The Volcano and the Heart of Jacqui
What’s the story behind the song that touched everyone at the Spiritual Exercises? We asked the artist herself. Here is the story of “Be Still My Heart.”It all began in Atchison, Kansas, a town of about ten thousand residents on the Missouri River, located on the border of Kansas and Missouri. Atchison is in the heart of the great and poetic Midwest, which many believe to be the true heart of the United States. Fun fact, Atchison was also the hometown of Amelia Earhart, the first woman to ever fly across the United States, from Los Angeles to Newark, NY, with no layover. This is just to say, there is some natural draw to travel in the town’s chromosomes is, and not just within the States.
Jacqui Treco was studied at Benedictine College, though she is originally from Nashville, Tennessee. Why are we writing about her? Because about five years ago, she wrote a song, unaware it would embark on a long journey that would ultimately lead the song to us. Jacqui told us about it herself in an email exchange. She graduated in 2016 and now lives in Maastricht, Netherlands.
The summer following Jacqui’s Freshman year of College, the young man she had been seeing for some time told her he had decided to join the seminary. Their relationship, obviously, ended and Jacqui entered a period of great crisis, during which she even came to believe that it would not be possible for her to be loved again and, even if it were to happen, she would not allow anyone else to hurt her. However, through a special friendship, something eventually began to stir in Jacqui and she once again returned to her heart and her desires. She could no longer pretend her heart was not there and, after begging, fighting, and struggling, she eventually gave in.
This is where her song comes in. "Be Still My Heart" finds its source in the reality Jacqui could no longer ignore: her deep desire to be loved and, at the same time, that step into the void which occurs after losing a loved one.
Jacqui said that, throughout the years, the song became a continuous prayer to remain before her hear and her desire without fleeing from them. “Christ has shown me throughout this time that when I call for Him, when I am honest in front of the heart he gave me and the desires he gives me, that I am never abandoned and never disappointed,” she wrote.
The song, then, began its journey. Jacqui’s friend Emma introduced her to the local CLU. Her song struck them and started to circulate until it was played at the following CLU summer vacation. There, a Memores Domini from Florida—Alberto—heard the song, and when he was invited to the public university in Milan for a witness, he requested "Be Still My Heart" to be played beforehand. Two students, Chiara and Andrea, prepared the song and then played it again at their 2017 summer vacation.
So, the song made the rounds in Italy, where it passed on from one guitar to another, from one voice to another, leaving its mark every time, until it was chosen for the 2018 Spiritual Exercises. Who knows what the rest of its journey will look like as it is mysteriously carried by the need for beauty and truth.
“For me, writing music is as necessary and natural as talking to a friend about what I am experiencing. Not that songs flow like water and are not a work, but that they are a necessary part of who I am. Because of this, Christ often uses my own words, my own songs, to reach me— and so, a song which was originally written about a boy can become something much deeper,” wrote Jacqui.
This song is like a child who, after being nurtured, will hopefully find its way forward. The simple melody and profound words have traveled thousands of miles and will travel much more because they draw from and return us to the human heart which—as Fr. Giussani originally taught us and as Fr. Carrón reiterated at the Exercises—is the same at all latitudes. If you stay still, you won’t get burned, but you’ll never know why you burn at all. This is a great challenge.