Dear friends,
I share with you below part of a beautiful note I received from a friend of our music ministry. While he sent the note to me, I read it as a note to all of us. Thank you for your contributions to our shared life of worship through music.
Grace and peace,
TT
Our sister-in-law recently sent us a DVD of the September 12 Plymouth service, and I am led to write to you just to express the appreciation I have come to have for your music ministry, since I'm not sure how often folks take the time to thank you. We have had the chance to experience your music on half a dozen occasions since you came to Lincoln, including the BrahmsRequiem performance last spring. And I congratulate you on the high level of artistry you have achieved and share. But this recent service DVD was particularly meaningful to me at this moment in my life. What I am really writing to thank you for, above all else, is your living out of the possibilities of music truly serving worship, not being imposed upon it. I'm writing about your musical excellence, but even more about what I've come to recognize as your integrity and your humility in sharing that excellence.
I am retired from my career as a conductor, both choral and orchestral, at Penn State University. I was blessed to make music for about 50 years with wonderful colleagues as I grew up in Iowa, did a choral doctorate at Indiana U., and performed around the East and around the world with various of my PSU and professional ensembles. But one regret I have lived with is that I have not ever found a forum in which I could wed my music-making and my formal spiritual leadings.
I grew up singing in Methodist Church choirs in Iowa, in high school and then in Des Moines when I went to Drake. By my sophomore year I was conducting church choirs in various denominations, which I continued in Bloomington. Early on I had even considered a music ministry career. But by my late 20s I had come to acknowledge that my experiences with music in worship were personally more music than worship. And by the early 1970s my wife and I had become "convinced Quakers" and have largely worshipped in the silence of unprogrammed Friends meetings ever since.
A few months ago I had one "epiphany" when we attended worship a few times with two Mennonite friends at their "liberal Mennonite" church in Lancaster, PA. And as we've shared in the sincere and enthusiastic (often a cappella) four-part congregational singing that dominates their worship time together, as well as their community life together outside of formal worship, I've begun to wonder if perhaps I've found a setting, at least on occasion, where for me the integrity of wedded music and worship can be experienced. I'd be delighted if I find that in the days or years or decades left to me I can actually use my vocal instrument in sincere shared communal worship.
"Epiphany #2" came as my wife and I sat watching and hearing the DVD of your service. In observing your gesture, in hearing the choral result, in reading the countenances of the colleagues with whom you were making music, and in just seeing your demeanor I was struck that perhaps it IS possible to bring the sort of integrity and humility to rehearsed, highly artistic music making that allows it to be an experience of sincere worship for those making the music, as well as those sharing it. I'm not naive enough to think that the "performance for" mentality is absent in some of the musicians. But what I read from you is that for you it IS about worship through music, not music imposed on the service.
Anyhow, I didn't write to embarrass you with praise. But I do thank you sincerely, for both of us, for the contributions you have made to our lives this past year or so. And I especially thank you for modeling a life of worship through music.
