Flying to church

[pegkerr]

I blearily opened my eyes this open and squinted at the clock--and sat up with a screech, my heart hammering. "8:51??? What happened to my alarm?"

"You turned it off," Rob said sleepily beside me.

"No way!" I bounded out of bed. "Girls!"

They came running upstairs. They were still in their pajamas, and I groaned. "No, no! You're not even dressed?"

"What is it?" they asked.

"I'm Assistant Minister today! I'm supposed to be standing in front of the congregation in less than ten minutes! Why the hell didn't you wake me up?" Which was a really unfair accusation.

"I didn't know," Fiona said.

"I forgot," Delia admitted in a small voice.

I was already ripping a sweater and jeans out of my closet. "I don't have time to wait for you. Daddy's home from work today, so you can stay with him." I ran to the phone and somehow managed to dial it while getting my jeans on.

"Hope Lutheran Church," Pastor voice said calmly.

I winced, appalled at the magnitude of my error. "Pastor . . . I slept through my alarm. I just woke up."

"Oh boy," he said.

"I'll get there just as quickly as I can!"

"Well, just slip into the side door and join us when you can."

No breakfast, no makeup, no time to warm up the voice, dirty hair. Tough. I raced out to the garage, and got into the car. I didn't run any red lights, but I was pushing the speed limit the whole way. I ran into the church, dumped my coat in Pastor's office, grabbed an alb out of the closet and fumbled to put it on, catching my hair in the velcro closures. My hands were shaking as I fastened the cord around my waist. The prelude was still playing; good. I opened the door and slipped to the seats to the side where the acolyte and the ministers sit. Pastor had just walked to the front and was doing the announcements. The choir director was sitting in my place, with the assistant minister's mike on.

"I'm here," I hissed. "I'm sorry. I can take it."

"Are you sure?" she whispered. "You can do the psalm without going through it first?"

I rolled my eyes. "Yes. I'll punt. Just give me the mike." We exchanged the hardware, and she slipped back out the door as I clipped the mike on and put the power pack into my pocket.

And so I made it in time. The Kyrie was spoken, not sung today, and there was no Communion. It was still tough, though. We have a new organist, who gave me a couple of shocking miscues, making me stumble once as I led the Hymn of Glory, but I just gritted my teeth, concentrated on tapping out the beat with my foot, and blundered on, even though the organ was all wrong. I could feel the reek of my own sweat, prompted by the adrenaline rush, and of course, I hadn't put on any deodorant.

We got through the service. Pastor and I recessed to the back during the final hymn, and I gave the dismissal and we went back to the Narthex to exchange greetings with the people leaving.

"Wonderful job!" they said, smiling as they filed out and shook my hand.

I smiled grimly and reached into my pocket to turn off the microphone. If you only knew.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I didn't know you went to Hope. Do they still do the choir trip?

K. [nice job pulling that off this morning!]

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Yes, they still do!

[aome.livejournal.com]

Can I just say that, oversleeping-emergency aside, I think it's very cool that you serve as an Assistant Pastor? What a wonderful way to give back to your community. Did you have to do special divinity training for that, the way a Catholic deacon does, or is it more of a general lay position?

Congrats on winging it so well! I hope the rest of your day is calmer.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

It's really a singing position. It's sort of the Lutheran version of a cantor at a Jewish service. All you really need is good pipes, the ability to read music, and the willingness to get up and sing in front of everybody.

Also

[nwl.livejournal.com]

(Wow, I'm late in commenting. Oh, well.)

The cantor is also the musical position in the Catholic church, leading the singing as you did.

[splagxna.livejournal.com]

eep. been there, done that, yeah. congrats on surviving. :-)

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

Yeowch! Congrats on making it through! All impressed now. I would have hyperventilated and fallen over the first time the organ was wrong, on top of everything else.

I trust the girls got a nice apology once things calmed down?

Re: Oooh

[kayre]

Ow... I sympathize, both with you and with a new organist trying to sort things out. But people were probably less disturbed than you, if they noticed the miscues at all, and worship was still worship.

Chinese curses

[jbru.livejournal.com]

Why, just yesterday, you were saying how boring your life is. Be careful what you wish for.

Re: Chinese curses

[lizardek.livejournal.com]

LOL! So true!! :)

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I must admit, I am baffled by this entire story. You attend a church where the parishioners take turns serving as minister? Isn't that what they pay the minister to do?

I'm also a little envious of anybody capable of sleeping soundly enough to actually sleep through an alarm. I don't remember the last time I slept longer than 4 hours without at least waking up, checking the time, remembering what time I had to get up in the morning, and (most of the time) going back to sleep. Usually I do that at least 3 times a night. Even without an alarm, it is almost impossible for me to oversleep. You don't know how lucky you are.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

The assistant minister in a Lutheran service is the person who sings the Kyrie (Lord, have mercy, Christ have mercy, etc.) and who leads the congregation in plainchanting the psalm of the day. The pastor is leading the service and preaches the sermon. The assistant minister, a lay person, is leading the congregation in the sung parts of the service, in several call-and-response portions. For example, I sing the odd verses of the psalm, and the congregation sings the even verses. It's rather like a cantor at a Jewish service.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Also, I figured out I didn't actually sleep through the alarm. I checked it last night and I had mistakenly set it to 7:50 p.m. instead of 7:50 a.m., which didn't do me a whole lot of good. Rob had conflated the idea that I'd gotten it up and turned it off with another morning.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Isn't that what they pay the minister to do?

I don't think I've ever met a minister who's overpaid and underworked. The pay is usually small, the list of stuff they pay ministers to do is huge, and if you find someone who is fabulous with youth ministry, counseling, community outreach, sermons, hospital visits, building maintenance, fundraising...etc.etc.etc...and that person doesn't sing as well or as comfortably as one might hope, there's an easy solution. It happens commonly enough in small and medium-sized congregations that I was surprised to see this question at all; it had never occurred to me that someone might see this as "the pastor's job."

Also, I can't speak for Peg's church specifically, but in some parts of the Lutheran tradition, there's a very strong sense that everyone is supposed to do ministry in some way or another. "The priesthood of all believers" is a phrase that gets used.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"If you only knew."

They never know. That's what makes public speaking so fun.

B

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

In my case, what they usually don't know is that I love getting up and speaking in front of an audience. Live or taped. On TV or in person. Ad lib or prepared. In grade school, I was the kid who always wanted to be the announcer or MC for programs--to be myself, facing an audience, blabbing away. This is probably pathological, I know.

[averagegirl.livejournal.com]

Oh my god. I'm so glad I'm not the only one who loves speaking to an audience.

[folk.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. I remember doing something similar in a Christmas Carol service. I was supposed to be singing two solos, leading the tenor section (there were three of us who were actual tenors and two ickle firsties whose voices were breaking behind us) and doing the Choir's Reading in the Service of Lessons and Carols. I was on my way home from my Cambridge interview (the one where I was interviewing for Politics + Anthropology + Sociology + Psychology and ended up talking about International Relations before agreeing with the interviewer that I should come back and do an IR postgraduate degree if I wanted Cambridge)...and the train broke down, a not uncommon occurrence in England. Thanks to my House Matron waiting in her rickety old Mini with a choir gown (robe, whatever) at the station and barrelling down small country lanes at breakneck speed, I managed to fling my interview clothes down on the bed, change into my suit, arrange my hair on the way downstairs and run to the church, making it just before the organ started with the Processional.

Not something I'd like to repeat...hence why I'm always early for things.