Submission to the Parish Newsletter

It’s a very difficult thing to try and communicate a relationship with music in only a few words. But I’ll try.

When my mother was appointed rector at Most Holy and Undivided, I didn’t immediately make the transition to the new parish. Rather, I professed a desire to stay at Little Cottage Church. I believe that my intention to stay at LCC came largely from a desire to define a relationship with the church that wasn’t simply that of PK.

That said, and despite my declarations of loyalty to LCC, I stopped attending services there. I didn’t attend LCC; I didn’t attend MHU. My push for an independent attachment to the church had resulted in no attachment at all. I was, in effect, without church.

I happened to be at MHU for a Sunday morning service in December 2003 and through a variety of circumstances, found myself the subject of choral hounding at coffee hour by then-Music Director KW.

So I joined the choir.

And by the grace of God, and thanks to William Byrd and Anglican chant, my rupture from the church began to heal. And the more I sang, the more I understood that the relationship with the church and with God that I had abandoned was a relationship communicated through music. Music, to me, was prayer.

It was helpful, of course, that I thought the choir’s conductor was a handsome and nifty fellow. In my case, not only did the choir’s music prove to be a healing force, so too did the musician.

So here I am again, ten years later, at another crossroads in complicated relationship between me and church. My mother’s retirement, while a joyful event that she has very much earned, has incited in me moments of panic as I try to imagine what it means to be a parishioner at a church not led by her. I know that this feeling, too, shall pass.

Because I’ll just keep singing.