On the last day of school for this year, the girls’ elementary school, Oglethorpe Point, held it’s annual holiday sing along. All
the students sing Christmas songs under the direction of one of our parishioners, Beth Jennings, who teaches music at the school. Beth does a great job of getting the kids to sing and does a number of concerts and presentations throughout the year. This particular sing-along had a unique feature. For one of the numbers there was a guest pianist, the school’s principal, Mr. Carter Akins. As Beth explained, it was important to her that her students see an adult, someone besides their music teacher, playing an instrument and making music. She was spot on, and it was something we had spoken about recently in our Sunday morning parenting group too.
The Church has long been one of the places for adults to engage their artistic side. Kathleen Turner does a great job at
including all kinds of adults in the music at Christ Church, from the adult choir to those who play instruments on special occasions, folks like Brooke Bartlett, Carol Slade, and Brad Hamil. It’s particularly exciting to see that our choristers now sing with the adult choir, something I did when I was a young singer. A part of my deep love of singing came from singing alongside the men in our church choir. But music is not the only artistic expression we find in church. As the Flower and Music Festival reminded us, floral arrangements are another of the ways we engage our artistic sides in church.
In our parenting discussion group we talked about the need for parents to show their children how they engage their artistic side. For some it will be in making music with their kids. For others it will be in sharing their love of photography or painting, or sculpture, or dance. Many adults lose track of their artistic side as they get older. Either they don’t have time for it, or they feel that they outgrow it. Many more rediscover it later in life, and wonder why they let it fall away in the first place.
My own recognition of this is not dissimilar, although it didn’t take me decades to figure it out. I have sung since I was a young child, joining the church choir mid-elementary school. I sang in the church choir, school choirs, barbershop, and even in the seminary choir. But there were years when I didn’t sing much, if at all. I had to drop most of my singing in those years I worked for UPS when I worked every weeknight, making mid-week rehearsals impossible. Then, after getting out of seminary and into the parish, I still didn’t have time. In those first few years, I didn’t really realize how much I missed it. But when I began to sing occasionally with the choir in Poolesville I remembered how much I loved to do it, and how singing actually fed my soul.
Fast forward to Christ Church and a consistently “encouraging” Kathleen Turner, and I find my self singing regularly, most notably with the X Choir, which provides the support for singing at X Church. It is often what I call “close” singing, not just because of the physical space, but because of the tight harmonies and the increasing amount of acapella (no accompaniment). There are often times when our little X Choir is practicing in the choir room and I get chills from the way the voices and notes blend together. It is one of the things that feeds me and gives me energy; it fills me back up where I find myself depleted from other endeavors.
What is your artistic outlet? Do you have one? Did you ever? Is there something you want to try or need to return to? I do know that we have a lot of artists in our parish, yet I suspect there are more who have misplaced that aspect of themselves, or at least don’t engage it very often. God gives us such gifts to make us happy and to make the world a more beautiful place. Worshipping and praising God through art is one of the most intimate statements of faith we can make. Well, it’s a new church year, and soon to be a new calendar year. Perhaps there is a way that you can engage your artistic side as God intends you to.
You don’t have to share your art with anyone. You can sing in the shower; you can dance in your own bedroom; you can keep you paintings in your own studio; you can write songs no one will ever hear; you can write poetry in your diary. Even if it’s just between you and God, don’t miss the opportunity to do something with the artistic gifts God has given you. And if you can, share them with others, and encourage them to do the same!
Tom+
O God, whom saints and angels delight to worship in heaven: Be ever present with your servants who seek through art and music to perfect the praises offered by your people on earth; and grant to them even now glimpses of your beauty, and make them worthy at length to behold it unveiled for evermore; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.