this is no longer my blog

In smaller churches, church choirs are often sad and small. For some reason you just can't seem to get enough people to be interested in singing. Even when you try to come up with a fun new name for it like "Sunday Singers." People just think "Same crap, different name." A root canal is still a root canal, even if you call it "Happy Fun Time." A church choir is still a church choir, even if you call it "DJ Jazzy Jesus and the Funky Fresh Bunch" or something like that. Such is the dilemma at my church, and I had intended to stay away from it... until a member came into my office this morning and asked if I was going to be at choir tonight (see! she knew! call it 'Sunday Singers' but she knew it was really just choir). Now, if you know me at all, you probably know these two things: 1) I'm a horrible liar and 2) I can't say no. So I had an open evening this evening, so I really had no excuse to not be there, and she asked me in person, so I couldn't really say no. So I said "I could probably make it." Nice lady responded with "Oh good! We need people to help sing!" Well... 6:30pm rolled around and I wandered over to the church. They were meeting in the church balcony so I started to walk up the stairs. The stairs come into the balcony behind the pews and in such a way that you can see underneath the pews all the way to the front. I walked up and saw two pairs of old lady ankles and one pair of middle aged lady ankles. I stopped. They were chatting and I was quiet. They hadn't heard me. Really did I want to commit to being a part of THIS?!? I tured around and started to sneak down the stairs when wouldn't you know it someone comes around the corner and sees me. "Oh Mark!" he says "Are you going to sing with us?" DAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMNNN! "I was thinking about it," I say. "Good. We can always use more people." So I turn around and start to follow him up the stairs. "You just came down the stairs and now you're going back up? Were you going to get something?" "Oh, yeah..." I say. "I totally forgot." So I walk down the stairs wander aimlessly for a couple of seconds and then go up the stairs. They were all glad to see me, Supervising-pastor, his wife and daughter came to sing, too. We sang fairly badly. It's hard to harmonize when you have three men who can't really find their part. And the pastor's wife admits she can't really sing. But she likes to, and that's all that matters. So we had fun. We enjoyed each others company while we were there, made some jokes, I suggested the pastor's wife could do some interpretive dance while we sang... I guess it doesn't matter that we weren't the Mormon Tabernacle choir or anything like that (frankly I'm glad I'm not the Mormon anything... no offense to my Mormon brothas and sistahs who might be reading this, that stuff just ain't for me... and seeing as how mostly seminary friends read this, then why are you at a Lutheran seminary if your Mormon (besides to work there... of course)) but I don't think that matters. Make a joyful noise unto the Lord? Is that how the Psalm goes? So does it matter if our joyful noise sounds like a wounded moose? I say NO!
And now, for no other reason than because I can, I'm posting a picture of my main man Gandhi.


gandhi is the man!