Tess Orozco
October 24, 2004

“May my new song float like a feather on the breath of God.”
Amen.

I came to St. Paul’s twenty years ago. This is the only church I have known. It is my sacred home, a place where I feel I can most truly be myself. The ease of familiarity combines with the challenge of further responsibilities. Each time I walk through the doors I find something new arising from something observed for years. Two decades have passed, and I have become an adult in the same place in which I was a child.

A person once walked into St. Paul’s and exclaimed, “This is a church that has been prayed in!” I’ve felt it all my life. These walls are filled with a reverence for the Mystery, and my greatest security here is that there are no quick answers. Such an open-ended definition, however, leads to difficulty when attempting to communicate to other people what exactly is so compelling. I’ve found a handful of concrete images in the words of Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, the life of Joan of Arc and the music of Hildegard. I know, though, that these are only stepping stones, and in the words of Aslan himself, “You have known me here, so that later you might know me better.”

One of the bittersweet blessings of growing up in a single community is that we all, for the most part, speak the same language. Yes, there is some necessary dissonance, but the overall ideas, which I suppose can be listed as Episcopalian, I take for granted. I do not have a clear expression ready in my mind because it is not often necessary for me to put the essence of this place into words. It wasn’t until I attended a religious university that I stopped going to church. The sermons there felt too easy and the music too obvious. My skills to verbalize this were only such that I hung a sign outside my dorm door reading, in large medieval letters, ‘Resist Simplistic Theology.’

At a time when other people of my generation were leaving St. Paul’s, I found refuge in the choir. I was fifteen, and that loft, which really is its own world up there, provided a mix of artistic creation, analytical thinking, and beautiful, excellent music which held me here throughout my adolescence. The choir brought a connection to the liturgy that I had not yet experienced. The pieces we sing never really leave us, but rather become a part of the very fabric of our beings. For the past seven years I have sung the role of the narrator in the St. John Passion, and I consider each Good Friday a gift because of it. The choir here is an essential part of my spiritual life, and an essential part of St. Paul’s.

Give back to God that which God has given to you. St. Paul’s is a place with depth, and as such it always provides room in which to grow. While singing with the choir here, I continued working on my outside musical studies. As my abilities increased, the choir offered opportunities in which to use those new skills – singing in small ensembles, the knee-knocking role of cantor, and eventually an opening to be the interim section leader. I am grateful for the chance to incorporate my professional life with my spiritual life, to have one foot in each world.

Growing up in a single church, I have been warned about the danger of becoming stuck, the danger of a plateau offering too much comfort. It has been suggested that leaving for awhile might bring a new perspective. While I do not disagree, I do not feel a call to be in any other church. St. Paul’s is hardly a static environment. Our parish has gone through extraordinary changes in this past year, and while awaiting our new rector we are on the cusp of an entirely unread chapter. There is so much left to learn. I only know the bare outline of our church’s history, many aspects of the Bible are still a Mystery, and when I do eventually explore other churches, the new perspective will no doubt throw this familiar place into a whole new light. With each new experience, I find that what we do within these walls has a great relevance to life beyond these walls. I know the words of our liturgy as well as any prayer learned in childhood, and yet with each repetition, there is always something more, something more. The second you think you know a place, try looking at it from a different point of view. In my years at St. Paul’s I have made a slow migration around this church, from the Sunday school pew to the choir loft to the altar as an acolyte, and this movement around the parish has brought new sides, like turning a gem to view its different facets. It calls to mind the Celestial Rose in Dante’s Paradiso. Surrounded by saints and angels, the rose is ever blossoming. As each petal unfolds, we find that there is always another beneath it. God is the center of this flower, and because God is endless, so too is our journey deeper and deeper into the heart of the rose.

With further blossoming comes further responsibility. Now arrives the decision to support that which supports us – to give back to God that which God has given to us. We all have gifts. Our life lies in these gifts, and it is our challenge to find them and make use of them. Rather than speaking of stewardship in terms of dollars, I will speak using the words I know best.

The Latin word spiritus means spirit. It also means breath. Singing is a constant balance between completely emptying the body of air and becoming refilled. Dedication to this cycle results in a sound that replenishes the musician, even as that musician is depleted in the sound’s creation. A breath is not planned around the note about to be sung, but is instead a preparation of the end and release of the final note of the phrase. The long-term goal must always be kept in mind. A common mistake of many singers is to hold back their breath while singing, fearful of running out before the end – the resulting sound is pinched and tight. An open sound comes from letting the breath flow freely. Almost always there is more air left over than expected. Just as the body readily sustains air’s outpour, so it is also designed to open up and receive a new breath. The instinctive urge is to also control this incoming air, to tell the body to breathe. This results in a gasp and slows the air’s progress, often only half-filling us. But the breath is waiting to flow into the body, and with a release of control the spirit pours in instantaneously, rushes in and floods all vacant space. By giving we are filled, by releasing control we gain it.

Music is constantly in motion. It is never finished – it continually offers something new to explore. When creating sound, there is no luxury to step back and admire how beautiful that sound is. A new moment has already arrived, demanding its own attention and care. As with any work, time cannot long be spent praising that which has already been done. We must look forward to the new demands of the present. God is closer to us than breathing. Let us contribute our daily breath to sustaining the place we love, releasing our control that we may be filled. A single person cannot be a choir. Rather, it takes many people working together to form something greater than all of them combined. May we of St. Paul’s continue our work as a parish, letting our new song float like feather on the breath of God.

Amen.