Easter 2011 at St. Richard Catholic Church, Jackson, MS

Easter morning came very very very early for us.  I got up at 5:00 AM to make goo for the choir (goo is our special concoction to heal all things that ail voices at 8:00 in the morning).  We got to the church by 6:30 AM, and started setting up for Mass.

The choir started arriving at 6:45 AM or so and put on their robes and grabbed their books, ate the last of the bananas from Saturday's rehearsal and settled in to warm up and get serious about this Easter thing.

Our organist, the ever-amazing and wonderful Christopher Ray arrived, got the organ warm, and helped us run through psalm and acclamation and anthem and ordinary before heading over to the church to start the prelude.

We downed some more goo, sang through the sequence (which is by necessity here sung after communion, which makes me a little sad), and did the yearly "how do we line up for a procession" dance (with about the same results as usual---cat herding and lots-o-confusion), and then realized we had our binders AND our Worship III hymnals to manage while walking and no time left to fix that, so things were a bit awkward as we processed, but still good.

Claire sang the psalm and it was lovely.  Below, there's a video clip from the psalm, but I did not include it in its entirety because it is marred somewhat by me TRYING to get my darling little slugs to SING the parts we had gone over so many times in rehearsal (or sing ANYTHING for that matter) on the refrain and the little tag bit in the verses and one thing I've discovered about myself is that I do not sing well when I'm trying to communicate vociferously to a choir of people who are ignoring me WHILE I'm also trying to song lead.  (This is why song leading FAILS---it's a dual role and you end up doing neither thing well.  You neither sing well NOR conduct well.  HATE HATE HATE song leading.  Let's start a petition to abolish THAT, why don't we?)


We sang our anthems, sang the ordinary, and sang the sequence.  Not too shabby for the little choir that could.  I am proud of the work we've done these past seven years.  I think back on how far we've come and I wonder...how far CAN we go?  How will we serve God next year and in the years to come?

In the meantime...here is Sunday's full choir rendition of Exsultate Justi, Regina Caeli, and that snidbit of a psalm I promised you.