Alleluia!

It's after Valentine's Day and we can still sing Alleluia in church, because Lent is still weeks away.  Hard to believe, isn't it?  The weather this week has only made it harder yet, because the only snow drifts left in my neighborhood are the remnants of snow piles next to driveways.  Maybe that groundhog knew what he was talking about?  (Or maybe it'll be back to reality next week, but we can still enjoy it for now!)

This week we get to open and close the service with two of my favorite hymns.  The opening hymn will be "O Holy Spirit Enter In" (ELW 786), a text that seems like such a perfect opening prayer that it will also be the meditative prelude.  The composer of this great tune is Phillip Nicolai.  He was born a decade after Martin Luther had died, and he served as a Lutheran pastor in Germany in the late 16th century.  His tunes have inspired composers ever since, particularly the chorale tune we're singing this week, which is sometimes referred to as "the queen of chorales."

Our closing hymn will be "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling" (ELW 631).  The Welsh hymn tune by Rowland Prichard will be well known, and the particular text here is by the prolific Charles Wesley.  I think the strong 3/4 meter has a great lilting, lusty quality that makes it a joy to sing.

That upbeat 3/4 tempo will be echoed in the postlude as well, when I play an arrangement of the Easter tune "O Sons and Daughters of the Lord" by Deshayes.  Despite being an Easter text, the hymn is in a minor key which may be part of why it no longer appears in our hymnal.  But it's a beautiful chorale, and the setting has plenty of fun flourishes for the organ and a big ending, if you stick around for it.

The 4-H hymn?

As we were singing our hymn of the day, "Oh, That the Lord Would Guide My Ways" (ELW 772), this past Sunday, part of the last verse caught my eye.  Here is the entirety of the verse:

Make me to walk in your commands,
'Tis a delightful road;
Nor let my head or heart or hands
Offend against my God.

I hadn't noticed it in my preparation earlier in the week, but this verse lists three of the four H-words that constitute the four areas of personal development of the organization 4-H.  (It only took me the rest of the day to come up with the missing one - health.)  Despite growing up in rural Minnesota and despite having many friends and classmates involved in 4-H, I was never a member.  But I think the mission of the organization is pretty widely known.  Similar to the many other youth organizations, they encourage students to do their best while engaging with their community.  This is spelled out explicitly in the 4-H pledge:

I pledge my HEAD to clearer thinking,
my HEART to greater loyalty,
my HANDS to larger service,
and my HEALTH to better living,
for my club, my community, my country, and my world.

While the text by Isaac Watts was first published in 1719, it engages in dialogue across the centuries with this mission statement.  Each of these statements is an important aspect of faith, good citizenship, and a well-lived life.

The only unfortunate thing about the hymn (from my perspective today at least) is that the phrase is negative.  It talks about preventing offense.  While abstaining from offense and sin is important, it's still only a first step.  We also need engagement and participation - in our families, community, country, and church!  To take a bit of poetic license, allow me to suggest a minor rewrite:

And let my head and heart and hands
Do service for my God.

Ubi caritas et amor

"Where charity and love prevail" is among the most well-known of the Latin chants, generally considered to come from the 9th century.  It's a hymn of forgiveness and joy, peace and reconciliation, and therefore perfect for singing during communion, as we will this week.  We'll be singing the text to the more popular chorale tune, but during the interlude between the communion hymns, I'll play a few lines of the chant.  Listen and see if you recognize that snippet of chant melody from centuries ago.

Singing the hymn also foreshadows Maundy Thursday, an occasion where the text is often used.  But Maundy Thursday is many days in the future still.  The time before Lent stretches on this year, and we get to enjoy music of praise and celebration during these cold winter days.  That's why we get to end the service with "Joyful Joyful" and enjoy a postlude with the title "Alleluia!"  And the choir will be sharing an upbeat anthem of praise: "O Praise the Name of the Lord."  I hope that all of the music lifts your spirits this weekend!

Planning

It's one of the ironies of my work at Bethany, but the more time I spend planning and preparing and thinking about church music in any given week, the less I find myself blogging.  I suppose it's in part because I'm busy daydreaming and forming ideas, which doesn't always lend itself to sharing more fully-formed thoughts, the way I like to on this blog.  But as I was reading the text of this week's closing hymn, "The Church of Christ, In Every Age," its message of continuing change and mission and rebirth only seemed to urge me to keep working:

The church of Christ, in ev'ry age
Beset by change, but Spirit led,
Must claim and test its heritage
And keep on rising from the dead.

