Body, mind, spirit, voice, it takes the whole person to sing and rejoice

Friday I realized that the two concepts I most obsess over, that I spend so much time trying to figure out, "infinity" and "unity"… are the two words that are used in setting levels for sound. (unity is "0", a magical concept of when input and output are the same, infinity is when there's no sound) Of course.

Saturday I learned: Care means not giving up when everyone else has.

Sunday was Palm Sunday, the weirdest Sunday of the church year. Palm Sunday has to get you from joy and celebration through the Passion (since these events happen in the middle of the week but we can't trust people to go to church on the weekdays.

Palm Sunday is Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem. Jerusalem, during Passover. The political situation was charged, there were people piling in from everywhere, looking for someone to lead a revolution. Into this comes Jesus, riding on a donkey, not a warhorse, which is the first break of expectation (I mean, really, a donkey is awkward). But still, they shout praises and throw palms down and strip off their clothes to make a Biblical red carpet.

Thus begins Holy Week, my favorite week of the year, the week at the end of Lent where the whole Christian story really happens. I'll be updating you on where we are in the story throughout this week. Holy Week has come at the last of my 7 straight weeks of tech (ANY YOUNGER ONES WHO MAY BE READING THIS BLOG, SAVE YOURSELVES AND NEVER DO THIS), where I am exhausted and therefore in need of much church. And luckily, I now have more and more church than I used to...

Many people who read this blog have most often seen me in a choir loft. With both of my parents being church musicians, I've been singing in choirs for as long as I can remember, consistently, through my first semester of college. Choir camps nearly every summer since… 2nd grade?, weekends of larger choir festivals, singing with some pretty big-name directors/composers in the church music field. I grew up with church music, not "contemporary Christian", but Rutter, Britten, Mozart. I LOVE this music, and I love singing in choirs. Choir was never an option for me, growing up. Every Sunday I had choir. No question. And I was the smart aleck sitting in the back row in youth choir because I knew most of the anthems because I'd been hearing them my entire life, sure, but I did love it. We can very easily track my interest in speech back to choirs. Pronunciation was a strength of mine, getting the exact shape of the mouth for the vowel. Singing in church choirs is joyful and extremely comfortable for me. It's a place and situation that has very specific rules and behaviors which I know intimately. And there is nothing like lifting your voice alongside others in praise. Choirs were my first real experience with collaboration. You blend, you listen to others, you don't try to be noticed, but you also have to sing out and enter with strength and hit those consonants or else it will sound flimsy. The choir creates a whole that is larger, and that whole is the goal of everyone involved.

I was in a choir through Tisch my first semester of college, as a 2 credit elective, but after that, I wasn't able to commit to the time a choir needed. So I have sung at Bon Air whenever I've been back in Virginia, but mostly sat at church in New York listening to beautiful choirs and singing hymns with particular gusto. And while I've been singing hymns with particular gusto, a woman at my church noticed me, and noticed my tendency to sing the alto line, and started talking to me about joining the Parish Choir. Having been on the other side of this equation at Bon Air, I was both highly amused at being approached and heartbroken to say that I could not join. And throughout the years, this woman has seen me and mentioned the choir, assuring me it was very casual and didn't take up a lot of time and I didn't even have to come to rehearsal on Wednesday nights if I could just show up before the service on Sunday morning. Being a child of choir directors, I disbelieved this, knowing that rehearsal was important.

In the moments when the two of us would run into each other this semester, she would mention rehearsal at 8:15am on Sunday, but never Wednesday. I started to wonder if they had stopped rehearsing on Wednesday nights. About a month ago, the week after she tried to recruit me yet again, there was an announcement in the bulletin saying, "THE PARISH CHOIR WANTS YOU!" which said that rehearsal was Sunday, 8:15am. After a couple weeks where I was operating a show in a church and therefore had to be on call in case that church was confused as to what we did with the sound system, I found the woman during coffee hour and said, "Next week. I'll be there."

And thus, I joined the choir.

I was nervous coming into the church early that Sunday morning. I'm confident in my choir-singing abilities (I better be, at this point), but any new situation sends me into panic, really. But, of course, I was welcomed with open arms. It's a small choir that mostly sings hymns during communion at the early service, very casual, very welcoming. The woman had already set aside a robe for me. We warmed up with "O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing", which is one of my favorite hymns, and having the opportunity to sing with other people in this setting again was incredibly moving.

It's a lovely group that I'm so grateful to be a part of. Odd how getting up supremely early is more restful than sleeping late on Sundays. Beautiful.

