Kindness

Yesterday at church my friend Andrea and I led the music.  I would say that I played piano, but that's too grand a word for what I did. I mostly sat at the bench behind an instrument that feels way too elegant for me and plunked out the first bars of whatever hymn we were supposed to sing, and then I stood up with Andrea and we led the singing.  I don't know what it is about Catholic congregations, but no matter what the tempo of the song, they'll always managed to back it into 4/4 time!

I've written before about how I loved to play piano, but I was never very good at it. I began taking lessons when I was 13, I studied a lot of music history, theory, sang with church and school choirs and basically enjoyed music all throughout high school. My original plan was to minor in music in college and major in writing/English, but I listened to all the grownups in my life who were already panicking because I was going to be a writer....now I wanted to give piano lessons on the side to little kids and play piano at church? What kind of money could I make? Could I support myself? So I gave it up.  I really haven't played in about 20 years or so.

But they need someone to hit a few keys at the start of the music at church and I'm it when the music leader (a professional musician and professor of keyboard studies) is on vacation and the other good pianist cannot make it.  Tag, you're it!

I'd vowed a long time ago not to play in church. When I was 16 and learning how to play the organ with Mrs. Cook at Our Lady of Victory church, a very mean priest who shall remain nameless stormed up into the choir loft and forbade me from playing. Mrs. Cook tried to explain that I was a student and learning and how could I learn if she couldn't sit with me up there and teach me? Especially on a day when she had apparently cleared it with everyone to use the afternoon as practice time. But he was mean and his words stung, and that plus my general anxiety issues kept me from ever playing in church again.

Now here we are in 2010 and I have played (okay, still a grand word for playing a few notes with the right hand, but one step at a time, and there are no words for the little bit I can do) three times since Christmas.

And here's the difference: kindness.

I have never experienced such kindness as I have at St. Theresa's.

First in June.  Father Joseph came up to me after my little bit of piano plunking and beamed at me.  "Thank you for the effort!" he said, clapping me on the back like I'd just won a rugby match.  I loved it.

A lady on the other side of church smiled at me and gave me two thumbs up when I slid behind the piano bench.

And yesterday, before Mass started as I sat reading the music and reviewing it in my mind, Joan slid onto the bench next to me. "I just want to say how much I enjoyed your solo a few weeks ago," she said. "You were the only alto singing, and I could hear your voice...it is so lovely...."  I was flabbergasted.  She was so kind.

Another lady slid into the pew behind me and put her hand gently on my shoulder, smiling and wishing me
good luck.

You know, you can't turn back the clock. I can't go back to that day when I was 16 and got so frightened that I thought I'd never play in church again.  But honestly, God only gives us today (that's why they call it "the present". It's a gift, see?).  And today, I am so very grateful for the people at St. Theresa's church, who somehow sense all the anxiety and issues I overcome every time I slide behind the piano bench.

I don't have much of a gift for playing the piano. Even when I took lessons regularly, I wasn't very good.  It takes me weeks and weeks to learn a simple song.  But I think God appreciates the efforts. In fact, I know he does.

Thank you St. Theresa's congregation for being kind, generous and loving.