Ponderings

My first adult church was an enchanted place with historic architecture (the rounded Akron Plan), stained glass windows, and a pipe organ that sang. The First Congregational UCC in Menomonie, Wisconsin came complete with bats in the belfry and in every other dark corner.

In rich wooden pews, scratched with years of stories, I learned hymnody from the Pilgrim Hymnal. Having grown up in Sunday School and church camps, coming of age in praise chorus style worship, the richness of European style hymnody was an acquired taste to which I’d not yet become accustomed. The entry point was a response that we sang each week with the same words, same tune, and same placement in worship. The repetition seared the simple classic lines in my soul and whetted my appetite for the then foreign style of hymnody.

The Gloria Patri was the response that opened a window in my soul. The Gloria Patri was steady even as I entered the turbulent theological and spiritual waters of seminary. My dear friend Julie cross-stitched these words for me and they buoyed my timid feet.

“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen, amen.”

After four years of grounding, 3 of which were spent in the choir pews where the sounds of the organ danced throughout my body, our pastor left and we entered the strange odyssey of the interim land. Our interim was fresh out of seminary but with an uncanny amount of wisdom. In several important ways she quietly laid groundwork for the congregation to celebrate its past while moving boldly into the future. I had and have immense appreciation for her ministry and thoroughly enjoyed watching it unfold.

Until she changed the Gloria Patri.

One week the music changed so we were expected to sing the familiar lines to unfamiliar sounds. The next week the music reverted to our comfort zones but the words were jolting, “Glory to the Creator, and to the Christ, and to the Spirit, One!” My head was with the new words; inclusive language was in vogue and I a seminarian ready to lead the charge. But my heart longed for the comfort of the Holy Ghost. Not that I believed in ghosts, holy or otherwise, but I longed for the comfort of the syllables that my mouth could make without thought.

My head was no match for my heart in those days and the experience made me downright crabby. “She took my Gloria Patri!” was my loud and public lament.

All these years later, now with teenage children who don’t even know the Gloria Patri, I still can feel my visceral reaction to change. My worship habits are more subtle now, but every bit as entrenched. I cannot start Advent without “Jesus, Jesus” and Lent begins with “Be Still and Know” and ends with the promise of Easter’s “Halle, Halle”. None of these responses may be noteworthy in their own right, but their consistent ebb and flow throughout the past decade has woven them deep into my being.

As we act our way into being, moving pews in the sanctuary and trying new things in worship, I remember the interim that took my Gloria Patri. Each new position of a chair, each new shape of a bulletin, each new sound in worship, represents both gain and loss. Perhaps not with the timelessness tone of the Gloria Patri, but certainly with a promise more lyrical, Carrie Newcomer offers wisdom for times of transition with her song, “Leaves Don’t Drop”:

Leaves don’t drop they just let go,
And make a place for seeds to grow.
Every season brings a change,
A seed is what a tree contains,
To die and live is life’s refrain.
… And this I know is true.