ORGANISTS, as every churchwarden and parish priest knows, are like gold dust. Even those with just one left hand and a fair breeze behind them are like pearls. No: that is an exaggeration — the right hand is an essential bit of kit.
You might have sympathy with my position last year as a parish priest. November was upon us, and in our six rural Suffolk parishes, a star organist went sick. In spare moments, as I slid around the single-track lanes, I pondered what Christmas, and our candlelit midnight service, would be like without him.
I talked to God — perhaps he wanted us to use only our voices. That was not a problem: we love unaccompanied singing, and my days of persuading adolescents to sing “Der Erlkönig” might suddenly have their place.
On further consideration, however, the Almighty seemed to reject that idea for the holy mystery of the first mass of Christmas. Even worse, in the host church, at Brundish, sat a new and beautifully reconstructed organ by a celebrated Suffolk organ-builder. God must have a plan, surely.
If the worst came to the worst, I decided that I would have to do a dignified quickstep to the organ console, hold my feet well clear of the pedals, and hope not to catch my cassock, alb, trousers, socks, long johns — and possibly wellington boots — on anything that would make an unholy sound.
GLUMLY, I went for a haircut.
There is, for me, a huge treat in having someone else wash my hair and hold my head in their hands every two months. (Does baptism feel this good?) But, this time, only great self-control saved my giggles as the newly recruited washer-of-hair asked kindly: “Doing anything else today?”
All the entries in my diary came to mind, but “Oh, this and that,” I heard myself say squeakily, summarising those diary entries that would go on long into the evening. I know: I ought to have offered her a selection of what I might have been doing on a November afternoon and evening. Then at least one person might have realised what clerics get up to on the other days of the week.
But then I was steered towards the great hairdresser’s mirror, and the great Greg. I did not know him well: he had just moved up from London, and had a fine reputation. He would need it, if he was going to make anything of my thin offering. I politely enquired how the move was going.
“We’re having difficulty finding somewhere to fit my partner’s piano.”
“Piano?” I said, waking from a gentle stupor as he began work on my hair.
“Yes, it’s a grand, and it’s quite a problem.”
You may be ahead of me, reader.
“Grand piano?” I asked, in a voice reminiscent of Lady Bracknell, as Greg continued snipping away.
“Yes, and then there are the organs.”
“Organs?”
Greg’s scissors sliced away. Ignoring the disappearing fringe, and the emergence of the tops of my ears, I plied him with questions. “He’s just retired as a school director of music, and church organist,” he told me.
“Church organist? Where? When did he stop? When is he available? He played where?”
By the time I left the salon, I had discovered that Greg’s partner had beaten my husband in their school music competition, and had gone on to have a career in music. In addition, the wonderful Greg had assured me that the man would love to play at our midnight service — and, by the grace of God, he has been helping us out ever since. A benefice choir has even come to birth.
The churchwardens and PCC were over the moon. “We wondered why you looked like a bloomin’ billiard ball.”
Our midnight service was breathtakingly wonderful. As ever, people packed into our remote Suffolk church. And, as ever, only candles lit our liturgy. But now, from this wonderful instrument, expert fingers made sounds emerge that some of us had only dreamed of.
WHAT has the episode taught me? First, that the answer to my prayer was completely outside my expectations, and well beyond my hopes. Sometimes, whether I am looking at a rural sunrise or the blank wall of the next building, I set the limits of God’s action within my own imagination. Even using that phrase “I set” is a giveaway.
It betrays the pattern that I already have in my head about how the Almighty might conveniently answer my prayer. But “Go and get your hair cut” was not within my battery of holy answers.
That, of course, is the second lesson. (You will probably see more.) In London, there was a gifted and experienced organist, music teacher, and choir trainer wondering what on earth retirement might offer him. He was facing the reality that, for the first time in 50 years, he would not be at the organ to celebrate Christ’s birth with the gifts that he had been given.
He and I both marvel at the story, and at the process of discovery. We both ponder the action of God, which seemed to say: “Trust me. I am way ahead of you.”
Now we are all prepared to go forward in expectation of what new things might be possible to make our worship ever more an encounter with the living God — to which new and old are excited to come, want to stay, and wish to bring others.
This year, we have a new angel in our carol service on Christmas Eve in Brundish. This one is indeed God’s messenger, and will just have put down the tools of his trade: his scissors. A tool of the dancing Holy Spirit? I think so.
Canon Fiona Newton is Rural Dean of Hoxne, and Vicar of Brundish, Cratfield, Laxfield, Syleham, Wilby, and Wingfield, in the diocese of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich.