Choral Evensong

Last night I had the privilege(?) of leading Choral Evensong in the college chapel.  It was certainly an experience.

Choral Evensong is essentially evening prayer using the text from the Book of Common Prayer (1662).  What makes it choral is that much of the service is sung rather than said.

It has some interesting features which you have to get used to, the 17th century language and some of the responses don't seem to follow particularly.  For example, 

The Lord be with you| And with thy spirit 

seems fair enough, but 

O Lord save the Queen| And mercifully hear us when we call upon thee

makes less sense to me.

In college there is a worship rota.  This is compiled by the Warden and so you don't have any real choice about which services you lead.  So whilst Choral Evensong is not at all my tradition, I had to do it anyway.

There are two approaches to it.  One is to let the choir do all the singing, which makes your 'leading the service' role rather symbolic.  I chose to do the full on singing the responses which is scary when you're looking directly at the choir master all the time.

So, how did it go?  Apart from the tuning fork issues, really rather well.  I did wonder whether I would lose everyone at the start because I couldn't get the fork to ring, so I was standing at the front of chapel, wearing cassock and surplice (which is not optional for this service) repeatedly smacking myself on the back of the head with a tuning fork.  Nice. (and yes, there was sniggering)

But we did get there and we did make it to the end.

What did I learn?  Well, I learned that if you hold a tuning fork too tightly it doesn't ring.  But it also reminded me of some of the brokeness I carry and won't put down.

At college, it is seen to be a brave thing to sing the office, and so most people don't.  I really like singing, I know I can do it and I knew I'd be totally fine.  But I built up a sense of nervousness that was out of proportion with reality and sought lots of ego strokes from others to make myself feel better.

When it went well, I was into full on 'false humilty' mode, to get more strokes and feel good about myself.

At least, in the mixture of emotions and motives, these were certainly more present that I would have liked.

When, O when will I learn to just be secure in all that God has made me?  How often do I see in others that same insecurity about who they are that plagues me so often?

Oh, and I learned that whilst I didn't hate it, if I never had to lead a choral evensong again, I wouldn't be sad.