Spiritual Care & Comfort

When I taught undergraduate music, I always found the end of the academic year to be laced with just a tinge of sadness. The intensity of preparing lectures and grading papers had come to a sudden end. The classrooms were now empty. Those moments of spontaneous intellectual dialogue between colleagues or students were gone. The students with whom I had spent months with had moved onto the next part of their journey of life. As summer dawned, a time of rest and personal academic pursuit was the reward. Yet, I always felt a bit of melancholy in that season of change. 

The same feelings materialize at the end of each programmatic year in the church. Since September, I have worked with the members of our choirs learning and preparing music for our liturgies. Anthems were a mix of familiar favorites and new musical adventures. There were moments of challenge and moments of triumph. And now, as summer dawns again, it is a time for rest, reflection, and preparation. And yet again, there is that familiar tinge of melancholy in this season of change.

Every vocation has its own unique set of parameters. The reward of summer is a welcome gift. During the year, every weekend is dedicated to practice and our Sunday liturgies. If a wedding or funeral is planned on a Saturday, there is no time for other weekend activities. Over the years, I have learned how to manage the dichotomy of work and home responsibilities, and I have learned to pay special attention to my personal spiritual needs during the summer. 

In the Episcopal tradition, the rector is responsible for the hiring of staff. This is different from congregational models, where staff management is done through a board of trustees, or perhaps a staff-parish relations committee. In the Episcopal dynamic, I “serve at the pleasure of the rector.” In this model of ecclesiastical governance, the rector has full authority over the staff of the parish, including the hiring and firing of staff, with the exception that associate rectors must be called in consultation with the Bishop of the Diocese. In this polity, the rector of the church is my boss, and he or she cannot be my priest or pastor. 

That leaves many musicians in a bit of a spiritual vacuum. We have formed guilds, such as the American Guild of Organists and the Association of Anglican Musicians, to help support one another in our vocations. Each has their own monthly publications and these guilds sponsor continuing educational opportunities in the summer. I haven’t been to such a retreat since 2019, and I have missed those weeklong sessions of music, concerts, workshops, and inspiration. Life and work and a pandemic simply made it impossible to go, but I know that those moments of renewal have been and are critical to my success.

The summer, in addition to the ideal time to utilize vacation allotments, is also a time to spend Sundays away from the organ bench and in the pews of other churches. It is a time to “be” church instead of “do” church. 

Professionally, the summer is also a time to concentrate on technique, dust off some gems of the organ literature, and learn pieces from the proverbial bucket list. 

But back to that idea of spiritual care and comfort. Last week, many of our hymns came from a more protestant evangelical tradition. I have “played church” from months to years at a stretch for Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, Methodist, Lutheran, and Roman Catholics parishes. Each denomination has hymnody more closely associated with their individual traditions. What would the Lutheran Church be without “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” or the Roman Catholic Church without “Adoro te devote,” or the Methodist church without the triumphant favorite, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness?” With each tenure, a part of their musical tradition has become part of me, and it is those hymns, in the absence of pastoral support, that have become a source of great spiritual strength and comfort. Last Sunday, you sang “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” with such passion and gusto that through your singing, you were ministering to me. It is a hymn I played at my Grandad’s funeral in 2003 and again at my Grandmother’s funeral in 2023. As a baptized Methodist, it is imbedded in my psyche. Thank you. 

As we enter summer, I tend to broaden our hymnological offerings, using hymns outside of The Hymnal 1982 from the various collections authorized for use in The Episcopal Church.  Most of us in this parish spent time in another denomination or two, so I am certain you’ll find some of these offerings welcome for a season. 

This Sunday, our gradual hymn is “I Love to Tell the Story,” a hymn composed by Arabella Katherine Hankey. Born in Clapman, England in 1834, and died in Westminster, London, England, 1911, Hankey was the daughter of a wealthy banker. She came from a family of devout Anglicans, associated with the Clapham sect of William Wilberforce, a group of prominent evangelical Anglicans. This group helped to establish the British and Foreign Bible Society, promoted the abolition of slavery, and was involved in improving the lot of England’s working classes. Hankey taught Bible class for shop girls in London, visited the sick in local hospitals, and with her brother, she did missionary work as a nurse in South Africa.

“I love to tell the story,” is derived from Hankey’s 50-verse poem, Tell Me the Old, Old Story of Unseen Things Above, written in 1866, during a period of serious illness that left her bedridden for an extended period. Hankey recovered and the text from her poem was quoted by one of the speakers at an 1867 YMCA convention in Montreal, Quebec. Gospel hymn writer William H. Doane was inspired to set the text to music; however Doane’s tune was soon replaced by the tune HANKEY by William G. Fischer. 

Fischer taught music at Girard College and co-owned a piano and music store in Philadelphia. He became a popular director of music at revival meetings and choral festivals. It was Fischer that added the refrain to the original text and the hymn was first published in Joyful Songs in 1869. The hymn was popularized through its use in the Ira D. Sankey and Dwight L. Moody crusades. 

While the hymn “I love to tell the story” is not on a list of personal favorites, I have fond memories of playing it through the years. Moreover, the poetry of the hymn pairs beautifully with Sunday’s lectionary. If the hymn is unfamiliar, I’d ask that you sing it with an understanding of its origin. If the hymn is a well-loved familiar one, may you sing it with the rich history of associations you carry with it. In either case, may we all be mindful of our duty as outlined in the refrain: “I love to tell the story! ‘Twill be my theme in glory to tell the old, old story of Jesus and His love.”

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