One of the musicians at our parish asked Stella and me to sub this weekend, and so we went to their Thursday night rehearsal. It was bigger than expected; he's playing for three of the masses this weekend, which meant there were a bunch of musicians at the rehearsal.
I'm still thinking about how much fun it was. The pianist is an interesting guy. I would 100% pay money to hear him play and sing if he had a gig in town -- he has a nice voice, and he's a far better pianist than I am. But he cannot -- just cannot -- read music. He's been in this role for many months now, and I keep expecting him to get more comfortable with reading music. But no: someone asked him to play the alto line in the Gloria and he called me over to do it instead. At the same time he has a deeper understanding of music theory than I do, a better intuition for the complex interrelationships of messy jazz chords.
I guess that's my happy spot: in the middle of an enthusiastic crowd of competent amateurs. There was another 15-year-old girl there, happy to see Stella again, and she and I were weaving harmonies above and below the melody line. Her dad sang baritone across from us. Near the end we all sang Sanctuary together and I reveled in the depth of the improvised harmonies.
Sometimes with church volunteering it's easy to let the quibbles interfere with the joy: that one participant who says we shouldn't sing anything social-justice-y (lyrics based on Matthew 25 are right out when she's planning the music), or the older lady who keeps trying to tell Stella what to do in a slightly unkind way. But what I want to remember is our loose circle around the piano, with the tabernacle light flickering on the other side of the church.
"Lord, prepare me," we sang, "to be a sanctuary, pure and holy." We sing this fairly often after communion at our parish, so we slipped easily into harmony -- stretching our voices across the octaves, the accompaniment spare and gentle underneath. "A sanctuary for you," we concluded. The final chord hung in the air and collectively we breathed it in: the goodness and the joy of making music together in that sacred space.
Recent Comments