Three Songwriters Reflect on the Origins of Their ‘Sing Out Love’ Hymns

Sing Out Love Artist: Ana Hernández

Ana Hernández heard the call to start writing music over thirty years ago on a beach in Montauk, New York. As she sat on the sand during hurricane season and read from a book of poetry, she recalls, the words started singing in her head.

Since then, she’s never stopped listening.

Hernández, who is a well-known sacred music composer, spent the last few decades creating music that encourages people to pray together and confront injustices. She’s intentional about introducing music where everyone gets to join at their own level and pace regardless of their denomination.

“The idea of being able to do justice work and the work of love together and not see them as separate has always been appreciated in the UU way,” says Hernández.

Hernández hasn’t been published often, so she was delighted when Rev. Erika Hewitt, minister of Worship Arts for the Unitarian Universalist Association, asked her to submit some of her songs for consideration in the UUA’s new virtual hymnal, S​ing Out Love​.

Hernández joins many other artists and composers whose songs have been accepted into Sing Out Love, an ever-growing collection of hymns, songs, and other musical resources that launched in August 2025. The collection has the potential to reach organizations and denominations around the world, carrying messages unique to artists and their experiences. Some of the composers are UUs. Others, like Hernández, are not.

The virtual hymnal is a natural fit for Hernández, who, through her experience with classical and folk music, says she adopted a paperless tradition. She learns the songs from the page and then teaches the parts to participants and directs them when to sing and play instruments, so they can collaborate without needing to reference a piece of paper. The practice has served as a simpler way to help people learn a song and connect, according to Hernández.

“This pedagogy is both intentional and theologically grounded: by watching and listening to the song leader, singers are invited into deeper relationship with the song leader, the gathered community, and the prayer itself,” Hernández says.

She says she usually waits to share the story behind a song until people are done singing it. “I want you to be able to have your own story and experience with the song.”

Hernández, who pursues music full-time, has had two songs accepted by the virtual hymnal task force. “Open My Heart” can be sung in different languages, and the song’s title is an action she considers to be the work of her life. Hernández came up with her other song, “Hold My Heart​,​” while driving on a highway in New York to get to a gig, and she hopes people can avoid despair by singing it.

Sing Out Love Artist: Laura Zucker

Laura Zucker, who lives in Northern California, also bends to the sporadic nature of the creative process of making music even if it means writing lyrics in the produce section of the grocery store. Zucker has wanted her songs to be a part of the UUA’s music collection for years, she says, but was never sure how to go about it.

Zucker is part of the house band at Mount Diablo Unitarian Universalist Church in Walnut Creek, where she’s been a member for at least fifteen years, and many there are familiar with her music. She plays guitar and piano and does vocals. Zucker also teaches trumpet, trombone, and cello in local elementary schools and provides guitar, piano, and songwriting lessons privately. She is also passionate about commissioned songs, including one she wrote for a bat mitzvah called “My Heart’s Delight.” Zucker has even written songs for when each of her children went off to college.

“I write things that are important for me at the time, that I know somebody else will probably need at some point,” Zucker says.

Zucker was inspired to write “This Boat,” which made an appearance at General Assembly 2025, after reading a book by Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist, neurologist, and Holocaust survivor. Frankl wrote about the difference between having happiness and meaning. As she read the book, Zucker kept envisioning a boat and drew metaphors from it.

“Happiness is the waves that bounce the boat up and down, but the meaning is the direction in which your boat is traveling and who you have in your boat with you,” Zucker says.

The essential message of her song is that people can be there for one another and do not have to face everything alone, says Zucker, who has five CDs’ worth of original music. Zucker hopes the song resonates with many people and that they recognize the strength and solace that comes from having a sense of community.

Sing Out Love Artist: Soren Austenfeld

In Malden, Massachusetts, Soren Austenfeld is in his seventh year as the musical director at First Parish in Malden and feels called to help people facilitate the catharsis music and singing can cause. Austenfeld has been writing music as a hobby since he was a teenager and tends to create content that’s personal.

Austenfeld credits his community, including colleagues and friends, who in conversations transformed how he thought about the world and spirituality. In many ways, he says, the conversations led to him creating songs like the one he submitted for the virtual hymnal, “We Will Carry Each Other.”

The song, which was accepted into the hymnal, is grounded in the critical conversations he was having with people about how to show community care while balancing what’s been going on around the world the last several years, he says. He is glad that he received the support and nudge to get “We Will Carry Each Other” into a more public format because other avenues of publishing can be a bit more strenuous, he says.

Austenfeld thinks the existence of the virtual hymnal is wonderful because “having music where we can discover and create our UU theology together feels really important,” he adds.

He is a proponent of the overall feeling of connection to oneself and something bigger than oneself through music and song. Whether as a voice educator, a music director, or a composer, Austenfeld is drawn to bridging that connection.

Austenfeld considers the publishing of his composed work in the virtual hymnal to be a special milestone as a professional artist. He appreciates the song’s potential to reach many people and that its origin is fueled by connections made and kept.

“I feel really honored that the conversations I’ve had with friends and colleagues and the perspective that I’ve taken from getting to know the denomination and the theology have turned into something that is so meaningful to other people,” Austenfeld says.