Hey…it’s Sunday morning! Time for a little pipe organ music. Well, in this case just a virtual organ (thanks to the Garritan Pipe Organ collection of sampled sounds) and Logic Pro X (audio/midi recording/mixing software) and the ability to record the hands and then the pedals separately.
Hmmm…maybe the organist (me) is virtual, too. I better check in the mirror to be sure I really can see my reflection to confirm that I really exist, although thanks to a wonderful cultural history of horror stories about organists whose reflections can’t been seen in mirrors, maybe I better not take the chance I won’t see mine!
This is a fun piece to play, in person as well as virtual. Have a good Sunday morning.
This will appear in the next couple weeks as part of a Corona Sabbath post, but it’s posted here, by itself, for your weekend pleasure. This is a virtual performance–each choir member, at home, alone, records their part against a background track which is then assembled later. It’s their second foray into this artform. With each piece they get better and better. There will be more. Stay tuned!
The pictures of the choir and congregation are from church services and caroling parties and concerts over recent years.
These weeks when we cannot gather in person for Sunday worship, Lakewood United Church of Christ is providing brief weekly sabbath programs for you to listen to on your own or with others in your social isolation group. They will be posted on Friday so that you can schedule your sabbath time to suit your schedule and your spiritual inclinations. We hope these programs are of spiritual support to you in these difficult times.
During these summer weeks, the theme being used in “Grounded.” Some of us feel that shelter-in-place feels like being grounded. Some would normally have travel plans and feel grounded. With the many challenges facing our society, it is important to feel
grounded. So these Summer Sundays will focus on key concepts in Christianity that provide grounding. So, welcome to “Grounded.” This post focuses on healing.
There is a scripture reading offered by Chip Cosper and a meditation by Pastor Kim Wells as well as music offered by Music Director Hilton Kean Jones.
You are invited to find a quiet space, inside or outside. Light a candle. Take a look around you. Breathe. Life-giving breath. Be present.
You may begin by offering this reading:
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
–The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
(poem submitted by Sue Sherwood) When you are ready, start the video below.
(For written text of the above video click HERE.) As you listen to the music from Hilton which follows, you are invited to notice the thoughts and feelings and that arise for you.
Before closing, today’s Corona Sabbath presents a video of scenes from the life of the Lakewood UCC community created by Yoko and Randy with music performed by them.
After viewing the video, you are invited to offer the following closing –
O mover of miracles within me
Pour the healing waters of compassion
On the wounded body of humanity
And make it whole, make it whole!
–Ancient Sanskrit Prayer
Breathe. Breathe again. Be filled. With a desire for wholeness. Extinguish your candle and engage whatever may come with a sense of peace and a desire grow and serve.
12 y.o. piano player 6’1″ me standing in line at the archetypal church potluck supper
This whole online church presence thing is constantly evolving. One of the things that only now is finally falling into place is when to post some hymns for folks to sing at home. I’d done some before, but it was early in the pandemic and I recorded them more to have something to do at 3 a.m. when I couldn’t sleep because of worry. Now, however, it seems that what I did then is what to do now: have a hymn or two mid-week as sort of a mid-week touching base.
So, this is the first hymn posted purposely mid-week for you to enjoy and sing along to if you wish. NCH stands for New Century Hymnal. If you don’t happen to have one, often you can find the words at hymnary.org, perhaps under a slightly different title. You can also look there for all the hymn texts that fit that hymn tune. The hymn tune name for this hymn is PLEADING SAVIOR (melody from The Christian Lyre, 1831).
1831 definitely qualifies this tune as “old timey!” Even though I’m a conservatory trained composer/organist and a retired music professor, my roots are in deep, deep Southern Illinois…Snuffy Smith country, down where Illinois meets Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri. In fact, if you’re up on Lookout Mountain, you can see all four states.
My father was a Methodist minister and I was pressed into playing for Wednesday night prayer meeting and Sunday night services. Those must have been very patient parishioners because I was doing this long before I really was able to do it proficiently. But…before long I was good enough to do the big camp meeting at summer church camps under the giant circus tent. I learned how to jerk all the right emotions for altar calls and whoop’em up happy-dance hymns.
I guess I’ve never lost the fondness for those kind of hymns even though I adore a good Bach chorale. This hymn is definitely old-timey. Just play the video below and sing along…
All this week, there has been a series of daily Advent and Christmas songs from my collection of organ pieces, published by Concordia Press: “9 Seasonal Voluntaries. This is #5 in that lead-up to tonight’s Christmas in July Zoom, the Christmas favorite, “What Child is This.”
These weeks when we cannot gather in person for Sunday worship, Lakewood United Church of Christ is providing brief weekly sabbath programs for you to listen to on your own or with others in your social isolation group. They will be posted on Friday so that you can schedule your sabbath time to suit your schedule and your spiritual inclinations. We hope these programs are of spiritual support to you in these difficult times.
All this week, there has been a series of daily Advent and Christmas songs from my collection of organ pieces, published by Concordia Press: “9 Seasonal Voluntaries. This is #5 in that lead-up to tonight’s Christmas in July Zoom, the Christmas favorite, “What Child is This.”
Lakewood United Church of Christ 