“Wow! That’s loud.” “I’d like that played at my funeral.” “That was pretty.” “I think I heard that in a horror movie once.” These comments, all spoken by me at one time or another, capture pretty well the breadth of my knowledge of church organ music. Nonetheless, there I was, along with 20 or so other folks, to hear a candidate for our open position here at Glenn. My presence was ex officio. Being senior pastor has its responsibilities and its perks, and my presence that evening fell blessedly into both categories.
As I took a seat in our sanctuary, with late light shining through the windows, my anxieties decided to take a break, and my soul seemed suddenly, surprisingly settled. I looked around at the people scattered across the pews. They were my people—and I say that not possessively, but communally. We shared a place, a time, and, for a while that day, a task—ex officio all.
Michael Dauterman introduced the candidate and laid out the plan for our time together. Then she played. In case you’re interested, it was Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in D Major (I had to ask Michael again today). Some of our group, I’m sure, took note of her interpretive choices and the subtleties of technique. I, on the other hand, noticed that her hands and feet actually moved separately but somehow in sync. Coordination always amazes me. She was playing the organ, but she could just as easily have been juggling while riding a unicycle.
But then—ah!—there were the sounds her juggling produced! I can’t explain to you one note she played or one choice she made. But I could sit there in the pew and be in it all. That was good enough for me. From pipes through ears to heart.
An artist puts jots on a page, and 400 years later another artist brings them to life. DNA plucked from a mosquito in amber? No, it’s a duet across centuries; it’s time rendered meaningless; it’s the kind of beauty that only those beings who are a little lower than the angels can create—a beauty that brushes against heaven and plumbs the depths of souls. And I was there for it, held in those notes with the 20 others in the room.
Remember when we shared pews? When we gathered in soaring notes together and sang together and slipped out of time together and rejoiced and prayed together and found in hymns sung and words spoken the truth we needed? We rather casually called it “going to church.” One evening, with 20 or so other folks, during an interview with a music candidate, I remembered how that feels. It’s like nothing else in the world.
Soon. Again.
In Christ,
Mark Westmoreland,
Senior Pastor