Let everything that has breath give praise to the Lord!” – Psalm 150:6
The monks were chanting as monks do,
All in their oaken choir stalls,
Antiphonally, side against side,
When suddenly they were joined
By a single Psalm-singing cicada.
While billions droned outside the church
Only one felt called to venture in;
His vocation, so very rare among his kind:
The really rare Psalm-singing cicada.
He sang his heart out to his God,
Sang so lustily until he died–
The model entomological monk
And model, too, for the human kind.
“Let everything that has breath give praise to the Lord!”
Father Gerard Garrigan, OSB, is a Benedictine monk of Saint Louis Abbey.