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Name: larry
Location: Massachusetts, United States
Interests: Sending jokes to Zach. Being nosey. Walking Brewster. Music.
Expertise: Being proud of my kids. It's a tough job, but someone's gotta do it.
Occupation: Research and development
Industry: Research
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
1/19/2002
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| One problem with maturity is one's ears begin playing tricks. In today's pre-service prayer with the choir, I heard the pastor begin,
"Oh Lord, make us camels for your spirit..."
Something like that. Pretty soon, I realized she had meant to say (and likely did say) "channels for your spirit". The theory being, I suppose, that our music can channel the Holy Spirit to the congregation and, thereby, touch their lives in a positive way. With luck, perhaps the Holy Spirit will dwell with us choristers long enough to render us a bit more competent than we would otherwise be. Perhaps, a more competent rendering of the music touches the hearers in a more positive way.
Whatever, I can't forget about the camels. I think they might be in some way an apt image for us. We guys and gals in the choir plod along faithfully, bearing as best we can, our own burdens, while also sharing those of our fellow choristers...well, our fellow congregants as well.
It seems to me that folks in the U.S. have a problem where we think one needs to be a superstar to affect the world in a positive way. If one isn't a superstar, what's the point of even trying? I don't think that's a valid point of view. I think a caravan of us plodding camels can, in our own way, make our particular corner of the world better. And, once brightened, our corner then radiates out to affect other corners positively as well. One of the things one learns if one spends any time as a guy or gal in the choir is that the music we produce collectively is ever so much better than anything the vast majority of us could produce individually. So perhaps our camel caravan of choristers does indeed channel the Holy Spirit to our congregation, and, thereby, to the world.
From now on, I think I'll be content to be a camel for the Holy Spirit. As it says in scripture, the yoke is easy and the burden is light.
Posted via email from Slothoughts Hypolite
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| For reasons unknown, someone asked me to do a "ministry moment" at church last week. I was to represent the music ministry. Here's what I told them:
I'm not sure how I got asked to do a ministry moment on music. Presumably it relates to the fact that I'm one of the guys in the choir. I pretty much have been that, a guy in the choir, most of my life, and most of the time I've been here. This year I expanded my identity and am now also a guy in the bell choir. So, how did I get here? It pretty much goes back to high school. I was having some kind of discussion with my minister at the time (I grew up Presbyterian, so didn't find out that we are all ministers, presided over by a pastor, until I got here). Like most young people, I was a questioning and cantankerous sort. Somewhere during the discussion, I said I doubted that I believed "all of this stuff". It's probably fair to say that at the time, I believed "some of this stuff", but I just wasn't going to swallow "all of it". He seemed unperturbed. He merely said, "just sit in the choir and it will all come to you one day". When I think of this now, I am reminded of the amazing gospel song by the Harmonizing Four, Farther Along. I'm sure other folks have done this song too, but it's their version I know. I'll spare you my singing of it, in part because I don't have the mellifluous bass of Jimmy Jones, and in part because I haven't prepared my choir mates as a doo wop back up. Whatever, these words come to me:
Farther along we’ll know all about it,
Farther along we’ll understand why;
Cheer up my brother, live in the sunshine,
We’ll understand it all by and by.
