The other day, I was introduced to the concept of the "Flash Mob" by a group of 450 choir members who sang, spontaneously, in Kansas City. The song of choice was the Hallelujah chorus, which appears to be a pretty popular choice for the holiday season.
A day or two later, Savannah showed me the posting of another flash mob performing in a plain, old food court (Canada's Niagara chorus). Again, it was the Hallelujah chorus from the Messiah... and it was amazing!
Beautiful!
Stunning!
It was very fun to see. Anyway, I have a wonderful sound system and 3 cds in my truck: The Beatles, The Man from Snowy River, and The Messiah. The latter is my all time favorite composition; I listen to it year round.
Enter yet another Sunday. Like always, I was in church. Sacrament meeting was okay, Nursery was wonderful (especially having Savannah in there to enjoy the little kids with us). The meetings ended and we made our way out to the greater outdoors, chomping at the bit to escape to home (like always), only to be stopped in our tracks.
"I signed us up for tithing settlement at 12:40," Kirk announces.
A chorus of moans sounded from within the bowels of the earth. You would have thought that the crust had opened up and all the underland hosts were expressing their acute disappointment over "the fractious day"... but alas, as it turned out, it was only me... I was the only heathen in the group that would overtly complain about something like tithing settlement.
It's true. I don't like it. I don't like leaving my home at all... let alone waylaying my return for something like tithing settlement. Honestly, and we have to sign up for this annual liturgy? Why, might I ask, can we not just check a box next to it that also says "Full" or "Part" or "Non". Sometimes it all just feels a little sanctimonious.
The "Non" status is always an interesting one to me. Why would anyone go to tithing settlement to declare themselves to be in a "non" status. Ha ha. I can barely stand to go being in the full category, I can't imagine putting myself through that laboriously boring ritual, just to say that I didn't participate at all.
In fact, secretly, I had full intentions to skip it this year all together. I mean, if the scriptures say not to let your 'right hand know what the left hand doeth', then why do we have to go declare it to the bishop? There must be some hidden epic reasoning that I've missed in all of this.
Oh well, I survived it and eventually we were on the way home. Upon settling into the truck, I turned on "Snowy River", but Kamaron complained that he didn't think it was "Sunday music".
Yeah, whatever... (just because it's not Taylor Swift...)
Snowy River is epic and glorious... and it's totally Sunday worthy... however, not wanting to interrupt his moment of piety, I changed discs to "The Messiah".
We pulled onto the freeway and suddenly, onto the awesomeness of my awesome truck's even more awesome music system comes... "For unto us a child is born...".
I cranked up the volume as the violins sang through the cab, allowing the percussion, bass and brass to fully rumble through the floor boards. Then, simultaneously, we burst into song, just like those glorious flash mobs in the food court... only we, somehow, sounded even better.
WE had the Tabernacle choir and a full symphony to accompany us... and far less cacophony from the zillions of mall goers milling about besmirching the performance. The only offending noise at that volume was Kamaron complaining that it was too loud. However, his protests were soon abandoned because...
...we sounded GOOD! Awesome! Beautiful! Amazing! The heavens parted and smiled on us!
It was a wonderful moment.
*Sigh*
And then...
we were home...
where all the moments are always wonderful.
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