His praise ever on my lips

(This post was originally written in May of 2008 but never published)

After about 3 months, here I am again. I am so bad about this blogging thing it's ridiculous, but I felt a need to get some of my thoughts/feelings out into the open just now.

I have just returned from an extended weekend excursion to California with my college choir. The college itself being Roman Catholic, so are the majority of choir members. The majority of our repertoire is Latin polyphony from the 16th Century (Palestrina, Byrd, Lassus, Victoria, and the like). It is absolutely a joy and a privilege to go on these excursions as we sing this beautiful godly music in all sorts of beautiful settings. It truly is evangelism of a sort to expose people to these ancient ways of expressing our thanks and praise to God.

My perception of God's presence started while on the plane, approaching Los Angeles (where we would change planes en route to Fresno). We were passing over mountains and canyons (I am not sure whether we passed over the Grand Canyon), I beheld the beauty of the landscape and was reminded of something my sister said while showing me pictures of her recent trip to the Grand Canyon: "how can you look at that and say there is no God?" INDEED. How can you???? Sure, you can say millions of years of erosion and what not, but how could all of that come to pass if not for God setting it all in motion? But I came here to talk about music, not creation and evolution...

Our first event was rehearsal at St Anthony of Padua RC Church in Fresno, CA for rehearsal. It was good to sing with these people once again...we even had a few of the original members from 1993 return to sing this weekend. We have a number of pieces in the repertoire, but there is one particular piece that always moves me -- "Sicut Cervus" by Giovanni Perluigi da Palestrina.   The text is Psalm 42:1 -- "As the deer longeth for fountains of water, so my soul longeth for Thee, my God."  If any piece brings me to tears, it's usually this one...and it seems to happen more frequently within about the last year or two. I actually managed to hold it together tear-wise, but I was indeed moved during rehearsal. It's always exciting to be back singing with this group. There is a tangible faith in the room as we sing -- we don't just sing words in a language we don't understand -- we sing in faith at least understanding the basic translation of the piece. One of my favorite things to do (although the director may not exactly approve) is to look around the choir as we sing and observe the facial/bodily expressions of the singers. It can be quite awe inspiring. How wonderful it is to look around and realize that we are all singing to the glory of the same God, be we Catholic, Protestant, or otherwise?!