The strength of a single voice
Why it matters when we sing
The first thing you need to know about my church is that we sing.
Actually the first thing you need to know is that we are Catholic and we are welcoming and we are full of joy, adjectives you don’t often hear in the same sentence, which is a problem to tackle on another day, because the day in question was decidedly not a problem.
When I say we sing, I mean we will startle you out of your seat.
The first time my family slid into the pews, it took half of one hymn for me to turn to my spouse over the squirming squabbling scrum of two small children and mouth WHAT IS GOING ON, THIS IS AMAZING to which his equally wide eyes nodded back RIGHT?!
When I say we sing, I mean that whenever friends come to visit or new folks join our community, the first thing they always say is the music! and the second thing they always say is everyone is so welcoming and the third thing they always say is you can feel the joy in this place.
The second thing you need to know about my church is that the worship space was built in-the-round. This means that when you walk in the doors, the altar and the ambo (the podium where the Scripture is read) are right in the middle and the pews spread out on every side like a starfish.
This means that when you are looking at the altar or the ambo, you are also looking at other people. This means that you see the People of God when you hear the Word of God and eat the Body of God. This means that you see the holy radiating out on every side all the time, like a star, like a burst, like the sun.
The third thing you need to know about my church is that we call ourselves The Church of the Last Minute because we often start not-quite-on-time. This means that families love it, and chatty folks love it, and the always-trying-but-still-tardy love it. (Which means that I love it three-fold.)
Which means that on the particular Sunday in question—which was not a problem, which was Pentecost—I slid into the pew with the squirming squabbling scrum of many more children than when we first started worshipping here, which would make even more of a scene except that we are in-the-round and of-the-Last-Minute, which means that I could see how many beautiful bustling bedraggled churchgoers with bedhaired children were still sliding into pews, too. So all would be well, and all would be well, and all manner of things would be well.
And what happened to be very well on this particular Pentecost was the voice of the man sitting right behind me. Because I tell you, once the children were moderately settled and the song of procession was rousingly begun, this brother-in-Christ behind me opened his mouth and my jaw dropped to the floor.