Ding-a-ling!
Mar. 25th, 2002 10:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
saxikathWow, I'm tired. I can't do late nights so well anymore.
Good to go back to handbell rehearsal tonight. I'm enjoying preparing Easter music. Church hasn't mattered much to me of late; I'm not sure if it's just that my church's rector is heavy into politics and so on, or if it just isn't reaching me on a spiritual level anymore, or maybe both. Whichever, I find little draws me there anymore unless the bell choir is playing.
But Easter music is great. We're playing an arrangement of "Holy Manna" that's a bit lower-key than your usual triumphal Easter music, but it's a nice piece. And the hymns -- most of the classics, though our current music director doesn't do "Hail Thee Festival Day." But we have "Jesus Christ Is Risen Today," "The Day of Resurrection" (with a cool descant), "He Is Risen, He Is Risen," and the one that begins "Alleluia, alleluia, give thanks to the risen Lord..." Good stuff, and made all the better because handbells are just inherently cool.
So I'll make a joyful noise on Sunday, and enjoy it, though the strict religious connotations of it are perhaps not really mine now. But the message that there's always hope, that redemption is always possible -- that, I can hang onto. Trees are starting to show their buds here (perhaps a little too optimistically, given the chill tonight!), and crocuses have started poking their heads up.
Passover and Easter coincide this year the way they in some sense "should," given that the Last Supper was a Passover seder. Redemption and miracles, things worth remembering and celebrating, in whatever ways and whichever metaphors work for any given person. Me, I focus on the music, and on the sunshine and the colors of flowers. It's early this year, so not many flowers yet, but they'll get some to put in the church windows on Sunday morning. I hope it's sunny. And I hope the choir sings the Hallelujah Chorus or something similarly jubilant (and you know, there really isn't any better expression of pure rejoicing than that chorus!). That's what makes Easter for me.
Good to go back to handbell rehearsal tonight. I'm enjoying preparing Easter music. Church hasn't mattered much to me of late; I'm not sure if it's just that my church's rector is heavy into politics and so on, or if it just isn't reaching me on a spiritual level anymore, or maybe both. Whichever, I find little draws me there anymore unless the bell choir is playing.
But Easter music is great. We're playing an arrangement of "Holy Manna" that's a bit lower-key than your usual triumphal Easter music, but it's a nice piece. And the hymns -- most of the classics, though our current music director doesn't do "Hail Thee Festival Day." But we have "Jesus Christ Is Risen Today," "The Day of Resurrection" (with a cool descant), "He Is Risen, He Is Risen," and the one that begins "Alleluia, alleluia, give thanks to the risen Lord..." Good stuff, and made all the better because handbells are just inherently cool.
So I'll make a joyful noise on Sunday, and enjoy it, though the strict religious connotations of it are perhaps not really mine now. But the message that there's always hope, that redemption is always possible -- that, I can hang onto. Trees are starting to show their buds here (perhaps a little too optimistically, given the chill tonight!), and crocuses have started poking their heads up.
Passover and Easter coincide this year the way they in some sense "should," given that the Last Supper was a Passover seder. Redemption and miracles, things worth remembering and celebrating, in whatever ways and whichever metaphors work for any given person. Me, I focus on the music, and on the sunshine and the colors of flowers. It's early this year, so not many flowers yet, but they'll get some to put in the church windows on Sunday morning. I hope it's sunny. And I hope the choir sings the Hallelujah Chorus or something similarly jubilant (and you know, there really isn't any better expression of pure rejoicing than that chorus!). That's what makes Easter for me.
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no subject
Date: 2002-03-25 10:40 pm (UTC)For the longest time, the only thing that kept me in the Catholic church was my role in the choir. I enjoyed the music, plain and simple. I don't think I've been back to church more than a dozen times in the 9+ years since I moved away from the family church.
(Yes, I've looked at churches here, but I haven't found one whose music ministry really reaches out and grabs me.)
I have plenty of fond memories of Easters and Christmases. A lot of those memories involve choir lofts.
...and handbells are inherently cool. ;-)