December 15, 2024: "France," Good Catholic Boy, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Sometimes, the pure ridiculousness of life is astonishing.  This morning, at the Lutheran church where I play keyboard, I experienced that sort of astonishment.

Billy Collins gets fed up . . . 

France

by: Billy Collins

You and your frozen banana,

you and your crème brûlée.

Can't we just skip dessert

and go back to the Hotel d'Orsay?

You and your apple tart

and your plates of profiteroles.

Can't we just ask for the check?

Can't you hear Time's mortal call?

Why linger here at the table

stuffing ourselves with sweets

when all the true pleasures await us

in room trois cent quarante-huit?

Collins really doesn't want to eat any dessert.  Doesn't want a fancy sweet that he can't pronounce all that well.  What he's trying to do is convince his dinner companion to return to their hotel room for some post-meal delight, and he does so with his usual wit and charm.

I don't have anything quite so sexy to write about.  

I played four church services this weekend--two last night, two this morning.  All but one were Catholic.  The outlier was a Lutheran church.  The opening hymn for the Lutherans was listed as 626 in the hymnal, a song titled "By Gracious Powers," with words by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, music by Robert Buckley Farlee.  I'd never heard it before.  

As I started playing it on the pipe organ, I chose a quieter setting, counting on the song being an old standard for the gathered congregation.  I went through the introduction then launched into the first verse.  

Nobody sang, except the pastor, and even he seemed to be struggling.

Realizing that something was amiss, either with my playing or the congregation itself, I got to the end of the refrain and immediately launched into verse two, louder, the right hand an octave higher on the keyboard.

Still, nobody was singing, and I began to panic.

About verse three, I realized that I was on my own.  Everyone else had given up.  It was five verses long, but it felt like an entire symphony.  There I sat on the organ bench, a good Catholic boy, powering through a Lutheran hymn that even a retired Lutheran pastor of 30 years didn't recognize.

With each consecutive verse, I played louder and louder, until the stained glass windows seemed to be rattling and fracturing.  When the song finished, I lifted my hands from the keyboard and looked out at the congregation.  They sat there, dumbfounded and confused.  I sat there, drenched in sweat.

At the end of the entire service, one gentleman from the music selection committee made an announcement, apologizing for "By Gracious Powers."  "I don't know what happened," he said.  "I was not familiar with that song at all."

The pastor chimed in, "In the 30-plus years I worked as a pastor, I think I've sung that song twice."

The whole situation was pretty fucking hilarious.  A Catholic leading a bunch of Lutherans in a song that nobody knew.  Ridiculous.  Astonishing.  Even tonight, as I was recounting this story to two musician friends, I couldn't stop laughing.

Saint Marty died a slow, musical death this morning.