Not fear

Sister Wendy Beckett. Consecrated virgin, hermit, and art historian. Hearing her talk about art and sensuality is incredible (though that's not the focus of this video). Here she says some fabulous things about fundamentalism and why we go to church.

Love unconcerned with being returned

Yesterday I learned:

Love is its strongest (and most useful?) when it is directional.

Like most things, I suppose.

I'm often overwhelmed with feelings of love, gratitude, etc. and I have no idea what to do about them because I don't know how to express them. I don't have anything to direct them towards. No vessel to pour them in.

But man… if I can direct it towards making you muffins, or fixing your sound system… prepare to be overwhelmed.

Which is why I wrote this blog at 1:13am, having just gotten back to my apartment, exhausted, but very happy.

It's been one week!

oof, I'm behind.

Tech. But I am approaching my last PHTS tech week of the semester, and this last one should be easier. This week is a bit trying. I've been in tech for the past... 5 weeks, really. I'm getting a bit tired.

SO.

Wednesday I learned: For a good time, approach the next piece of art you encounter as a conversation between you and that work.

Thursday I learned: JUST ASK. If you don't ask, people will think you know, and then it gets awkward for everyone if you've been pretending to know but, when the information becomes necessary, you don't. (this is rather huge for me, as I'm so often scared to ask questions.)

Friday I learned: Not knowing can be terribly exciting.

Saturday I learned: Half an hour spent outside doing nothing in a park makes the next 3 hours of work much more productive.

Sunday I learned: It's a joy to be able to help others. To be qualified to help others, to be equipped to help others.

Monday I learned: Sometimes releasing your feelings (particularly anxieties and stresses) to another person who wants to be there for you is actually extremely helpful.

Tuesday I learned: Similarly: we don't have to carry everything ourselves.

Wednesday I learned: It is vital to know what you can and cannot do at a certain point. (I think of this in contexts of productions, but it's relevant for the larger sense too.) You pick your battles, and you fight them hard, and if they're easily won you pick more. But if you try to fight everything, you will win nothing.

I have 3 major posts to make. Soon. Wrapping up techs, figuring out post-college life (putting down a deposit for an apartment today, hoping all goes well--trying to rent an apartment as a graduating freelancer is a headache).

Somebody tell me all there is to know

Today I learned: there is nothing that is not of God.

Oh wait, I learned that a long time ago. I learned that during the first conference I worked at Montreat back in 2009 when I came to understand the Doctrine of Divine Sovereignty.

I learn that all the time.

But here's the thing about knowledge: you are never done with it. It is never, "Oh, I've got it, let's move forward." Not once you get past memorizing times tables. It is moments of clarity, bursts of understanding, that we then complicate and dance with and lose and regain and then burst again. We are never done with it. Our relationship to everything we've learned changes with each new experience, so we will learn the same things over and over and over again in new lights with the same joy of discovery.

Do it in the name of living

In the last few days I have learned a lot of things. They've been jam-packed both literally and emotionally.

Thursday: Competition can very easily turn into two people with similar interests learning from each other, if you navigate it well.

Friday: I had a very long conversation with a good friend of mine stretching quite late into the night/early in the morning, during which we passionately debated pretty much everything to be debated and traveled through nearly the entire spectrum of human emotion. The tidbit from this conversation I'll share here was:

Her: You can't love everyone, even if you say it's your job.
Me: Yes, but I can't be okay with NOT loving someone. I can't say, "Oh, I don't love them, that's fine."
Her: But still. You're not Jesus.
Me: But we're all called to be Christ to the world!
Her: Colleen, if you die for my sins, I will RESURRECT you just to kill you myself. MY SINS ARE MY OWN. YES, I'M QUOTING PATTI SMITH AT YOU!

I was thinking about this, the "my sins are my own" vs. "my sins are God's" and what I think it actually is is, "our sins are each other's". We are responsible for each other, for each other's wellbeing, for each other's development, for each other's lives. What Christ left for us, the Holy Spirit coming down during Pentecost, was, "Okay, you have to do this for each other, now. Love each other as I have loved you."

Saturday: Sometimes, being around people without any agenda except hanging out and being together is just as restful as sleep. (this is not to dismiss the importance of sleep, which I am well aware of. but I'm not used to being social.)

Sunday: Just take the scary first step, already. You'll be happier for it. (I will expand on this later. Sunday was thrilling.)

Monday: It's possible to make time for things you think you're too busy for if you care about them.


Last night I got 8 hours of sleep. It was awesome. 4 of my 10 shows are done (I was pretending it was 9, but really, it's 10.) After this week, 6 out of 10 will be done. Phew.