More Advent
We were in Wales again last weekend, so I took the opportunity to wander off to church on Sunday morning, for the 1st Sunday in Advent. I love this part of advent, where everything is still so nebulous. The specific bits of the story have yet to kick off, there's just this general air of expectation but you're not sure what for. There's a yearning, and a promise. What I hadn't realised was that the service wouldn't have a sermon, but a live performance of Bach's Advent Cantata Schwingt freudig euch empor, No 36. The Unicorn Singers ( http://www.unicornsingers.co.uk/about_us.htm ) include a group of instrumentalists, so we had appropriate period accompaniment as well.
There's something about Bach, it always seems to me that once the first note has sounded, there is a precise mathematical beautiful inevitability which leads you through the piece, the footsteps of God across the universe.
The church at Llangattock is a squat Norman building, with Victorian "modernisations", in a small churchyard between the old village street and a brook running down to the Usk. It's very white inside, with dark woodwork, stained glass, and it still has pews. There's a fat belltower, and a new room at the back with access to a little kitchen and toilets.
I love worshipping there. People from the village and surrounding farms have been meeting there every week for nearly 2000 years - not just for the religious bits, but to mark a point in the week, a date in the liturgical and village calendar, take some quiet time, gossip, check up on each other, identify who needs help and how best to give it. Yes, and be rude about people, shun them, at some point probably even kill them. Not at all cutesy Dibley. But there's that sense of continuity, I like that.
There's something about Bach, it always seems to me that once the first note has sounded, there is a precise mathematical beautiful inevitability which leads you through the piece, the footsteps of God across the universe.
The church at Llangattock is a squat Norman building, with Victorian "modernisations", in a small churchyard between the old village street and a brook running down to the Usk. It's very white inside, with dark woodwork, stained glass, and it still has pews. There's a fat belltower, and a new room at the back with access to a little kitchen and toilets.
I love worshipping there. People from the village and surrounding farms have been meeting there every week for nearly 2000 years - not just for the religious bits, but to mark a point in the week, a date in the liturgical and village calendar, take some quiet time, gossip, check up on each other, identify who needs help and how best to give it. Yes, and be rude about people, shun them, at some point probably even kill them. Not at all cutesy Dibley. But there's that sense of continuity, I like that.