Thoughts from a Choir Assistant

This year for my workstudy job at Wyoming Catholic College I am the choir assistant. I'm not going to lie, it's a pretty cushy job, and also the best job in the world, at at least the best job at WCC. I get workstudy hours just for going to choir. I can mess around with a motet on my music writing software and get workstudy hours for it. I'm getting experience so I can lead a choir of my own someday. Best of all, I get paid for doing what I love.

I love choir. I'm a violinist, and I can't say that I have the best voice, but I love choir. There's something very wonderful about working with a group of people to create something beautiful. St. Augustine says that "singing is an expression of joy and...love. As you tell out God's praises, you give voice to the natural desire of every human being to glorify him with songs of love. It is hard to find words to convey the joy of the soul's loving encounter with God, yet fine music is able to express something of the mystery of his love for us and ours for him." (Sermo 34:1) When I'm up in the choir loft on Sunday morning I'm tired, and all I want to do is go back to bed. But then we start singing Victoria's Ave Maria, and I feel incredibly happy. I get this incredibly wonderful feeling all over my tired body, and I know that I am doing something worthwhile. I am doing something to praise God, and I am helping others to praise God. It's the same kind of feeling I get when I'm sitting alone in the church on a Saturday evening, and one of my professors comes in to practice the organ. The church is almost dark, and very quiet, and then suddenly the first notes of the organ sound, and become a vast, beautiful harmony. I want to laugh, and I want to cry, and it is at those moments that I feel so close to God. 

Choir can be a pain sometimes. Sometimes I don't want to run up after dinner and go to practice every Thursday. Sometimes, well, most of the time, I don't want to drag myself out of bed for early morning practice every other week. Sometimes people don't listen, or don't get their parts, or don't count, and the whole piece falls apart. It's a struggle to create beautiful music, and it takes time, precious time when you could be doing your homework, when you have that speech or a presentation tomorrow. It's a struggle to be patient when people don't put their choir binders back in the correct place.

But really, those things don't matter. What really matters is that we're making beautiful music together, and we're praising God together. I've been in choir all four years of my college career, and I plan to be in choir till the very last moment, that very last time that we sing together at my graduation. I couldn't imagine not being in choir. When I first came here, it was sort of a consolation for not being able to be in orchestra. Now I'm in choir because I love choir. Pope Benedict XVI adds to St. Augustine's words, saying, "Always remember that your singing is a service. It is a service to God, offering him the praise that is due. It is a service to other worshipers, helping them raise their hearts and minds in prayer. And it is a service to the whole Church, a foretaste of the heavenly liturgy in which the choirs of angels and saints unite in one unending song of love and praise." Yes, we choir members have the best. We get to join forces and sing for God with the angels and the saints. And we love it.

All the Stars in the Sky

Alice lay on her back in the green field. the sun had just set, and the sky was a lovely dusky blue tinged with gray.The air all around her was fragrant and warm, with just a hint of the coolness that was to come with the closing of the day. Alice closed her eyes. she could smell the warm grass, and feel its springy softness beneath her hands. There was a bird singing in some nearby tree. Its song was caught up by another bird, and passed on to another bird until  their song was a glorious symphony, made of many different melodies, but a beautiful whole. A cow lowed in its field, and its bell rang as it made its way  to its queen, carrying a piece of food in its mouth. A cricket started to play its fiddle, and then all the crickets were playing their fiddles.

Alice opened her eyes. A star had come out. She closed her eyes again and made a wish. When she opened them again, there were more stars. Three, then four, then five, then ten. The birds kept singing. The cow lowed once more and was still. The ant crawled away to its queen. The crickets launched into another fugue. And more stars came out.

Alice sighed happily and moved her hand over the warm grass. The sky had darkened to a lovely dusky gray tinged ever so faintly with blue. More and more stars were coming out. There were thirty now, thirty little hard cut diamonds shining in the sky. Now there were forty, then fifty, now a hundred. She had always wanted to count the stars. Her father said there were too many to count; only God could know how many there were. Her mother said it was silly. But she wanted to count them.

