Tag: Choir

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Turning 50

My mid-life crisis happened when I was 36. It lasted about 45 minutes.

It happened as my wife and I were at a joint birthday party for a man turning 50 and his daughter turning 20. We realized during the party that (a) we were closer in age to the 50-year-old and (b) we preferred his company to the younger set. I turned to my wife and said, “Honey, WE are now officially the old people!” When we got home I processed this realization by listening to Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water on repeat. That was it.

When I turned 50 this past weekend I experienced perhaps the opposite of a mid-life crisis. It began with the course I was on in Dublin, filled with meaning and blessing and delicious birthday cake. And then when the course ended, I headed for the nearest pub.

This was a genuine Irish neighborhood pub, straight out of a James Joyce novel. No tourists. I ordered a birthday whisky and sat at the bar with the locals watching rugby. The man beside me gazed upon his frothy Guinness with a tender mixture of reverence and lust.

My eye was drawn to a poster on the wall promoting the “Dublin Gospel Choir”. Their benefit concert was scheduled to begin within the hour at the nearby Dublin Rugby Club. Why not? I finished my whisky and headed for the concert.

The Dublin Rugby Club has all the charm of an old bowling alley. Featureless white walls are adorned with faded rugby pennants. Ancient floorboards reek from generations of spilled beer. The all-local crowd was packed in on lawn chairs. I stood in the back nursing a Guinness in gleeful expectation.

Before the choir began they took up a collection for the nearby Saint Francis Hospice. As they passed the donation bucket round, the choir director shared a heartfelt story of the hospice staff quietly sneaking whisky into her father’s room as he lay dying. When he finally died, they lovingly slipped a bottle into his casket to “ease him over the threshold”.  God bless Ireland.

Then the choir began. The Dublin Gospel Choir is, without doubt, the whitest soul group I have ever seen. But man can they sing. They delivered a moving mix of spirituals and modern classics as the audience swayed along. Beer was spilled on the floor. Then the choir launched into a gospel version of…Bridge Over Troubled Water.

Hearing that song moved me to tears of joy. I would like to think it was the effect of whisky and Guinness. But in truth the tears flowed in happy nostalgia for my life long ago and gratitude for the present; for the touching humanity of the hospice staff; in remembrance of a facility across the ocean in which my own infirm mother is so well cared for. Unlocked by the familiar song, I glimpsed a small fraction of the overwhelming grace in my life. In all our lives.

I walked back through dark streets and warm Irish rain. I came upon an empty church. I wandered in. I lit a votive candle and sat in silence, reflecting on the choir’s unexpected birthday gift. Then I said “thank you” over and over and over again.

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them the link to WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

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Easter

 

Our family had a moment of divine intervention over Easter.

We arrived in Paris late in the afternoon and after settling in, we set off on foot to make something of the remaining daylight. We crossed the Seine to the cathedral of Notre Dame. We stood staring up at the heights of the cathedral, taking in her grandeur: the stone carvings over the doors, the gargoyles, the bell towers. We ambled through a park as the sun set and the temperature dropped.

A meandering route home took us through a tangle of small empty streets. We found ourselves walking behind a stone church, unmarked even in our guidebooks. The cathedral of Saint Gervais sits tucked back, overlooked in the shadow of her more famous neighbours. Being curious, we walked up the church steps as the first of the homeless people began bunking down there, sheltered by the alcoves and pillars from the night wind.

Saint Gervais

The church was completely dark. The only light came from an alcove halfway down the length of the cathedral. There, an unseen choir was practising the Pope Marcellus Mass by Palestrina (I only know the piece from a CD we were given). As we stood there adjusting to the gloom, the soprano’s voice soared high into the recesses of the church, floating there alone, sustained, with the clarity of a bell. Then the choir’s voices swelled to meet her, joining together and tumbling like a stream of sound splashing off the stone walls. We, all of us, were completely transported. We sat on wooden stools in silent wonder, hardly breathing, as the music rang out into the dark void of the church.

Eventually, we returned to this world courtesy of a playful churchmouse scurrying across the floor. The children followed it as I wandered over to the door. There, I was transported for a second time by the sheer weight of history as I glanced up at a plaque listing the names of the priests that have served Saint Gervais in an unbroken line since 1278. Here we were, in a place where a church has stood since at least the 7thcentury. Then she humbly served boatmen and fishermen. Now she shelters the sleeping homeless, an unseen choir, we few tourists, and a churchmouse.

Finally we stepped out into the cold and dark. As we picked our way around the sleeping bodies of the  homeless, I had an Easter thought: in a City full of showpieces, this is exactly where the risen Christ would be – huddled alongside forgotten people on the cold steps of an overlooked church, while a choir inside pours out His glory in song. What a gift. Happy Easter everyone.

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them the link to WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

The song for Palestrina is available as a link here

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The Christmas Concert – 18/12/2017

It officially became the best Christmas concert of all time when they broke out the bongo drums and booze.

My daughter’s school choir sang this morning in an ancient stone church in the next village. As I walked there I greeted some French-Swiss construction workers who, true to form, were leaning on their shovels and smoking. The German-Swiss street crews work. The French-Swiss crews smoke.

The concert was hosted by the local International Women’s Guild.  The only thing international about the Guild is the use of the word “International” in the title. These women are all English. Like Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey. Like the Queen mum and her Corgies. The aging flower of Britannia.

The audience sang along with Silent Night, While Shepherds Watched their Flocks, What Child is This, and other old-fashioned-hey-nonny-nonny English Christmas classics. The songs were interspersed with readings by proper British authors like Rudyard Kipling and Charles Dickens. There was even an inexplicable Beatrix Potter poem about an Ostrich pulling the Christmas sleigh. How did these people once hold dominion over a quarter of the world?

Then things got “International”.

First, the choir made the mistake of projecting the words to a French carol. The Guild ladies sang along, but only out of duty and with nowhere near the gusto of the other carols. There were sideways glances and knowing nods exchanged, lest anyone be perceived by their Guild-sisters as being unpatriotic or worse, a Francophile.

Then came the Hanukkah song. This was received by the stunned assembly like the sting of a boxer’s jab. It was followed by the bruising right hook of the Kwanza song. The choir director had to explain to the baffled crowd what Kwanza was. One of the boys in the choir produced a bongo drum.

Then all hell broke loose. The bongos wailed, the choir sang, and the director, with her ample backside to the crowd, began to shake her caboose in time with the music in a most un-British manner. The Guild matrons swooned.

Decorum was restored by the taking up of a collection for some suitably obscure British charity involving animals. Then the crowd filed into the back of the church for biscuits and mulled wine. Even the kids were given mulled wine. It was 10:30 in the morning.

As I walked back to the car I passed the construction workers once more, their cigarette butts piled high from a long, unproductive morning. Each of them was by now also holding a steaming cup of mulled wine, a gift given by the passing Guild ladies returning to their cars.

I love Christmas. God bless us everyone, no exceptions.

 

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them the link to WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier. Note there will be no posts for the next two weeks on account of the holidays. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy New Year to everyone! More to follow in January, 2018.]