Discussing our musical heritage (while hopefully keeping it new and fresh) could be one way to describe my goals in writing this blog.  But the hymn presents a message that all members of all churches need to heed.  We have hundreds of years of heritage that we must not only honor and claim as our own but continue to test and question and refresh.  I find it particularly interesting that the rest of the hymn's text portrays the need for engagement "across the world" and "across the street."  The hymn is sometimes subtitled "The caring church" because it advocates direct engagement with problems in the world around us.

The theme of the week is justice, which requires our engagement and action.  Notice how many of our hymns mention a desire to act as a servant leader, not preaching or judging but demonstrating and encouraging a joyful Christian life.  In the words of this week's choir anthem "Let All the World in Every Corner Sing."  We can tackle difficult problems with joy and hope and songs of praise.  And we can even find time to engage with in those activities amid our busy lives and our work planning for the weeks (and holidays) ahead.

Come, Ye Thankful People, Come

This week brings Thanksgiving, and we have a special Wednesday night service for the holiday at 7:00.  Many of us spend time this week cleaning, cooking, shopping, and catching up on schoolwork.  But in the midst of that flurry, it's important to take the time to reflect on our blessings and give thanks.  In the same way we gather with family, we should set aside time to gather as a congregation.  It allows us to express thanks for our church and community and God's blessings in our lives.

We'll be singing all the classic hymns of Thanksgiving and praise, including of course "Now Thank We All Our God."  That hymn tells us to praise God with heart and hands and voices.  Singing is explicitly part of the celebration, and I hope we'll have a full church making joyful noise together.

As a special treat, we have David returning to play trumpet.  A BW alumnus and frequent visitor to Bethany, he's back in town to visit family for the holidays.  He's currently studying trumpet performance at the Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford.  We'll be playing several Baroque trumpet pieces by Telemann, and he'll also be playing along on many of the hymns and liturgy.

The choir will end the service with one of my favorite choral pieces, a setting of the Nunc Dimittis by Robert Scholz.  The text is sometimes referred to as the Song of Simeon, and it comes from the second chapter of Luke.  When Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the temple, Simeon utters these lines:

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word.
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
Which thou hast prepared before all nations,
A light to lighten the gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

The text has a long tradition as part of compline or night prayer, and we'll be singing a particularly lyrical and beautiful setting of the text.  It will provide a quiet and contemplative ending, in contrast to the big hymns of praise.  I hope that we'll all depart into the dark night pondering the many reasons we have to be thankful this week.

Crown Him!

"His eyes are like blazing fire, and on His head are many crowns...He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and His name is the Word of God" ~ Revelation 19:12-13

This week is Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the liturgical calendar.  The ELCA church in which I was raised paid little heed to this particular celebration, and I wonder how common its celebration is among Lutheran churches.  After all, the festival was instituted by Pope Piux XI in 1925 as a reminder of Christ's dominion.  However, his encyclical wasn't focused on the earthly or even heavenly reign of a monarch.  Instead, his encyclical referred to Christ's reign over our wills, our hearts, and our bodies.

Despite adopting the holiday, we might have forgotten to adopt that broader message.  The hymns we'll sing this week are suffused with language about earthly rule, about kings and thrones and power.  In particular, we'll sing "Crown Him With Many Crowns," which has its own conflicted history.  Six verses of text were written by Matthew Bridges, of the Catholic faith, and six verses were later written by Godfrey Thring, an Anglican who wanted the text to align more properly with Protestant theology.  Don't worry, we won't be singing 12 verses this week, though interestingly, the ELW retains four verses from Bridges but only one from Thring.

I read the text of the hymn in vain for any depiction of Christ's influence on our own daily lives and actions.  It's purely a hymn of praise and bombast.  Then I searched through the other hymns for the week and found exactly the same.  It seems we will gather for a true festival of praise this week, leaving contemplation and application for our prayers.  We might do well to recall in those prayers the intent of Pope Pius to instruct us on Christ's reign over our lives, rather than over our country, world, or heaven.  That might better transition us toward giving thanks for our blessings, preparing for the pentitential season of Advent, and beginning a new church year.

