Hello First Pres Family!
As I am writing this on Tuesday, I thought it important to share that I did my daily walk outside in shorts! The warmth of the sun is a precious thing.
I have been thinking a lot about what life will look like when this pandemic is behind us. I understand that the virus may be part of our lives moving forward, even with medicine to prevent and/or fight it, but there will be a day when we are once again breathing air among one another. We will be worshipping together again, embracing each other again, and not worrying about the distance between one human and another.
Thinking about this time excites me because it means the return of music rehearsals here at First Pres. What a joyous time that will be for so many people! It will also be a time of uncertainty, however. Moving forward might not come as easily for some. Maybe isolation has taken too much from us, and left us with the questions like, “What does moving forward even look like?” It is in this dichotomy that I am reminded of the words that Leonard Bernstein spoke two days following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Bernstein said the following, “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” As I think about the first rehearsals I will have with the ensembles here at First Pres, since we shuttered our programs, this text becomes gospel to me. As we approach Easter Sunday, I find it all the more poignant to ponder on what we have lost, so that we might rise to focus on what is to be gained! The mission, the education, the worship, the fellowship, they are all on the horizon.
And this will be our answer. This will be our reply to the pandemic: to be the church that we and the community need more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.
I wish everyone a blessed Holy Week and a very special Easter Sunday.
Adam
