The Courage to Begin
Next meeting: August 25, 2024
6:00 pm: Q & A session, Taizé Contemplative Prayer
6:30 pm: Taizé EVENING PRAYER SERVICE:
Location: St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church in Salado, Texas
Live-streaming: Via St. Joseph’s Episcopal – details to be posted soon
Dear friends of the Wholeness Service,
For the first time, I address you in the form of a prayer letter. This is a privilege that is almost always left to the pastor presiding over the next service in our season. I spend my time on your music, which is plenty of work for me. However, this month is different from the others in a couple of important ways. First, our pre-season service this August does not have a presiding pastor from our worship team. And more importantly: because God has given me something to say.
We are delighted to partner with so many churches all over the Central Texas area. While we tend to stay in one church for an entire season, any of our partners may host us. Our regular season this year remains at San Gabriel Presbyterian Church, Georgetown, but this month we kick off the season with an early service at St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church in Salado, Texas. We will spend an evening praying solely in the style taught to us by our friends in Taizé, France. If you are accustomed to our usual services of Wholeness, you may not notice many differences! We will enter with song, meditate with scripture, light candles, and sing a prayer litany. We will observe a moment of silence. However, more in the style of Taizé, there will be no pastoral address, no calling out of names, and Communion will not be served this time. These elements are natives of our services of Healing and Wholeness. Sunday’s service will be simpler, more pneumatic; yet deeply meditative.
Never fear, pastoral addresses and open Communion will be a feature of every other service in our season. But for just this time, when we are welcomed into the lovely, intimate chapel of St. Joseph’s, we will pray in the style of Br. Roger of Taizé. This is a kind of homecoming for Sean and myself, as the very first Taizé prayers we ever heard were played in Fletcher’s bookstore in Salado, directly behind St. Joseph’s. We never forgot that, and it brought us to where we are today.
Prayers on Sunday, the 25th will focus on the topical themes for our coming season, which are based on “Courage:”
September 22 Courage to See
October 27 Courage to Hear
November 24 Courage to Discern
December 15 Courage to Love
January 26 Courage to Suffer
February 23 Courage to Believe
March 23 Courage to Act
April 27 Courage to Journey
May 25 Courage to Serve
I did not know how important “Courage” was about to become to me until this past Wednesday night at 8:15 pm. That was when I found myself face down on a piece of pavement with a bloody lip and broken wrist. See, I love to ride my bicycle, but on the way back from choir rehearsal this Wednesday I hit my wheel on the edge of a sidewalk. The impact tipped me face-forward and I landed on concrete, badly injured. So today, one day after surgery, I’m typing to you in a splint.
I can definitely claim the hashtag #blessed, seeing as I was treated well by the St. David’s E/R, then immediately afterward by the renowned orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Christopher English. Everything looks like it will be fine, eventually. However, a splint on my left arm makes things interesting. I direct the choir and play the flute, see? Hands and arms matter. But even now, I am called to go to Salado with you, conduct an Evening Prayer service with you, and to give my gifts. That sounds impossible, but the call remains. The more I think about it, the more I suspect that God has something in store.
Salado is a bit farther than many of our musicians and our southern congregation wish to travel, and although we look forward to Beverly Harrison’s cello, Sean Mann’s piano, and Karen, Sean, and Jayden’s voices, we will miss a great number of usual voices and instrumental talent. And now I’m your flutist with a broken wrist. However, I have noticed that God loves to overcome the impossible, especially while we’re watching. Perhaps, in place of a concert, we are about to experience an evening of pure worship.
Already, I have seen signs of greatness in this event. God surprised me even yesterday, after my surgery, with an inclination of how I might be used. So as I go into the season of Courage, I see that God has something in mind, and I am not in control of it. For the first time that I can remember, I will not simply play my instrument for God. I will show up where God needs me and be the instrument.
I hope you can make it out there with me next Sunday. August 25, in Salado, Texas. If you cannot be there in body, I hope you will lift us up in your prayers. I can’t wait to see what God will do.
Yours in Christ,
Ginger Mann
Music and Publicity Director
Georgetown Ecumenical Wholeness Service
