Sunday things

Sunday morning I had a Dummerston church choir rehearsal at 8:30. We had awakened earlier at 7a.m., as we usually do, to listen to Krista Tippett and On Being. The guest was Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arch - an international network of safe and compassionate houses for persons who have some sort of cognitive disability. What he had to say got me thinking in some new ways about "embodied spirituality." 

Rehearsal went well and was followed by the church service where we had a guest speaker also, Lucy Fortier (a little coincidence of final letters there) who is director of our local homeless shelter. She talked about how she came to be called into that work, and what she said just fit perfectly with the music I had chosen for the choir. Sometimes that happens! 

After coffee hour we came home. The house was cold because the temperature had dropped outside, and I was feeling exhausted and decided to just go to bed and get warm, and that's pretty much what I did all afternoon! Ellen brought our lunch in and I ate, dozed, read, worked on the computer -  a perfect "sabbath" afternoon. 

About 5 p.m. I roused myself to prepare for a St. John rehearsal. I had written an essay years ago about the St. John Passion that I wanted our director, Mary W-G, to see, so I printed it out and took it. She was glad to see it because she had been thinking quite a bit about the issue of anti-Semitism in the  Passion, which is a controversial topic which I discuss in the essay. E.g., should one  change every occurance of "Juden" in the libretto to "Leute" ("people") as some conductors have done, notably  Lukas  Foss? Or should one leave the text as Bach intended it, but contextualize it through a panel and discussion? We'll see how that plays out.