There were a hundred and fifty now – no, a hundred and ninety. Now two hundred. But there were more than that now. She counted steadily. Three hundred. Five hundred. A thousand. That was a lot of stars. How could God know how many stars there were? She kept counting.

Five thousand. She hoped she hadn’t missed any. Oh, there was that little one. She had hardly seen it. Five thousand and one. Eight thousand.

A million.

What was that? She stopped counting and looked hard. The star was beckoning to her, and the star was not a star. It was a girl, with a snow-white frock and a wreath of shining flowers about her golden hair. The girl reached out her hand, and Alice took it. The star girl’s hand was smooth and warm, and when she touched her, a lovely, tingly feeling went all over Alice.

The star girl lifted Alice up into the air, past the birds singing in the trees, past the birds flying in the sky, and up, far up, so far up that everything looked like the little toy houses and trees that Alice’s little sister played with. The air was delicious – cool and caressing, and it wrapped around Alice like a blanket, and it was the softest blanket in the world, softer than the blankets her mother made out of fine sheep’s wool.

Then there were other star girls, all wearing shining wreaths of flowers, but some had red hair, and some were wearing frocks shot through with delicate blues and greens and reds. They gave a cry of joy when they saw Alice, and they joined hands with her and danced around and around, and sang. It was the most lovely song Alice had ever heard, and it made her want to laugh and cry and dance and go to sleep all at once. It was more lovely even than the birds’ symphony or the crickets’ fugue.

When the dance ended, the star girls took Alice by the hand and showed her many wonderful things. They looked down at the rolling sea, their reflection sparkling on the dark water. They looked down at castles and mansions and cottages, and watched the mothers putting their children to bed. And then the star girls took dreams out of the pockets of their frocks and sent them down with a kiss to the sleeping children.

Then, somewhere down amongst all those sleeping children, a cry was heard, and Alice looked down and saw a little boy sitting up in his bed and crying for his mother. She saw his dream, and it was an ugly one, dark and frightening. And then suddenly there came swirling through the sky a dark shape, wearing a dark cloak that he wrapped around him. He took dark, ugly dreams out of a sack he carried on his back and blew them down to the sleeping children with a gust of cold air. Children began to sit up in their beds and sob and call for their mothers and fathers. The dark figure gave a hideous laugh and pulled more black dreams out of his sack.

The star girls pulled the petals off of the shining flowers of their wreaths and began to throw them at the dark figure. One after the other the bright petals flew at him, until he gave a loud cry and fled, dropping his sack of black dreams. The star girls quickly took dreams out of their pockets and sent the unhappy children back to sleep.

The star girls took Alice by the hand again, and took her away with them. And then there was a beautiful lady, who took each of the star girls in her arms and kissed them. She was the most beautiful lady Alice had ever seen. She wanted to be the beautiful lady’s little girl, but she was not, and so she hung back.

Then the star lady looked at Alice, and her gaze was bright as the sun, yet soft and gentle. She held out her hand to Alice, and Alice reached out her own hand and took it. The beautiful lady wrapped Alice in her arms, and Alice closed her eyes.

“Alice?” said her father. “Alice, it’s time to come in. Mama was afraid you’d gotten lost. You shouldn’t fall asleep in the pasture like this.”

Alice rubbed her eyes. “Oh, daddy,” she said, “I was counting the stars, and then they turned into little girls, and they took me up into the sky, and we gave lovely dreams to all the sleeping children in the world, and there was a bad person in a black cloak, and he gave the children ugly dreams, but the star girls chased him away, and there was a beautiful lady…”

She stopped, for her father was laughing.

“You have some interesting dreams, honey,” he said. “Hurry along now. It’s time you were in bed.”

As she was taking off her frock to put on her nightgown, Alice felt something hard in her pocket. She put her hand in, and there was a stone, perfectly round, and flat, and shiny. It was warm, and when she turned it around, she could see all the colors of the rainbow. She smiled to herself and got into bed.

She could hear the birds singing, but they were sounding sleepy. Their song was a lullaby now. The cow made no noise, and the ant was long gone to its queen. The crickets still sang their fugue. And up in the sky all the stars and the moon were looking down at her and smiling.