O Day Full of Grace

This Sunday will feature some of the greatest hymns in the ELW: "If You But Trust in God to Guide You," "This is My Father's World," and "Through the Night of Doubt and Sorrow."  The choir will also be singing a great piece by Mozart titled "To God Be Joyful."  It has the distinctly Mozart-ian sound that makes you sit up straighter in your seat and walk with a bounce in your step.  I hope it conjures images from Amadeus, the costumes and the wigs and the dances, all so much more formal and elegant than everyday life.

 But the song that I know will be my favorite is our opening hymn, "O Day Full of Grace."  Whenever I hear the text, I always hear the St. Olaf Choir singing the incredible arrangement by F. Melius Christiansen.  It's among the best vocal tone painting ever written.  The music beautifully depicts the sunrise.  The text of the first verse describes the day just appearing on earth's horizon, while the second verse takes us from the "gracious midnight hour" through dawn and the rising sun, driving gloom from our hearts.  Later verses continue the swell of activity and joy as the day continues, and it all ends with a nod toward the future and our trip to the eternal promised land.

With the amazingly beautiful fall weather in Ohio lately, it's easy to understand where the inspiration for this hymn came from.  Thanks to the end of Daylight Saving Time, we can drive to church in the early morning sunshine shining through the newly bare trees.  For me, it also brings to mind November deer hunting weekends, sitting in a tree stand as dawn came slowly to the landscape and birds began to sing.  Such beauty slips by us unnoticed so often, but tomorrow we will sing and remind ourselves that we are enjoying a day full of grace.

Glory Bound!

We heard a fantastic range of music for All Saints Sunday.  Mary's vocal prelude ("Angels, Bright and Fair" by Handel) helped create a contemplative mood in memory and honor of departed family and friends.  But the choir's anthem went in a completely different direction.  Rather than mourning our loss, the text of "I'm Glory Bound" focused on the joy of new life for our loved ones, even singing Hallelujah in a piece of music that is still appropriate for such a service of remembrance.

These two musical styles couldn't be more distinct, but they reflect the dichotomy in funeral customs.  It's reflected in the difference between sitting shiva and dancing in a New Orleans jazz funeral parade.  Individuals and cultures all have their own practices and musical styles, and there is room for them all.  We added our own ELCA point of view by singing "I Know That My Redeemer Lives" (all 8 verses) during communion.

Appropriately for this discussion, my grandma sent me a news clipping from the St. Paul Pioneer Press that made me laugh.  I'll share the gist of its story here, which summarized the difference between hymns and praise music:

An old farmer attended church one Sunday and returned home to tell his wife that they had sung praise songs instead of hymns.  "What's the difference?" she asked.  He replied, "If I say to you: 'Martha, the cows are in the corn,' that would be a hymn.  But if I were to say: 'Martha, Martha, Martha, Oh Martha, the cows, the big cows, the brown cows, the black cows, COWS, are in the corn, the corn, the corn, corn, CORN' and then repeat the whole thing two or three times, that would be a praise song."

The next week the woman's young nephew was visiting, attended church, and returned home to report that they sang hymns instead of his usual praise songs.  Once again, the woman asked for the difference.  The boy explained, "If I said: 'Martha, the cows are in the corn,' that would be a regular praise song.  But if I were to say instead:
"Oh Martha, dear Martha,
Hear thou my cry
Inclinest thine ear to the words of my mouth
Turn thou thy whole wondrous ear by and by
To the righteous inimitable glorious truth..."
and go on like that for about four more verses, and then only sing verses one and four, with a key change and organ interlude in between, that would be a hymn."

I couldn't describe the difference between Glory Bound and our communion hymn any better than that!

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty

We're singing another of my all-time favorite hymns this Sunday.  The tune "Lobe Den Herren" is among the most familiar and singable hymn tunes ever composed.  It rolls along like a pleasant folk song, meandering up and down the scale in a lilting triplet rhythm and ending each phrase with a lengthened cadence that gives it a sense of finality and arrival.  It's an absolute pleasure just to hum the tune, and I defy you not to smile when you do.

The text mirrors that joyful praise.  Many people can sing the first verse easily from memory:
Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation!
O my soul, praise him, for he is your health and salvation!
Let all who hear now to his temple draw near,
Joining in glad adoration!

