Church

June 1

Helen and I went to church with Cathy and Woldy on Sunday morning. They attend West Vancouver Presbyterian Church. Jane Swatridge is the minister there who I know from having been the minister at a neighbouring Presbyterian Church in Toronto. Cathy had asked if I might teach a song to the congregation. I went to choir practice in the morning and practised their things with them and also taught them "We will go out with joy", which was the planned song for me to teach during the service. It would later be the last hymn. I tried to teach the choir the bridge part too but we didn't have enough time for it to work properly so we collectively decided to skip it. I sang the introit with them though.

I taught "We will go out" during children's time. Off the top of my head I did a little blurb about how church can bring us joy and how we should take the things we learn at church about being good people out into the world. And I tied communion in to it too because under my suggestion, Cathy and I decided to bring the kids up for communion...something they've talked about heading towards but since they have communion so infrequently it hasn't gotten anywhere yet. Jane Swatridge was great with our idea and it went off perfectly. The kids were great. I worked with them on the song and added percussion after we went downstairs post children's time and told them about how there are certain ways to act during certain times in the service...that we would go up for communion and that that was a time to be quiet and remember Jesus and how he died. But then we would sing the song and that would be a good time to sing out loud, and play instruments and be joyous and have fun. The kids were great. And one boy in particular, maybe around 7 or 8 years old, was so into it. He picked the song and the percussion rules up right away and he smiled and was full of joy the whole time! His little brother kept coming up to me and pulling at my skirt, wanting to tell me stories. We then sang the song as the last hymn. The choir recessed on the repeated ending along with the kids and then we did a great fade out ending.

Many people thanked me after and told me how great it was. One man told me it was very un-Presbyterian. Another told me that there was bad news, that my passport to Toronto had been cancelled. One woman told me she liked the way I moved my hand along with the melody, that that was much easier to sing along with. Various others told Cathy that they needed to hire me. Mark Davis is the youth leader there. He’s also connected to days of yore at Beaches and we had a good little chat. So it’s good to know that if I were to decide to stay in Vancouver I would have a nice low-paying job here…and countless places to live.