Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...

Friday 31 October 2008

I loved to choose, and see my path...

So, there we are at choir rehearsal, two and a half flights up, and the choir is on their chairs on risers, with their hymnals, purses, coats, water bottles, CANES, folders, bags of cough drops, kleenex boxes, and the various detritus of life strewn about them.
And we've done the psalm, we've done the gospel acclamation, or rather, the THREE Gospel acclamations because I can't be certain which Mass which presider will have chosen and thus, which Gospel need to be... acclaimed. (I chose which psalm, on the basis that The Lord is my Shepherd is what everyone will want to sing and i will never hear the end of it if we don't....Being "pastorally" rather than "liturgically" minded, if you will.)
And we've absolutely flown through the Tallis and the Croft, they both sound great, and I'm thinking to use a hymn as another choir anthem, but since the Dread Hymnal Gather has an insufficiency of of real hymns I am up on the risers passing it out -- as we have a complete black-out, and we all discover that what were thought to be emergency lights with their own back-up batteries are not.
So by the light of someone's cell phone I crawl in the the otherwise pitch blackness on my hand and knees to the stairs to the risers, inch down them by means of the railing and go into the side room to open a window and let in a little more light, and find a flashlight.
And after much hub-bub, (which I wont go into, but which involved yelling at one chorister repeatedly to stand still on the top riser until we made it possible for said chorister to see a little bit, and if feelings of said chorister were hurt and said chorister does not return I will be almost relieved, but I digress... oops, I guess I DID go into it here,) we got everyone safely out of the building.
The music we were about rehearse?
A lovely work about trust in the Almighty, you may have heard of it, it's called, Lead Kindly Light.
Is Blessed John having a chuckle at us e'en now?

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