This post brought to you by Soccer Mom in Denial - posting every Monday on a different musical memory.
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For the better part of 40 years my family and I have attended the same church in the West Village in New York. Even through the years where we lived in Connecticut and had to drive an hour each way to attend, this was the place we always came back to. My brother and sister attended nursery school here, we protested the exclusion of gays in the clergy, we mourned members killed on September 11th .
Our sermons were full of anti-nuclear, care for the poor, anti-Reagan, pro-peace messages. It never occured to me that these were not the sermons everyone else heard on Sunday.
Being in Greenwich Village in the 1980's ours was also a place that saw AIDS early on. The first person interred in the columbarium was Louis who died from AIDS - one of the last times I saw him in the choir he was wearing a rainbow-colored wig to cover his bald head. Despite the death around us, this was a place full of life.
This Easter Sunday, we came back. Nearly all of us. My sister, little brother, Mom and Dad (who are divorced) - we were missing my older brother who lives just a little too far away. It was great. It was home.
And as on every Easter Sunday, the organist ended the service with the Toccata from Symphony 5 by Widor. Enjoy.
3 comments:
I. Love. Your. Family.
Will they adopt me?
Now that's a place I would be happy to worship. Beautiful -- just like your post. And your family.
Wonderful tradition - and so nice that almost your entire family could be together!
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