This all happened at St Michael’s Episcopal Church at the evening service where I worship and sing. Our worship leader was on vacation, and he had arranged for another local musician, David Childs, to take his place.
St Michaels is an “historically relevant” church in Charleston, very beautiful, with the old box pews. Our band sets up and tears down all the sound equipment before and after every service. After setting up an hour late because of an organ recital that had taken place there that afternoon, the sound equipment wouldn’t work.
I sing with two college age kids, Caroline, a classically trained musician, and Damion, a really great singer in the black gospel tradition. They are good friends of mine and I love them, but they are too young to know that life is change and were very put out with the fact that we had never met or played with this guy and that we had no time to practice. Even Ardy, our laid back sixty year old bass player, was becoming agitated.
Now the cool thing was that earlier in the week I had had one of those waking dreams where you really don’t understand or remember all that happens, but I knew that the dream was about that worship leader, and that I woke up from it feeling very peaceful. Even in all the chaos I knew that something good was going to happen that night, and I told the kids that. We practiced a few of the 9 or 10 songs that we play a night, and the service was upon us.
David sang the first song by himself, with just his guitar, and there was so much sweetness and joy in his voice that it seemed to open up the whole sanctuary to the presence of the Lord.
For some reason I rarely find a real freedom in the worship at our church. God does speak to me often there; once I actually felt Jesus’ pleasure during a song, once I felt Him smile ( that was cool ), and once I saw the Holy Spirit as a big white bird wrap its wings around one of the priests while he gave a prayer. (This priest nearly began speaking in tongues at this point, so I know that I was not imagining it.)
But this night it was if God’s presence was filling the whole space around us. As we sang the next three songs I began to hear at first softly, then much more urgently, voices like a choir, perfectly pitched, and I looked around the sanctuary and so many faces in the church were glowing with a yellow light, and they were so beautiful. There were two people in the congregation that I did not recognize. They were both huge; solid and tall; a man and a woman; and I wondered if they were my choir. I closed my eyes and sang with the voices and my bandmates and then it was time for the sermon.
I don’t remember much of what the priest said because God was filling my heart with prayers and blessings for someone that I had not been able to pray for because they had hurt me. It was very sweet and I could do nothing but bless the Lord for it and thank Him, and He brought more people to my remembrance, mostly the children that I work with in the public schools. All their little faces kept coming into my mind and Jesus had a prayer for each one of them that He let me pray.
We sang “ All Creatures of our God and King” , and after the first verse I realized that my bandmates had dropped out and that only David and I were singing. Even though we had never practiced together our voices were speaking to each other, praising the Lord. And it wasn’t about either of us; it wasn’t about how our voices blended together or how the notes were right; the conversation was all about Jesus. ( Later, I remembered Malachi 3:16 so it’s all written in a book somewhere before Him).
But the really best thing was later. We did the songs for communion and the “choir” was back, filling the space in the church with this glorious SOUND ( it is really so hard to write about music!). As the procession was ending David did the most unusual thing; he stepped out of the way(he was in the pew in front of Damion and me) and started playing the intro to “How Great the Father’s Love”. Damion then began to sing in a kind of broken, beautiful, high lonesome voice about God giving us Jesus and the violence that Jesus suffered for us, and I was so proud of my friend and so thankful that the Lord had sent this really great person to sing for us.
Caroline and I came in on the second verse and though we had never practiced that song together it was as close to perfect as we have ever been as a group. None of us can sing the way we sounded that night.
On the third verse, Damion’s voice took off and both Caroline and I knew that we couldn’t follow. The whole church became still, everyone in the congregation stopped singing, and his voice just filled the sky. I have heard a lot of great music, a lot of beautiful voices, but I have never heard anything like Damion that night, especially from two feet away. When he stopped singing no one moved; even the priests were silent. It was incredible.
As we were packing up I asked about the “choir”, and I couldn’t find anyone else ,either in the band or the audience, who had heard them. And as I was saying goodbye to our visiting praise team leader, asking him, very sincerely, to please come back, we really looked at each other for the first time and I realized that his eyes were the same eyes from my waking dream.
