The service ended on the vehement command: “Spend the afternoon! You can’t take it with you!”
I feel the church year proper has begun at last.
Rank by rank again we stand,
from the four winds gathered hither.
Loud the hallowed walls demand
whence we come and how, and whither.
There are times I feel that if I got nothing from church but the singing, that would be enough. I grew up sort of Methodist, which perhaps gives me a particular perspective on what Church Is About, but there’s also that… the only times that I felt deeply I could belong, in that church where I was, had to do with music. There is a particular feeling of voices joined in song, a particular sanctity, and it is so important to me. And even if I’m up in the balcony space – the drive means I’m often too late to be in the sanctuary proper – I can sing, I can belong, I can stand and feel the music welling up and my hand can mark the beats and this is important, so important.
Of course, I get more from church than the singing. But the singing would be enough.
The readings included The Little Duck and Pry Me Off Dead Center, which was also the sermon, and I found myself contemplating theology, listening. Theology and action and the necessity to move, and the shape and the change needed in the world, all of these things. One part of the sermon quoted Annie Dillard, and that, too, goes into the pot.
Balance, but also motion; not to be lukewarm, and thus spat out.
I came home and wrote a mythological snippet, titled Mercy, which I put up on my revamped Patreon in the appropriate category. We’ll see how that project rolls.
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