Church :)

This morning I biked to the Early Church and got there are few minutes early, just enough to get to have a brief conversation with someone who goes to church there year-round. And then my friend Taylor sat next to me when he arrived, and then we sang the trisagion remix (it is so nice to have people know you), and then the sermon was about communion (the mystery of the sacrament, the miracle of it), and then we had communion and I stood around a table with 8 people I didn't know and recieved the bread, the cup, I passed it on, and then we had prayers of the faithful and I said God, be with my friend Thia who is traveling in South Africa. Reveal yourself to her. We pray to the Lord and all around me voices echoed Lord! Hear our prayer!

The trisagion, for those of you who don't know, is an ancient hymn that is commonly used in Orthodox and Catholic churches. The text of it and a melody is in one of the hymnal supplements. The words are:

Holy God

Holy Mighty

Holy Immortal

Have mercy on us

The Early Church has taken the words and created a new melody for it - if you search YouTube for the trisagion hymn, you will see that traditionally it is a sort of slow chant (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPgT7--3Q0E). I happen to think that the orthodox way of singing it is beautiful - we just sing it differently. A lot of life, hand drums, everyone just sort of adding their own harmonies, sometimes just singing over and over have mercy on us, have mercy on us.

What a mystery it is: that what was unseen and eternal became visible, taking the form of flesh and blood; that Christ invites us to take the mystery and miracle of his incarnation into our bodies; that we can pray to the immortal, mighty God to have mercy upon us. Thank you, God, for mystery and miracles. Amen.