...is so personal.
I think all of the music in church is well selected and of good quality....but some of it I find dry, unengaging and unmoving. On the other hand I love some of it and am moved by some of it to the point of tears.
Problem is, I imagine some of what I would be more than happy to do without others value and some of what I love others deplore.
Take today for example. It was jazz mass. (Wonderful in my book). We sang "I Love to Tell the Story." I wondered how many people knew this song. I wondered what others thought of it. I tried to figure out a bit of what I though of it.
I sang most of it (including the 2nd verse) with only peeks at the hymn book. I know this song. This is a song from my childhood. These old songs bridge the gap between the more conservative place from which I have come (which will always be part of me in some ways) and the more liberal place in which I am now. Singing them at Gethsemane is an interesting and rewarding connective experience. (Not that the hymns we usually sing are liberal at all, just not so deeply familiar and evocative for me, and Gethsemane is in general more liberal than the churches from my childhood and past.)
I'm not at all sure that I would be much interested in "I Love to Tell the Story" if I didn't know it from my past. But I do. It took me back to specific places. It reminded me of my grandparents. It made connections between various parts of my faith and life for me. And it had new meaning as well as old because my grandmother and grandfather, who are strongly associated with my faith and religious experience as a child, and for whom I think their faith meant practically everything, both died within the last couple years. The 2nd verse includes the words..."and when in scenes of glory I sing the new, new song; 't will be the old, old story that I have loved so long."....you see where I'm going with this I guess.
I cried this morning in church and I'm crying even more now.
