You raise me up ....

I tuned in earlier this week to a brief service at Washington National Cathedral during which a plaque pointing toward Matthew Shepard's final resting place in the cathedral crypt was dedicated --- and have had a familiar song popularized soon after the turn of the 21st century, "You Raise Me Up," imbedded ever since.

The ashes of Shepard, the young gay man murdered during 1998 in Laramie, Wyoming, were interred in the crypt last year. The plaque has been installed in the chapel adjoining the crypt, not ordinarily open to the public, to serve as a marker for those who wish to visit his grave. A similar plaque points toward the final resting places, also in the crypt, of Helen Keller and her teacher and companion Anne Sullivan.

The young man responsible for embedding that darned song was Brennan Connell, a junior at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Md., who performed it (above).

It's easy to understand why the song, popularized (but not written) by Josh Groban during 2003, remains hugely popular --- performed at events ranging from funerals to weddings and every place in between. The melody is vaguely Irish and the words are open-ended, allowing the performer and the listener to imagine the sources of his or her own inspiration.

In Connell's case, the sources included LGBTQ hero Harvey Milk and, of course, Matt Shepard, an "accidental hero" of the movement toward equality for LGBTQ people.

Whoever your heroes or sources of inspiration may be, listing to that familiar song is not a bad way to begin a day. Here's the original 2003 Josh Groban version.

And here's the National Cathedral service. To hear Brennan Connell sing, just advance to the 23:40 mark.