Several years ago, my wife and I went to a memorial service for Lee Haggerty, co-founder of Folk Legacy Records with the Paton. Each musician or singer did a song as a sing-around in memory of Lee. I chose, spur of the moment to do a song I'd written but rarely sung in public, May My Heart Find Rest in Thee. It might have been an off choice, because as far as I know, Lee didn't believe in God. But, it seemed like the right song to do. There was a woman and her husand at the memorial who I didn't meet, and didn't know. As I found out shortly afterward, she knew that she only had a few months to live, and one of her last rquests was that I sing with the Gospel Messengers at her memorial service because she loved black gospel.
Again, that not have seemed like a logical choice to some people because she and her husband were Jewish as were most of the people who came to the memorial service. We did a short set of black gospel in a peaceful setting out in the woods behind their house in northwest Connecticut, including May My Heart Find Rest in Thee, which I didn't normally do with the Messengers. It was a sweet gathering of people to lovingly remember a woman I never knowingly met. There were no cultural or religious barriers, and that's as it should be.

Jerry