It is 4:00 on Saturday afternoon, and I've been at work in the choir room of the church since 8:00 this morning. And, quoting the hymn, I've observed a day full of grace.
We had a work day in the music library today, and choir volunteers came and spent the day processing music. And I'll bet you're still having a hard time imagining this as a day of grace. So here's the background that created the context in which this day of grace occurred.
I arrived in 2005 to become the full-time Minister of Music in a church that had spent many years with a part-time Music Director. That person was a giant of the choral and church music fields, Milburn Price, who is a past National President of the American Choral Directors Association. Needless to say, the choir had been in good hands! But since the program had been part-time, the budget for music was small and it was clear that it would take several years to incrementally increase it to the amount needed. So we have spent four years buying a small amount of music and borrowing a lot of music.
Recently the church from whom we had borrowed music decided to let us purchase a large number of titles from their music library. We made them an offer based upon memorial gifts that had recently been given to honor a beloved church member who had lost a long battle with cancer, and whose husband is a very faithful choir member. The other church accepted our offer and we have added around 125 anthems for the Sanctuary Choir, 13 major works, 25 instrumental titles and 25 children's titles to our library. This acquisition has dramatically increased the number of usable pieces we own. And since we used the memorial money, we sought to honor our dear friend by naming our music library after her.
So we now face the daunting challenge of putting a sticker designating the new name of the library on each old and new piece of music, and giving a catalog number and file box to the new ones.
Today around 20 people came and spent the day in the choir room, placing stickers on each piece of music. The bereaved husband worked with them as each person lovingly and carefully affixed his beloved wife's name. It was an act of love toward the choir and toward the suffering choir member, a mindless sort of task rendered into a sacrament.
And the grace didn't only exist in the honoring of our friend, but I watched as choir members whose tenures in the choir extend back as far as 30 or 40 years opened each piece and hummed a little. "Oh, I remember this one," they would say. "Remember ______ who directed us then? I wonder where they live now?" The collective memory of a musical organization began to unfold. And the lesson for me was that no comment was ever made about pitches and rhythms. The comments related to the people with whom they sang, and the directors they followed. They talked about what might have been going on in the church family around that time, and sighed to think of a singer who had passed on, or a member of the congregation who loved a particular piece. I was reminded through this lesson that we work hard on musical technique so that the grace can be evident, rather than as an end in itself.
When someone sings to you it is grace. When someone sings with you it is grace. Our work day became a day full of grace as memories unfolded, grief turned to honor, and the future was enabled.
We had a work day in the music library today, and choir volunteers came and spent the day processing music. And I'll bet you're still having a hard time imagining this as a day of grace. So here's the background that created the context in which this day of grace occurred.
I arrived in 2005 to become the full-time Minister of Music in a church that had spent many years with a part-time Music Director. That person was a giant of the choral and church music fields, Milburn Price, who is a past National President of the American Choral Directors Association. Needless to say, the choir had been in good hands! But since the program had been part-time, the budget for music was small and it was clear that it would take several years to incrementally increase it to the amount needed. So we have spent four years buying a small amount of music and borrowing a lot of music.
Recently the church from whom we had borrowed music decided to let us purchase a large number of titles from their music library. We made them an offer based upon memorial gifts that had recently been given to honor a beloved church member who had lost a long battle with cancer, and whose husband is a very faithful choir member. The other church accepted our offer and we have added around 125 anthems for the Sanctuary Choir, 13 major works, 25 instrumental titles and 25 children's titles to our library. This acquisition has dramatically increased the number of usable pieces we own. And since we used the memorial money, we sought to honor our dear friend by naming our music library after her.
So we now face the daunting challenge of putting a sticker designating the new name of the library on each old and new piece of music, and giving a catalog number and file box to the new ones.
Today around 20 people came and spent the day in the choir room, placing stickers on each piece of music. The bereaved husband worked with them as each person lovingly and carefully affixed his beloved wife's name. It was an act of love toward the choir and toward the suffering choir member, a mindless sort of task rendered into a sacrament.
And the grace didn't only exist in the honoring of our friend, but I watched as choir members whose tenures in the choir extend back as far as 30 or 40 years opened each piece and hummed a little. "Oh, I remember this one," they would say. "Remember ______ who directed us then? I wonder where they live now?" The collective memory of a musical organization began to unfold. And the lesson for me was that no comment was ever made about pitches and rhythms. The comments related to the people with whom they sang, and the directors they followed. They talked about what might have been going on in the church family around that time, and sighed to think of a singer who had passed on, or a member of the congregation who loved a particular piece. I was reminded through this lesson that we work hard on musical technique so that the grace can be evident, rather than as an end in itself.
When someone sings to you it is grace. When someone sings with you it is grace. Our work day became a day full of grace as memories unfolded, grief turned to honor, and the future was enabled.
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