from the river . . .

10/12/92

	One of the choirs went to New Orleans today to do the music for
one of the sisters (at the Center) anniversary.  It was a
beautiful day, cool and sunny, and while sitting in the church
of Paris street there, this large expansive 60's style modernist
sanctuary with the sun coming in through the skylights they were
so fond of (those modernist '60's church architects ) and
looking across the piano (a piano from purgatory if not hell, a
old old spinet, with a really high overly bright sound like
hammers hitting an anvil incessantly) and though there was no
reason for it I had this feeling of incredible rightness about
the whole thing, about having coming down a long stream of time
with that keyboard, or another of many like it, in front of me
to play and people sitting there to listen in many another place
at many another time, but here I was at  this place and this
time and it was just where I was supposed to be, had been meant
to be all along with all these young people around me singing
while I played, like it was the whole point of having been born,
and I realized yet again that each single moment is the whole
point of having been born but that it is only on special moments
that we realize that,  And the sun kept streaming in through
those '60's style sunlights, and the piano kept on being from
purgatory but I made friends with it anyway and sang with it 
like I was supposed to do, and the choir sang like they were
meant to do, and the sister celebrated her anniversary of
marriage to God like she was suppose to do, and it was one of
those special ordinary moments--like waking up sober after a
drinking dream--an epiphany  if you will l, and I felt really
old in experience but really young in years, and I thought I had
better get it down, write it down to capture it, this little
event where the Word came through yet again.


from the river by Jim Smitherman, Baker LA.