Hiccup....A-men!

Is it holyer to get drunk at church than other places?

I'm just in from Evensong at Trinity Episcopal downtown, and as always, they had wine and cheese in the parish hall after the service. In fact, they had a lot more than just wine and cheese tonight, with some yummy canapes of pate and pesto on small sourdough slices, new potato halves scooped out and filled with bacon, herbs, tomato, sour cream, and two cheeses, lots of fresh fruit and crudites (including some steamed sugar snap peas!), and I think some cookies, brownies, and other sweets. The white wine was a surprisingly good Gallo Sonoma Valley "white wine" and the red was a Tinfield Hall cabernet, which I'd never seen or tasted before.

Evensong was charming as always. The choir is so good there. I miss singing with them. They did the Stanford Mag and Nunc in C, Gerre Hancock's Preces and Responses, John Barnard's Psalm 34, Thomas Matthews' "Souls of the Righteous" for an introit and then for the anthems at the end of the office they did the Randall Thompson "Alleluia" and the Faure "Cantique de Jean Racine." Casey Cantwell, the organist, did a fabulous improvisation for the recessional. I was kind of surprised that he opted to play the accompaniment to the Faure on the piano, rather than using the organ (it's only 83 ranks, so I can't imagine using that little toy! ;-) ).

At Christ the King this morning, we did the Lacrymosa from the Mozart Requiem for the offertory and Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring for communion, with one of the high school boys from Cascia Hall accompanying both anthems on his violin. He also played Bach's Double Concerto for the prelude. The kid is only 15, but he's phenonmenally good for a high school violinist. I had a hard time tuning the choir during warm ups this morning. Must be the weather. I noticed the reeds on the organ sounded a little whanky today, too. Mass went well, and the sermon was short, which is always the case with Fr. Bill, who I like a lot, and who also happens to be a math professor at TU.