So here I sit, year after year, waiting faithfully to "understand it all by and by". So far, the wait hasn't been so bad. One of the things I've learned from my time of being a guy in the choir is that your brain functions differently when you sing. You can make sense out of some of the things you sing about that don't necessarily make all that much sense when you rely solely on your intellect. I think of this as opening up a more direct channel to the divine. That's pretty cool! There are other benefits to being a guy in the choir. In addition to getting the buzz, which comes from the aforementioned opening up the channel to the divine, the shared fellowship is amazing. One of the reasons I joined with the bells this year is that I could see how much fun they had together. I wanted to have that kind of fun too. Perhaps kind of selfish of me, but I hope it hasn't hurt the group too much. They tell me that they hadn't heard a Bb or a C in rehearsal for several years. So even though vaguely inept—there are times when the Bb and C still don't sound—, I appear to be contributing in a way. So, in a way, I am giving, not just getting Many of us grew up with what one might term a "consumerist view" of the church. We come to sit quietly and let the minister or priest or pastor do the worship. We are spectators in worship, kind of like going to a football game or movie. After a while, this likely becomes unsatisfying. But now we are moving away from this to a more participatory view. We don't consume or spectate the practice of religion we participate in it. In essence, all us guys and gals in the choir are working in a shared ministry. This is a ministry to ourselves, to each other, and also to you all. It's the old Paul thing, we have many parts but are all one body. This is not just a choir thing, but a church thing. Some of us sing and some of us bake; some of us arrange flowers and some of us wipe runny noses; some of us visit the sick and some of us built pageant sets. But we are all necessary parts of the whole. Just like you can't have a complete body without hands and feet, eyes and ears, fingers and toes, mouths and minds, you can't have a complete church without all the various ministries—baking, wiping, arranging, visiting, singing, sewing, building, etc.—, ministries that we all mutually share with each other. So, while I'm here technically to encourage you all to throw your hats in with the music ministry—hey, we have no cuts, not such a bad deal—, I'm also here to urge you all to engage in any of our enticing ministries. My guess is that the practice of doing pretty much anything in concert with the other people of God, i.e. being one of the innumerable, essential parts of the body of Christ, will open up new channels of communication between you and the divine. I'm willing to bet that you will find that is pretty cool.
Oh, and here's Jimmy Jones and the Harmonizing Four with Farther Along. Posted via email from Slothoughts Hypolite | | |
|  “spiritual shortcuts” from nakedpastor Posted via web from Slothoughts Hypolite | | |
| That's the prescription we have been given for swine flu, or as we now like to call it, so as not to offend the sensibilities of our porcine brothers and sisters, H1N1. Of course what we were really told was to wash our hands endlessly, for a full 20 seconds at a time. If you actually look at a watch for 20 seconds, you'll see that is a rather long time. So long, in fact, that you can't even come close to guessing it. Thus, you need to find something to say or do while you're washing your hands all that time. Something that takes a full 20 seconds to say or do. That something turns out to be two complete Hail Marys. Now, given that I was born and bred a Protestant, one of the more liberal Protestant denominations actually (née UPC USA; currently UCC), how would I know about Hail Marys? Well, it seems that when I was in 7th or 8th grade, I used to listen to the radio a lot. I had rather a good one, a Hammarlund HQ100 A. I liked changing stations on both AM and shortwave to see what I could find. I would listen to stations from Buffalo, Nashville, Cleveland, Boston, Toronto, Moscow, Quito. You name it, I probably heard it at one time or another. One day, I chanced upon a group reciting the rosary. Over and over again they chanted: Hail Mary, full of grace,
the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women.
Blessed is the fruit of thy womb,
Jesus Christ, Our Lord. Holy Mary, mother of God,
Pray for us sinners,
Now and at the hour of our death.
Amen. I may have this a bit wrong. Seventh or eighth grade was a long time ago. Whatever, when I started washing my hands, and looking at my watch to see if I'd done it for twenty seconds, those words from long ago popped into my head. I discovered that, when said at a measured pace, two full Hail Marys, at least as I had remembered them, took up twenty seconds. So that's how we combat swine flu H1N1: we spend quality time at the sink saying our Hail Marys. The Pope would be proud of me. Posted via email from Slothoughts Hypolite | | |
| I said something in my class a couple of weeks ago about visiting a Buddhist temple in Wakefield along with a comment on the art. That was a mistake, of sorts, in that my teacher, Catherine, then wanted me to post a link or two (which means work for me). Anyway, my friend, Roy, has a flickr page where he has posted photos of some of the art work. His photo stream has a picture of the dharma hall with the hanging lotus lanterns.
Every year, they tear down and remake all these lanterns. My attempts at paper art never got past folding origami cranes, so I found the description of the lantern making process quite fascinating. Roy blogged the process in steps: one, two, three, four. Posted via email from Slothoughts Hypolite | | |
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