Getting ready

Several things are coming up in the next couple of weeks that I need to be ready for. The main one is that I am leading the service and preaching in Guilford on May 5th. I need to turn in the information for the bulletin by next Wednesday. But I'm way ahead of the deadline. I already have bulletin information and a first draft of my sermon. That's good because next week is really full with extra rehearsals and two concerts on Saturday, May 4th. So I feel good about that!

Those concerts are also on the agenda - River Singers with special guest, Kathy Bullock. Kathy is an African-American Gospel Choral leader from Berea College - this will be the eighth time she has been a guest conductor with us. We love her.  We have two rehearsals with her next week, Tuesday and Thursday.

Dr. Kathy Bullock

Members of the chorus take turns announcing songs and I will be doing one. Here it is:

"Our next song, which is called Kingdom, is a contemporary hymn in the shape- note tradition with music by Vermont composer, Don Jamison, who is founding Co-executive Director of the Vermont Employee Ownership Center and is also founder of the Burlington-based choral group Social Band. Kingdom is a setting of the poem "The Spacious Firmament on High," by Joseph Addison, published by him in The Spectator magazine in 1712, and most famously set to music by Joseph Hayden in his Oratorio, The Creation. The poem is based on Psalm 19.1: "The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork." You might not recognize Addison's poem at first because of changes in verse one. For example, our "the lofty pillars of the sky" has been substituted for his "the spacious firmament on high." Our verse two about the moon, however, is exactly as Addison wrote it. Our hymn omits Addison's verse three altogether. Addison was a highly regarded poet in his time. His biographer, Samuel Johnson, said of him that he "taught a succession of writers to bring elegance and gaiety to the aid of goodness; and ... turned many to righteousness." 

There are several of Don Jamison's hymns to be found on YouTube, but not KINGDOM. But OWEN SOUND is there - we performed that last spring. Just go to YouTube and do a search of his name.

Then on May 19th I am leading the choir in Dummerston. That's a way off, but I think I already know what I want to do.

We are well into spring here now, at last. We have had a lot of rain.