a bobolink and a noted clergy...

yesterday was wonderful.
it is so good to be at momma and daddy's church and be with them on sundays.
momma did not tell us she was singing a solo with the choir! but she did and it was wonderful. it was funny because during one part of the last congregational hymn she sang an alto line that none of the other altos sang and with out looking up i knew immediately it was her sweet voice. i sat there and thought how probably no other person in the church could have picked her sound out that way, except for maybe daddy and boo, but that i knew it with no question. that same soft voice i had heard since before birth. then to have her walk from behind the loft and pick up a mic, i was so excited to get a public showing of the very singer i was just remembering so dearly from youth. so beautiful.

it is always good to hear daddy preach.
in my about me i describe myself as the daughter of a man who is not afriad to speak the truth. it is true. i could also describe myself as the daughter who sometimes cringes when he does. i have a tendency to be all talk and no action. i can get fired up at home, but its scary to speak your mind in public. its even harder to speak the Lord's words. its even harder sometimes to be the little girl sitting in the first pew listening to her daddy "step on toes". but also it is wonderful. it is inspiring. i think in human experiance there are opportunities to be decent, there are opportunities to be extraordinary, and then there are chances to touch on the divine. moments where we can look at a road before us and choose not to take it, to take it with hesitance, or to barrell through it like a wild sheep through a hedge! yesterday i watched daddy follow in the footsteps of violent sheep our family has known and loved.

the sermon was out of the book of james. following the litergy. but isn't it like God, it was exactly what the church needed to hear. sometimes the hardest thing to preach is what the church needs to hear. but preach it he did. he didn't bang the pulpit like jonathan edwards or dramatize his plight in life like hawthorne's minister in a black veil, but he stood up there like a man who had lived this last week in the presence of the divine. bowed with his wife in silent prayer, renewed. humbled within the walls of his office in study of the word, refreshed. transformed before he took the stage by the holy spirit, his lips no longer his own, but changed into an instrument of the Father. simple. profound. bold. truth speaking.

emily dickinson, whom i have enjoyed quoting as of late, stopped going to church as an adult.
it greatly shamed her father, a popular amherst lawyer, that she so publicly shunned the practice of her faith in a community setting, but emily believed that she could not worship with hypocrits. it delights me to consider the thought that she might have joyed in a fellowship under a preacher like the one i heard yesterday.

today my monday was better because my wonderful parents helped me renew my soul in fellowship yesterday. i pray that the rest of the congregation allowed the same renewal, but like emily, i fear that perhaps some did not.

today i am listening to:
ben taylor--deeper than gravity--nothing that i can do
rosie thomas--these friends of mine--much father to go
coday anthony--the forgotten album--beneath

some keep the sabbath by going to church
i keep it staying at home
with a bobolink for a choister
and orchid for a dome.

God speaks a noted clergy
and the sermon is never long
so instead of getting to heaven at last
im going all along.
--e.d.