a different state. I met even more people from even more different backgrounds. I kept researching, questioning, discussing. I found churches in my new area and tried them on. They never quite fit. When I went home to visit, I looked forward to Blest Be the Tie and the community I’d find in the little church and it remained a comfort even as I changed.

When I got married and moved even further away to a place where I knew no one, I craved the kind of connection I’d felt singing in the little church. I looked for it in new churches in our new home, but I never found it. I looked for it in other denominations I’d never tried before, but to no avail. I looked for it outside of the churches in book clubs and dog parks and jobs and found nothing similar. When I went home to visit, I went back to the little church and circled up for Blest Be the Tie, took the hands beside me, and wept.

The community and I were both different. The comfort and warmth I’d always found in that circle were gone. The person those hands had known so well had changed. The gathering around the piano had thinned and the music didn’t strike the way it had before. I realized then that what I’d loved so much about that circle wasn’t what the preachers had said in the sermons or what we’d discussed in Sunday school. It wasn’t the food we ate in the fellowship hall afterwards and it wasn’t the money dropped in the offering plate. It wasn’t even the songs we sang. It was the hands I held in the circle, the voices I harmonized with, the arms that hugged me and the knowing I felt from them. Many of them are missing now, and the circle has changed.

As Hozier says, “so much of the livin’, love, is the being unknown.” Being unknown when you grew up being so known is jarring. The community I grew up in is a rare one. It’s not perfect and it’s dwindling because the world is big and my generation grew up and headed out to explore. I don’t regret leaving, but I miss harmonizing with people who pull their voices from the same generations-old musical base that I do. I miss holding worn hands that got worn on the same gravel creek banks mine did. I have learned how much privilege there is in growing up knowing where your family came from and how they got here, and I miss that privilege some days.

I don’t regret leaving home, and I don’t regret changing as a result. I don’t regret not planting roots elsewhere and I don’t regret moving and traveling as often as I have. I wouldn’t trade the person I’ve become for anything, even if it’s cost me stability. I have community now, long distance and local, and I am full to the brim with people who know who’ve I’ve become and who love me. I have new hands to hold and sing with, and sometimes even harmonize with.

But even still, I’ll always miss the hands I held in the little brown church.