We have a priest, finally. His first Sunday was last week when David and I were out of town, so today was my first chance to meet him. His last church must have been much, much larger and unmiked – he has a very big preaching voice. Don’t know if he’ll conduct a sung service or not – I can hear the he has a very nice baritone for the hymns (even from Choir Country along the back wall) but he chose to give a spoken service today (probably because it’s the doldrums of August; Marion always sang the service, but she just liked singing).
He strikes me as a great guy – once the service was over, I had a chance to introduce myself to him. Very approachable and charming when he’s not “on stage,” so to speak.
He seems to be the sort of preacher that sticks to the text – Marion was more of an anecdotal preacher. All things change while remaining the same, in some ways.
I’m pretty sure he’s going to shake us up and get us off our butts; I hope to hear something soon about the planned-for Synergy Brass Quintet concert in October. Colleen, the Bishop’s Committee chair, will be meeting with him this week to tell him about the concert, how it went last October, and (I assume and hope) get his approval to proceed with the plans.
We had another guest organist today – no major misqueues, but one of these “improvise an accompaniment that clashes with the lower voices” kind of guys. Totally threw me off on a couple of hymns – old ones that I’ve sung dozens of times, too. It got better as the service went on. The issue of finding another organist will also be one of Father Ted’s first actions as rector/vicar/priest-in-charge. It’ll be interesting to see how he sets things up.
And it’s nice to be able to say “Father Ted.” Marion was never comfortable with the “Mother Marion” moniker, pretty much for obvious reasons: it sounds silly. One other nearby Episcopal parish goes with the “Mother” honorific for their female clergy, and feminist though I may be, it just doesn’t sound right. On the other hand, “Reverend Mother” sounds okay in the context of an abbess or head of a nunnery, so what do I know?
Anyway, the churchiness factor has been dealt with for the week. Tonight we have our season-ticket play night at the Marriot to see “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” so the musical-theater topic will be on deck.