getting a head start on good friday...

Tomorrow our sweet little band of musicians - vocalists and instrumentalists - will regroup after a long hiatus. We really haven't played much together as an ensemble since last April. Yes, we did a quick little number earlier this year, but we've not returned to the work of practice, listening and regular rehearsals since before our sabbatical.

For this year's Good Friday gig, we will step way outside the box and use the 50th anniversary of John Coltrane's masterwork, A Love Supreme, to guide the flow of our liturgy. There will also be select vocal numbers and poetry for this experimental in sound, song and silence. Two of the vocal numbers include Anne Heaton's arrangement of "The Prayer of St. Francis" that Dianne spent all day transcribing - and I mean all-freakin' day. We have four incredible vocalists - and two smokin' guitar players - so I am excited to hear what they start to cook up with this tune. It is the perfect song to start our journey into that most paradoxical worship encounters:  make me an instrument of your peace... let me not so much be understood as to understand.

The other large group song, with full band (drums, electric guitars, etc.) will be a new reading of George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." There is no other song quite like it in the annals of rock and roll - a lament embraced by a back beat, a cry to the Lord with a piercing guitar that sounds more like God's heart breaking than anything I've ever experienced - so we'll start to let this take shape and form among us, too.

I give thanks to God for these wise, talented, faithful and killer musicians.