Maybe you learned it with a different word or two along the way.  To me, the only proper text is the one sung by the St. Olaf choir in their rousing rendition.  I prefer the last line of the hymn to be "Join me in glad adoration."  The tune is so simple and pure that to me it makes sense for it to be in the first person, a call to join and share in celebration.  The final verse switches to the plural pronoun "we," which reinforces the sense of welcome to a community of believers.

The prelude this week will be an arrangement of the tune by Paul Manz, with the melody in a strong bass line, beneath a faster ritornello in the upper voices.  As with the text and the hymn itself, the entire piece builds to the joyful close:

Let the amen sound from his people again.
Gladly forever adore him!

I too sing praises with a new song!

We sang one of my favorite hymns today - Earth and All Stars - and the tune has been in my head all day.  The text epitomizes my fall theme, as nature, musical instruments, workers, classrooms, and people all join together in a joyful song of praise of God's "marvelous things."  There's a running joke among the choir that it's a pretty crazy hymn for its mention of boiling test tubes, but the universality of praise from all kinds of quotidian sources is part of what makes the hymn so great to me.

I heard plenty of positive comments about the choir anthem today, and I want to thank the choir again for devoting their considerable talents and time to enhancing our worship.  We've been having a lot of fun with the descants and psalm antiphons every week, and I hope they're adding some sparkle to your Sunday mornings.

I also had a few people ask about the tune of "Blessed Jesus at Thy Word."  They noticed that it seemed just the slightest bit different from what they had grown up with, and they were right!  The Bethany hymnal has the Bach harmonization, which in typical Bach fashion has plenty of added passing tones or what some of us now hear as "extra notes" compared to the LBW version, which often simplified hymns to a quarter note based chorale.  At second service, I played plenty of other versions of the hymn tune - from the simple to the highly ornamented, traditional to dissonant.  I hope the hymn tunes from this Sunday stick with you and brighten your week with hymns of praise.

Let Justice Flow Like Streams

The danger of putting a particularly meaningful hymn (ELW 717) during communion is that not enough people sing it!  I thought this hymn did a superb job of capturing the theme of engagement.  Not only does the imagery match perfectly with my latest "Make Joyful Noise" theme of the sounds of nature, but the text also brings to mind themes of the civil rights movement.  It's a reminder that the ideals of justice, righteousness, respect, and peace should pervade all political and social dialogue.

Among the things I value about the ELCA is our emphasis on reasoned debate and respectful dialogue.  Last summer's Churchwide Assembly may have had its share of contentious issues, but we had first taken years to pray and study and consider those issues from a variety of perspectives.  In this election year, I wish more people of faith were driven to collect facts and quietly reflect on motives and implications before rushing to judgment.

Rather than rambling on with my own opinions, I simply offer the full text of this hymn:

Let justice flow like streams of sparkling water, pure,
Enabling growth, refreshing life, abundant, cleansing, sure.

Let righteousness roll on as others' cares we heed,
An everflowing stream of faith translated into deed.

So may God's plumb line, straight, define our measure true,
And justice, right, and peace pervade this world our whole life through.

Labor Day music

First, a brief public service announcement: remember that we return to our fall schedule for worship this weekend.  We'll see you at 8:30 or 11:00 this week!

Labor Day isn't a holiday that naturally matches up with any hymns in an obvious or immediate way.  Perhaps it's due to a fundamental separation between theology (which we sometimes limit to Sundays) and our everyday lives.  It's too easy for the church and its music to get separated from our vocations.  But particularly in this time of economic struggle, it's vital for the church to speak to workers, and we are all workers.  Below is the text of a non-ELW hymn that reminds us that Jesus was a carpenter.  After that he was a preacher.  The Gospels tell us of his constant work, which should inspire us to do whatever work we have to the best of our abilities and with love.

Christ the worker, born in Bethlehem,
Born to work and die for every one.
Blessed manchild, boy of Nazareth,
Grew in wisdom as he grew in skill.
Skillful craftsman, blessed carpenter,
Praising God by labor at his bench.
Yoke maker, fashioned by his hands,
Easy yokes that made the labor less.
All who labor, listen to his call,
He will make that heavy burden light.
Heavy laden, gladly come to him,
He will ease your load and give you rest.
Christ the worker, love alive for us,
Teach us how to do all work for God.

Translation, please!

This past Sunday we sang the well-known hymn "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing," and I couldn't help noticing how difficult some of the language is.  For one thing, the word "fount" could hardly be considered part of the everyday vernacular.  But at least the root word is obvious in the word fountain, so we can all still understand it.

