[Faith-talk] 6/25/14 Daily Thought, and a Request

[Paul]

Hello folks and good day on this Wednesday for most of us except our readers in Australia and New Zealand.  I hope and pray that, by God's matchless grace and His providential care, that you are all doing well when you read this message.

This next paragraph won't apply to several of you, but to others it just might.

Shortly before she went home to be with her Lord, Pastor Karolyn Phillips of Guthrie OK expressed a desire to have in her possession for borrowing purposes only the series of articles written by the late Dr. Ralph Montanus (1919-1986), founder of the Gospel Association for the Blind, under the title of "Satan and the Saint," which was serialized in their house organ, "The Gospel Messenger." For those who remember her as a sort of memorial to this great lady of God, would you like me to put these articles together and send them once a week, or should I forbear to do this? Dr. Montanus brought some insights into the subject of Satan and the saint that even I didn't know.  Anyway if you'd like me to post these articles on a once-a-week basis, please reply to the list or privately to my personal email address of
oilofgladness47 at gmail.com.
Thanks for any responses to this.

Audrey Novak Riley contributes today's article entitled "Connecting On Another Channel," rendered as follows:

So how do you pray? Singing with others is how I pray.  It's been that way for as far back as I can remember, chirping along next to my mother and brother in the third pew on the right.  Joining our voices together connects us to each other in ways that are almost indescribable.

I've read that the members of the St. Olaf Choir in Minnesota hold hands as they sing.  That's a visible, tangible expression of the unity and connection that singing together nourishes among those who sing.

Years ago, I was caught up in an intense and unexpected experience of connection and reconnection in music.  It was right at the beginning of the choir field trip of a lifetime to France.  Our director had somehow gotten us an invitation to sing for a Saturday afternoon service at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.  We would join in the service and then sing an extended postlude from the altar steps.  Oh, the excitement!

We had to wear our choir clothes on the plane (all black, like orchestra musicians) and pack our folders in our carry-ons because we'd be going straight to the cathedral from the airport.  We had only a few minutes to warm up and pray together before we were seated in the choir area behind the main altar.  The great organ was in a loft at the far end of the vast space, and I asked my director how the organist way back there and the musicians way up here could possibly communicate--he told me that they used cell phones.

Anyway, the time for our postlude finally came and we arranged ourselves on the altar steps to sing.  And this is when it happened.

We couldn't hear each other.  I could hear the two altos on my left and my right, and the bass behind me, but I couldn't hear anyone else.  I couldn't even hear myself.  The cathedral was so enormous that the sound of our voices didn't come back to us.  How could we harmonize if we couldn't hear each other? How could we possibly connect? Then it came to me.  Trust.  Trust our director (who caught on in a flash and began singing to us as he conducted), trust our hours of preparation, trust each other, trust ourselves, trust our long-practiced connection.  Even if we couldn't hear it, it was real and it was there.

We got through our postlude, feeling more confident and more connected with every note, and the few Parisians who had stuck around to listen seemed pleased.  When we got back to the room where our coats and carry-ons waited, we all collapsed in laughter together.  Joyous laughter? Nervous laughter? Relief? All of the above? I don't know.

What I do know is that this experience of losing connection and then unexpectedly finding it again on another channel was a profound lesson to me.  Trust is another word for faith.  And faith can not only move mountains, it can make music.

And there you have Audrey's reminiscence which I hope was a blessing to you.  The closest thing I ever came to experience this as an observer and not as a participant was when I was a Catholic and had the pleasure and privilege of attending a Sunday morning Mass at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC.  I have heard that this church edifice is the sixth largest Catholic cathedral in the world, and I can believe it.  The organ itself is a wonder of building.  It consists of two consoles, one at either end of the Shrine.  Don't know how it works, but I bought an album of organ works played on that instrument, and it gives one a fleeting audio glimpse of the size of the church.  The grounds also contain a carillon in the Knights' Tower, donated by the Knights of Columbus at the-then cost of $ million.

And there you have it for today.  Until tomorrow when, Lord willing another Daily Thought article will be posted, may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, in these last days in which we live.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul