God's a-gonna build up Zion's walls

And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. (Revelation 21:2)

Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22; see also I Peter 2:5)

Great day! Great day, the righteous marching,
Great day! God’s a-gonna build up Zion’s walls.
(spiritual, which we sang in an arrangement by Warren Martin)

Thirty years ago, I thought the repertoire was the most important aspect of the RSCM Courses, and it was. I thought that the skills I learned from the music directors were important, and they are; I was granted a solid background at the Choir College for which I am grateful, but the Courses have taught me much more. But it took me many years to learn what is most important and best about the RSCM Courses: the people.

It was a delight to chat with the other adults over breakfasts and dinners and suppers in the dining hall; to take an evening “field trip” to a local ice cream shoppe; to talk at length with two of my best friends in a manner that doesn’t happen in our normal routines; to share in a three-hour Lebanese dinner with “a few” (twenty-six, that is) parents and choristers after Sunday Mass.

It was a joy to see Mario again, whom I first met when he was a young tenor at the Course, his voice newly changed. He is now in college and attending this week as an adult participant, and it was good to stand by him in the tenor section for part of the week as we did so many years ago. I did not think our paths would cross again.

It was good to sing under Michael Messina, and to be reminded that we first met long ago at one of the Charlotte RSCM courses for boys, where he was organist and I was there with choristers. I had forgotten this, as I had forgotten that it was that week when I first encountered the Short Service of Orlando Gibbons. It has been important to me ever since, possibly my favorite setting of the Evening Canticles.

It was a joy to accompany my student HMB in the talent show, the two of us playing the beginning and ending of “Rejoice in the Lamb,” a project of her devising after last summer’s Course.

It was a very great joy to see Mike and Tom and Bryn do the real work of the course – looking after the young people as proctors. I remember all three of them from their childhood, and it fills my heart with joy to see them all grown up and strong and intelligent and creative and full of integrity.

It was a joy to look to the right and see the front row of trebles in the Decani, many of them from our choir at home, and all of them singing with full commitment and delight. Or right in front of me in the Cantoris, two of our teen girls, grown into intelligent choral musicians of whom any choir would be proud. Or the young choirmen among whom I stood, six of them from our parish either now or when they were younger.

For the greatest joy is singing with these people, young and old. Parry’s “I was glad”. The Sicut cervus of Palestrina, one of the great choral masterpieces of all time. Anthems with connections to two of my teachers long ago at the Choir College.

I wish it could ever be so. One of the teen boys asked me “Why can’t we do this all year?” He is right to ask, but it is not simple.

O God, whose days are without end, and whose mercies cannot be numbered: Make us, we beseech thee, deeply sensible of the shortness and uncertainty of life… (BCP p. 489)

Somewhere in St. John of the Cross, we are admonished to flee from the temptation to cling to anything in this life. As soon as we clutch a moment in our arms and say “I want this to last forever,” it turns to ashes.

One of our trebles has moved to another state far to the east, and the Course was our last farewell to her and her family. It was hard, and will remain hard. One of the long-time adults was absent for reasons that are not clear to me, and I wonder when I will see her again. One of the former proctors is now a deacon and in a faraway place; he has missed two Courses in a row and again, I wonder when I will see him again. Soon enough, it will be me that is absent.

Reflecting on these things, the passage from Ephesians came to mind. How is it that we are “fitly framed together,” and what does that mean?

There are many ways, including the Holy Sacraments and Prayer. Another, and among the most powerful, is singing together. The more we do this, the stronger the bond. I hear and see it not just in the Courses, but in our choirs at home, and the Sacred Harp group that meets in our choir room, and the Skipperlings and the Family Folk Machine.

As in an earthly building, some of the most important ties for the architecture of the whole are those that, once formed, leap across the miles or the decades. No act of friendship, no song sung or played together, is in vain. The Spirit is at work in them, patiently knitting us into a whole that, until its completion, is known only to God. "I go to prepare a place for you," He says. He prepares the place by preparing us, for we are that place. Every song, every conversation between friends, every field trip for ice cream – each builds or strengthens a tie. If you will, these things are the connective tissue the binds the Body of Christ into one, the mortar and connecting rods and flying buttresses that join us into “an holy temple… an habitation of God through the Spirit.”

And so through all the length of days
thy goodness faileth never:
Good Shepherd, may I sing thy praise
within thy house for ever.
(Henry W. Baker, from “The King of love my Shepherd is”)

We sang well. There were many moments through the week that were especially fine: the first time in rehearsal when we really got rolling on “I was glad,” any time we sang the Sicut cervus, the moment when “Great Day” finally clicked.

More than any of these: “The King of love my shepherd is.” The opening hymn for the Mass, our director called early in the week for a “descant competition” for its tune St. Columba. Any chorister or adult who wished could compose a descant for the hymn. Only two took him up on it, both of them from our parish: Jean and Caleigh. We sang both descants, with Jean’s on the second stanza and Caleigh’s at the end. They fit their respective texts perfectly, the one calm and beautiful, the other more adventurous. When it came time for the hymn in the liturgy, I was quite undone: the organ, the large acoustic, the trebles’ strong clear line soaring into the space, all bound up in my affection for these two musicians. “Cling not to these things!” I remind myself. Music more than any other art lives in the moment, eluding every effort to bind it. But it lives in the Mind of God forever.