The second verse provides a much larger challenge:

"Here I raise my Ebenezer:
'Hither by thy help I've come;'
And I hope, by thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home."

What exactly is an Ebenezer?!?  Well, as the image hints, an Ebenezer is a rock, stemming from a rather obscure story in the book of 1 Samuel.  In that story, the Israelites are at war with the Philistines.  Samuel prays to God for help and protection, and the Israelites win the battle.  In recognition, he places a stone, and names it Ebenezer, which means stone of help.

So the hymn intends to remind us of God's presence and help in our lives.  Our accomplishments stem from our great gifts and endowments, mixed with our effort.  I can't help wondering if the hymn expresses that properly for us today.  Should the language be rewritten for clarity?  Should the second verse have a footnote in the hymnal?  Hopefully for at least my readers, this hymn now makes a bit more sense.

PS I'm still tweaking the blog design.  Stay tuned for more changes!

Generations

Several times on the blog we've commented on the fact that so many of our favorite hymns were originally composed for children. It's an easy and dangerous trap to fall into nostalgia for a golden age, but we have to keep a broader picture of history when we look back. On my trip to Minnesota I picked up several boxes of old hymnals, from 50 to 100 years old and more. The quality of the music and the lyrics varies widely. To believe otherwise is to imagine that every big band sounded just like a Glenn Miller recording. Only the great hymns have survived to be reprinted in modern hymnals.

Furthermore, many of the hymnals for "children" in my collection are actually hymnals for families and schools. They're meant to be sung as part of instruction in faith for people of all ages. That's been the purpose of hymns since the times of Martin Luther (and last Sunday we sang one of his great hymns, "Salvation Unto Us Has Come").

We should also recall that 19th century education rarely extended to high school, much less college. Adolesence is a modern phenomenon, so that "children's music" would hardly be necessary in an age when adulthood came even earlier.

Related to that, we have also seen changes in our understanding and tastes in art, architecture, and literature. How many of us can "read" and comprehend the stained glass windows in our own church? How many schools still teach the same canon of literature and language that our grandparents learned? Again, it's easy to sound like a cantankerous old man, but I recognize that computers alone represent a massive skill set and level of learning that students today have. So many things have changed, and our emphasis in many areas of life have shifted.

In many ways, our hymnals (and obviously to a greater extent the Bible itself) represent a constant, unchanging set of instruction and belief. They're a great treasure, and it is our privilege to keep those tunes and texts alive today.

Marching and Dancing, Part 2

My last entry focused on the marching and military themes of some of our recent hymns, but today I want to focus on the second part of my title: dancing. Our communion hymn on Trinity Sunday was "Come, Join the Dance of Trinity," and the poetry and imagery of the text were a poignant contrast to the march tunes we've sung lately.

Perhaps my mind was on the beautiful spring weather that day, but when I read the text of the dancing, interweaving trinity the image that sprang to my mind was of a May Day celebration, with a crowd skipping around a Maypole. The inclusive call to dance also brings to my mind wedding receptions - the one social occasion where people of all ages (and dancing abilities) will head for a dance floor together. To dance is to embrace the duality of rhythm and freedom. Unlike the lock-step of marching, we can all move to the same rhythm but in our own way, with our own step, unified but individuals. That's such a beautiful image of a dancing trinity: three in one and one in three.

Dancing and marching

During my vacation, I remembered something about our hymns for Pentecost and Trinity Sundays that I meant to note on the blog. Many of the songs we sang those weeks contained military references: "Onward Christian Soldiers" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" to name two that I recall (but I believe there was at least one more with a similar reference). In recent years, we've become uncomfortable with such aggressive language; indeed, some of these hymns were omitted from the ELW, presumably for that very reason.

There are certainly reasons to tone down such rhetoric, but we also lose out on part of our heritage and history. We also miss the chance to discuss the poetry and imagery such language can also represent - the final battle of the Book of Revelation, for example. We are also meant to wage a war for hearts and minds of converts, are we not?

