Last night there were nearly 400 people gathered at church on a Friday night.  We were there to celebrate a spectacularly enhanced pipe organ.

The air was charged with gratitude.  Those who gathered were current church folk, past church folk, and those who feast on the sound of a fine pipe organ.  In the house were those who had put their bodies and hearts to demolishing the old and building the new.  We knew each other to be compatriots in the great work that was going to be brought to our ears and hearts.

We weren’t disappointed.  From the moment organist Dr. James Welch began his concert, we were taken in.  The river of sound washed over us with all the voicings such an instrument can share.

My heart was near to bursting with gratitude.  For a century and a half, a scrappy and grounded crew of the faithful has sounded praise and lament from the corner of 58th and Lyndale.  Children have been raised, missions begun, hearts held and lives dedicated to the practice of living as disciples of Jesus.  We were at it again last night.

Any church is a dance, a partnership between the Holy and the human.  We gather to remember who we are in the midst of the chaos and competing claims of life.

Last night, the “who we are” was so clear.  We are a people committed to the power and possibility of transformation.  We need each other.

And so it was that last night we celebrated the with the sound of the flute and the trumpet what it is to be alive, woven, and generative.

Thanks be thanks be thanks be.