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Friday, April 14, 2017

Just Sing.

Sharon Penley is the choir director at First Pres in Vicksburg.  Every week, as we choir members go to do the Sunday morning anthem, Sharon will make eye contact with whoever happens to be looking up, and will mouth the words, "Just sing."

And we do.  We are a pretty small choir, but the level of musicality is - for a small group of singers in a small town church - fairly high.  We work pretty well together, with a decent balance.  Our sound is made even better by the work of the virtuoso organist, Barbara Tracy, an unsung hero working a lovely pipe organ to its fullest potential.

This past week during rehearsal, Sharon clarified what she means by the phrase Just Sing.  During the rehearsals, she said, we are working on notes and rhythms and rests and blending, and all of the mechanics of singing.  During that time, we become aware of the physicality, and we work to make the song sound like it was intended - meeting the intent of both the composer and the director.

It is hard, she explained, to make the transition from rehearsal to worship without moving it into the performance realm.  And what we are doing, when we sing in the church service, has nothing to do with performance.  It has to do with worship.  "You are worshiping in rhythm and notes," she explained.

This week is Holy Week, and predictably, this past Sunday's church service had a huge number of powerful songs - Palm Sunday is a time for singing loud and joyfully.  There was a lovely duet between organ and piano.  Children's choir singing their hearts out while processing with palm branches.

After the Lord's Prayer, my friend Paul leaned over to me and said, "Have you heard her sing this one?"  I shook my head.  It was a powerful tune called The Holy City, and it was one of my favorites when I was a kid.  The late Doyle Langley, uber-tenor in my home church in Greenville, would sing it from time to time, and I would listen to his voice soar impossibly higher and higher, providing awe-inspiring counterpoint with the Pendleton Street organ.

(I heard the words wrong, of course, and my 10-year-old self could be heard singing my own mondegreen version for the weeks following Doyle's solo.)

This Palm Sunday, as Sharon took a breath and began, I glanced over at the other choir members, all of whom had unconsciously leaned forward in anticipation.  The song - a tone poem of sorts -starts out as recitation of a dream.  Low and deep, as if sharing a secret, Sharon built the image of children singing, and the power of her voice rumbled through the verse, a powerful engine building to the refrain.

And when she hit the refrain, her voice soared and the raw power of her song ran through the whole congregation like electricity.  Next verse, the same thing.  Impossibly, the organ increased its volume, and Sharon's voice did, too.  By the time the third verse was concluded, every eye - congregation and choir - was open wide, and every body leaned forward, not wanting to miss a single note.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem.  Sing, for the night is o'er.
Hosannah, in the highest.  Hosannah forevermore!

Sharon sang a duet with the full organ, effortlessly matching power and timbre, instrument to instrument.

It was thrilling.

In that dead silence that followed - the long beat between the last note and the universal congregational 'amens' - Paul leaned over to me and gave a stage whisper that the whole choir heard.  "That, Crorey, is what she means when she says, 'Just Sing'.

Our anthem was a beautiful, powerful piece that we all sang with wild abandon. We worshiped God, as Sharon says, through notes and rhythm.

There exist in my own life so many places where I get worked up about the song, the notes, the pitch, the breath, and the phrasing.  Through all of the overthinking and focusing on the mechanics, my voice comes out weak and timid, for fear of making a mistake.  I forget to Just Sing.  It shows up in a lot of areas of my life.

My faith is tentative, and sometimes I am uncomfortable sharing.

My work, where I fret over decisions instead of just taking the lead.

My friendships, where I worry about saying the wrong thing, and instead just remain quiet.

Some of those times, I need to hear those words from Sharon, and simply join my voice to the organ.
And just sing.