From the Rector

Dear Friends in Christ,

Last Sunday was the close of our choir’s program year. I wanted to take a minute to say thank you to everyone who has sung in this very strange year. Whether it was online or in the gardens or in the church we have made music again and again even when it looked like it might not be possible.

It would be impossible though, I think, to have done otherwise. In the midst of trials and tribulations, Christians sing. In the midst of grief, we sing. Caught up with joy, weighed down with sorrow, or just to make slow minutes go by a little faster, we sing. It’s a natural human need. It’s a sign of hope. It’s a kind of resistance against the bland brutalities of our days.

So, during this pandemic, it has seemed a good and holy thing for us to sing — to find ways to do this ancient thing in a new way.

We’ve had music in some form or another as part of every service since the pandemic began. Whether the simple chant of the psalms or the great hymns of Christmas Eve complete with brass accompaniment, we have heard the choir and joined our prayers to theirs. It took untold hours, creativity, and technical prowess to make it all happen every week.

The heart of a Christian community is worship and the essence of worship is singing — and this comes from the heart of God’s creation itself. The ancients thought there was such a thing as the “music of the spheres,” that the planets made music as they spun through space — almost as if their dance was choreographed with the song that is the beating of God’s heart.

After the Enlightenment, this was thought ridiculous, but recently an experiment by physicists divided the orbital periods of the planets in half again and again until they were literally audible. The piece was named "Carmen of the Spheres."

So perhaps it wasn’t such a silly concept after all.

There is music at the very heart of Creation and in the halls of Heaven, and the Bible makes it plain that music is at the very heart of worship, and therefore at the heart of God.

There is no preaching in Heaven; it isn’t needed. There is no edifying reading in Heaven; it isn’t needed. There is no social work, no pastoral care, not even any Bible reading, and certainly no Biblical Criticism in Heaven; they aren’t needed.

The only thing that we know about Heaven for certain is that Heaven is the presence of God and that he is worshipped by all there, and that that worship is cast in song as Angels and Archangels and all the company of Heaven sing in adoration.

Thank you to the choirs, to Dr Campbell, to Dr Appel and to those who have supported the music program in so many ways over the years. It was a gift to have your voices joined with those in Heaven in a year when we needed those hymns of hope and praise so much.

Fr Robert