Looking back and looking ahead
It’s a newish tradition, if memory serves (as it so rarely does these days), but the Wednesday Eucharist at the conference is always Rite One, with the propers for the Commemoration of the Departed, and this year with the prayers from the Rite One Burial Office, as the rubrics allow. We celebrate at the high altar in All Saints’ Chapel.
It may look as if the altar is fixed to the back wall. It is not. You can actually squeeze behind it for a versus populum celebration. But why on earth would anyone do that? Eastward position for me.
During the prayers, the necrology is read: a list provided by the conferees of people whom we love but see no longer. Barbara Crafton had the excellent idea that she and I would alternate names to avoid the droning of a single voice (it’s always a long list), taking care that she would be the one to name her late husband, the beloved Q.
I was delighted to see Anita Lofton’s name. Anita was the organist at St Philip’s, Davieshire, the first Episcopal church I attended. We were never exactly close, but she was dear to me, and the first time I saw her at the conference—she was a regular, I was a newbie—I was thrilled. Pretty early on I mentioned that I was hoping to become a priest. “Yeah, I was expecting that,” she said.
May she rest in peace and rise in glory.
The celebrant had not sung a Rite One service since exactly this time last year, and there were some hiccups; but he is pleased to say that he kept pitch during the Sursum Corda and preface, so that the organist did not have to give a corrective A-flat to get the Missa Marialis Sanctus off to a right start. He thanks heaven for small favors.
Why is he speaking of himself in the third person? He has no idea.
Holy Eucharist for the Departed—including Mother Barbara’s characteristically excellent sermon—looks back to those whom we have loved, but it also looks forward to the life of the world to come. A similar Janus-faced moment came later in the day, at the reception for members of the Society for the Sewanee Church Music Conference. We look back with gratitude on our SCMC experiences over the years, and we want to ensure the continuation and financial stability of the conference for years to come. So the Society was formed a few years ago to preserve for others what we have so enjoyed, and in particular to fund scholarships for new attendees. The project has been more successful, more quickly, than I think anyone expected. This year three scholarships were offered; with a new major gift coming in, I expect there will be more next year.
I take the treasurer aside. “Can you take stock transfers?” I ask. (This is a thing I do on a very small scale near the end of each year, typically for the School of Theology at Sewanee and for Episcopal Relief and Development. Mine will not be a major gift.) “There must be a way,” she replies: “I’ll figure it out and get back to you.”
The commission has been a given a green light, with the understanding that if no good musical ideas come, it doesn’t need to get written. Here’s the full text by George Herbert to bring today’s post to a close (I have a lot more I could blog about, but rehearsal starts in forty-five minutes and I need to get myself put together and walk the mile or so to the Chapel of the Apostles by that time):
The shepherds sing; and shall I silent be?
My God, no hymn for Thee?
My soul's a shepherd too; a flock it feeds
Of thoughts, and words, and deeds.
The pasture is Thy word: the streams, Thy grace
Enriching all the place.
Shepherd and flock shall sing, and all my powers
Outsing the daylight hours.
Then will we chide the sun for letting night
Take up his place and right:
We sing one common Lord; wherefore he should
Himself the candle hold.
I will go searching, till I find a sun
Shall stay, till we have done;
A willing shiner, that shall shine as gladly,
As frost-nipped suns look sadly.
Then will we sing, and shine all our own day,
And one another pay:
His beams shall cheer my breast, and both so twine,
Till ev'n His beams sing, and my music shine.