by Alice Krapf

I wasn’t surprised that a reflection on light, on grace and blessings and my life at St John’s led me to music.  Here are a few stories. 

In the early 90’s, I was at a parents’ potluck at my son’s child care center when one of the mothers came by to chat.  She had seen my photo in the Patriot’s display from a St John’s Harvest Fair.  “Do you go to that church?”  Yes.  “Do they have a choir?”  Well, they could!  I had just met Louise Ambler Osborn.  With a few more wonderful voices, and the hiring of Douglas Witte, St John’s current choir was formed.

One day in the late 90’s, David Hermanns, who sang in the choir, and Jim Quale (at some point, a Senior Warden, who didn’t sing but loved music) asked me whether they could start a capital campaign to buy a new organ for St John’s.  I can’t remember why they asked me: I might have been on the Vestry, or maybe it was just that I was the main layperson worrying about the lake that appeared in the middle aisle just under the gallery every time it rained.  We hadn’t quite come up with a plan to deal with that at the time, but I think David and Jim were worried that fund raising for an organ might seem frivolous in the face of a major breach in the roof.  As a trained budget analyst, I certainly should have discouraged them.  But these two guys had a plan and an abundance of enthusiasm and the Spirit was with them.  So the answer was obvious.  Go for it.

They found an organ needing rehabilitation, which had been built around 1873, the time of the Victorian rehabilitation of St John’s.  At the big celebration upon the installation of the organ, the program noted that the organ fit into the alcove in the chancel with less than an inch clearance, and had clearly been made for St John’s.  It just spent the first 125 years of its life in Connecticut.

My own light? I am still amazed that I get to sing in the choir.  The first time I sung Tallis I walked on air with trepidation and joy from Thursday rehearsal to Sunday service.  I get to sing prayers and pray by singing. I am so grateful for the opportunity to study music, to develop what voice I have, to sing with others and to know that this music enhances our worship. 

These are small stories of grace and blessings that have occurred over my 30 plus years at St John’s.  From the chance meeting with a priest on a bicycle (who invited us to St John’s) to the day Lyn Brakeman broached the idea that I should think about EfM (Education for Ministry), I’ve come to expect that grace filled moments happen at St John’s. What very often seems to be an insurmountable problem or a loss, somehow gets turned into a blessing, perhaps many blessings.  Trust and hope flourish in this parish, and I am better able to trust and hope because of what I’ve experienced here.

Note:  Each week during our annual stewardship campaign, a parishioner will offer a reflection that will be printed and handed out on Sunday and reprinted in News and Notes for the following Thursday’s email.