For some reason, the hymn "Onward Christian Soldiers" always brings to my mind an episode of "Little House on the Prairie." (I believe it was the finale, but I may be wrong since it has been so many years.) The town's people are being evicted from their homes, with the whole town being forced to move. I can't remember the details of why exactly - some faceless and sinister "corporation" is behind the whole thing, as I recall. Anyway, the reason it's relevant is that the community chooses to blow up all their homes and buildings before walking, riding, and marching their way out of town with the remainder of the possessions. As they march, they sing that hymn, and it represents their fortitude, their rectitude, their positive attitudes in the face of adversity. They stand up and do what they think is morally correct, waging their personal battles of faith, and they do it without acts of violence, of course. The image has stuck with me for years for its emotional impact. To stand up for what you believe is to be a Christian Soldier, and I think that's worth singing about.

Veni Creator Spiritus

That's Latin for "Come, Holy Spirit." Tomorrow is Pentecost, so remember to wear red. It's the one Sunday of the year that we focus explicitly on the Holy Spirit. One medieval Latin chant that is appropriate for the Sunday still appears in the ELW, but we won't be singing it this week. Instead, it will be the meditative prelude. You might want to open to ELW 577 to follow along to the text there.

Here is one translation of the first verse, for our own prayers to be guided by the Holy Spirit:

Come, Holy Spirit, Creator blest,
And in our souls take up thy rest;
Come with Thy grace and heavenly aid
To fill the hearts which Thou hast made.

Ascension

The Easter season is coming to an end this Sunday. It's amazing how the spring has flown by, and we have reached the time of Ascension. This is not a holiday that is marked by famous hymn tunes, like most festivals of the church year.

The closest we will come this week is our opening hymn "Hail Thee, Festival Day!" It may not be the best known hymn, but the chorus is memorable and hopefully allows an opportunity to ring in tunefuly for part of each verse at least.

We'll also sing "Beautiful Savior" at communion. As a St. Olaf alum, it's naturally one of my favorites, and I expect to hear plenty of voices during communion for a change! The closing hymn will bring a musical ending to the Easter season with "A Hymn of Glory Let Us Sing!" which is sung to one of the most well-known Easter tunes.

This Sunday - the hymns!!!!!

Five exclamation points in today's title. That's how many appear in this week's hymn titles. If that doesn't tell you how to sing them, I don't know what does.

We haven't run out of Easter hymns yet, and this Sunday we're singing two of my favorites: "Hallelujah! Jesus Lives!" and "Alleluia! Jesus is Risen!" They're great pieces of music, of course, upbeat hymns of praise. I was also thinking, though, that it's their scarcity that adds to their value. (Somedays my economic and finance training interact with my music.)

There are no malls playing these hymns as part of their background music. No rock artists record albums with these tunes. No dogs will ever bark these tunes. Chances are you hear them only once or twice a year at church, yet I bet most people have at least the first verse memorized and instantly recognize the hymn from just the first few measures of the introduction. Don't those facts speak strongly of the power of music in general, as well as the educational power of church music?

While writing this post, I had fun imagining the new release of Bob Dylan's Easter album (just as horrific a train wreck as his Christmas album), and thinking how much I would love to hear Renee Fleming's performance of them. What singer or group would record your dream album of Easter hymns? What tune would be the first track?

Spring, Easter, and a brief harangue

Easter continues! Who doesn't love the season of spring? My drive to church gets greener every day, and the sun is up when I leave home now. Plus, we get to sing Easter hymns week after week, and those are some of the greatest and most popular hymns.

But why don't we sing them at the top of our lungs? Why, in particular, do congregations always sound so timid about the high E-flat at the end of "Christ is Risen! Alleluia!"? The title has two exclamation points in it, and it was our closing hymn. On a sunny morning, it should have been a chance to sing loud and proud.

Musicians often face the question of quantity versus quality. I grew up singing Boy Scout camp songs, and I sided with quality, asking people to do their best to carry the tune properly. I still do love good music, but I've come to think of quality as people singing their personal best. In so many settings, and especially for a congregational hymn, the blending of voices creates its own beauty and quality that transcends the individual voices.

Besides, we sing an E-flat every week at the high point of the liturgy (the sanctus or "Holy, Holy, Holy"). When we sing "The Star Spangled Banner" we typically hold an even higher note for an even longer time for the text "...land of the free-ee-ee."

Is it a Lutheran trait? A mid-western trait? Or perhaps a Cleveland self-effacing attitude? Maybe we've all heard the lesson about not praying too loudly in church one too many times. Instead, let's focus on not hiding our light under a barrel. Let's sing joyfully, loudly, to the best of our ability. Don't be afraid of the hymns, but embrace our congregational sound - especially during the season of Easter!