Mystery, Magnificence, and Majesty

by Kristin Lensch, Organist-Choirmaster

 

As any runner knows, the endorphins make the hard work of the run worth it. Most of the time, the hard work for me is just getting my shoes on and getting out there. However, I’ve found running to be best for my mind. Running is my stress release, my processing time, my prayer time. And it’s the “runner’s high” which often solves my problems and awakens my love for the world, my people, my life.

 

I’ll never forget the run I took mid-week while in Durham, UK, with the Calvary Choir in July 2025. There was a path along the River Wear that went through and gradually out of the town. I needed to get out, and it was a cool, beautiful morning. I was “working” in my head, making my lists of what to do that day. I was so lost in my thoughts that I ended up on a bridge that crossed over the river. I stopped and literally said out loud, “What am I doing??” And then I allowed myself to be in the present, and looked around at the river, the wildflowers on the banks, the bridge. And then, oh my goodness, I looked more closely at the railing of the bridge and saw a spider web between the slats, and then another, and another…there were webs between every slat on the bridge, as far as I could see. Gorgeous, delicate patterns, perfect in their imperfections. And the sun was just above the horizon and shining through them, making them glisten. I was mesmerized. I started looking for the spider, AND I FOUND IT! I watched as that gossamer thread came out of its body, spinning around and around, creating its next miracle. How does it do it? It’s a beautiful mystery. It was hard to pull myself away from this gift of God’s grace, an encounter I didn’t expect. I left the bridge and headed back along the river to the hotel.

 

Nadia Bolz-Weber defines grace as “the freight train that delivers into life all of the most beautiful and unearnable things,” and an orientation toward grace “leads very naturally to gratitude.” With a heart full of gratitude, it was only natural that I then started to think of everyone on the trip, each one a beautiful mystery and magnificent; their voices, coming out of them like gossamer threads. But it’s not an innate act, like the spider’s. It’s hard work, it’s very personal (it’s your voice!), and it requires a certain amount of vulnerability to truly make music. James Jordan, a well-known choral conductor, says, “One’s vulnerability allows another to experience a spirit and to engage a living soul through music. A more important component of an artistic relationship simply does not exist.” As a singer, you must take direction—corrections and suggestions—from the conductor, and you must figure out how to put your heart into the notes, the crescendos, and the diminuendos. As John Rutter says, “You express, when you sing, your soul in song.” If a choir can do that, they can reach a listener’s soul and bind the whole room up into a shared experience. That’s our goal—not to impress, but to express, and bind us all into one experience, one offering to God.

 

Already, after jetlag and three Evensong services, the Calvary Choir had made their home in the choir stalls of the cathedral, expressing their souls in song. We were all—the clergy, the congregation, the choir—starting to realize that we were praying together through this magnificent music, some written months, some even centuries ago. And there, within the structure of liturgy, we found ourselves mysteriously bound. Another gift of God’s grace.

 

It’s a wonder I hadn’t tripped at this point in my run, I was so lost in my thoughts and gratitude. But as I came around the last little bend in the River Wear, I looked up and received a final gift of grace. I saw that majestic cathedral rising above the trees in the heart of Durham, which it has done for nearly nine centuries. I was teary and ever so grateful to have that early morning moment to step back and realize what was happening that week. It was more than a list of fun excursions interspersed with services inside a grand old church. We were weaving gossamer threads of music together, making space for God’s grace to be found in the mysterious thing we call liturgy, in that majestic space that had been holding gifts like that for centuries.

 

After sharing these thoughts with the choir that day, one of the basses, John Phillians, wrote this poem:

Gossamer Threads

Like spiderwebs in cathedral halls

We ring and rise into hard-to-reach heights

Cold stones, warm chords, hanging free, we are together

Etch our short lives in this stained glass

Even when the last breath is cut off

We bounce from vaulted arch to marble column

Through the mortar and pock-marks and carve-outs

Our silvery strands glisten with dynamics like dew

Filling every ounce of free space

We yearn to spread

To grow

To swell

A bell

An organ

And we begin again

Forevermore, Amen.

 

Thanks for reading this long blog. My hope is that you have those moments where you’re off doing something ordinary, and, as Walker Percy writes in The Moviegoer, “through some dim dazzling trick of grace, [you’re] coming for the one, and receiving the other as God’s own importunate bonus.” God and God’s grace really are everywhere. Come through Calvary’s doors; you’ll find it here, too, with us.