The daily grind is not very grinding
Rehearsal begins promptly at 9:00 in the Chapel of the Apostles. (Everything begins promptly at the Sewanee Church Music Conference, a discipline for which I am very grateful.) Announcements first. I have a quick one myself:
Besides being available by appointment, I will also sit in the chapel after the afternoon rehearsal in case anyone wants to drop in. Because some questions have arisen, let me say that you do not need to be an Episcopalian to make a confession or be anointed for healing. Any baptized Christian is welcome. In the sacrament of healing, following the Prayer Book—as I have twice publicly and solemnly engaged to do [yes, I actually said that, and I saw some smiles of agreement around the room]—I will first lay hands on you and then anoint you. Then we’ll pray the Lord’s Prayer together and I’ll conclude with the “strong tower” prayer. If you don’t know it, it’s a banger. If you want to pray for healing for someone else, I won’t anoint you, because we don’t celebrate the sacraments vicariously, but I’ll lay hands on you and pray with you.
The full rite of healing takes just two or three minutes. Reconciliation takes . . . as long as it takes.
“The first thing we do is form a choir,” Jeremy Filsell tells us in what he himself describes as a “cut-glass British accent.” By this he means that we’re going to get organized and seated by parts. He seems dismayed by our surplus of tenors. At first I sit with the second tenors—third row on the cantoris side—the part I’ve been singing since grad school. But then I ask Jeremy if he wants me to switch to baritone. He welcomes that, so I trot over to be with the baritones—back row on the decani side.
It was only then that I remembered I had already learned every single note of the tenor part before I arrived. Now I’ll be sightreading everything. Well, fortunately I’m reasonably good at that. My first rehearsal as a baritone actually goes rather well, and I discover that I have a perfectly solid E2. That’s this note:
I’m pretty sure I had not sung this note since the late 80s.
The ravages of age, which have seriously damaged my falsetto, have also given me my lower register back—without (yet) shaving anything off the top of my tenor range. I’ll take that deal.
Holy Eucharist, Rite Two, for Saint Benedict of Nursia. Barbara Crafton celebrates and preaches, and I serve as deacon. The conference choir (which is to say, everybody in attendance) sings the Sanctus/Benedictus and Agnus Dei from Kenneth Leighton’s Communion Service in D, and I get to stand at the altar and hear how good it’s already sounding.
Following the afternoon rehearsal I sit in the chapel. Experience sitting for confessions in an Anglo-Catholic parish with a posted time for confession has taught me that I get some of my best praying done when I’m waiting for penitents who don’t come. I wait long enough to pray for every conferee by name. Some of them I don’t even know yet. Some I know only slightly. Some I know well enough that I can pray for specific needs.
Just as my time is coming to an end, I have the privilege of administering the sacrament of healing.
The Almighty Lord, who is a strong tower to all who put their trust in him, to whom all things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth bow and obey: Be now and evermore your defense, and make you know and feel that the only Name given under heaven for health and salvation is the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
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