This past weekend the youth at my church participated in a 30-hour fast, in which they drank only juice and broth from Friday afternoon until dinner on Saturday. During this time of hunger and crankiness they held a food drive, listened to guest speakers, and planned and ran a service that would cap off the fast. I was asked, as Minister of Music at the church, if I would come in and help the music team plan the musical part of that service. And of course I said yes.
Now, I was only there for about four hours, but let me tell you: hunger is contagious. Though I’m sure it was nothing like what these kids were going through, I was starving, pretty much the entire time, despite having eaten just before arriving at the church. There is nothing that makes me want to eat more than being told I am not allowed to eat, apparently. You see, I was under strict orders not to bring any food in. Even though I was not participating in the fasting portion of the event, I had heard tales of other people sneaking food and then being torn apart like a gazelle beneath a mountain of hyenas, simply because they smelled slightly of Fritos. So there would be no snacking for me once I stepped foot in the church.
Having no idea what to expect, really, I flipped through all of my hymnals ahead of time looking for songs that dealt with hunger and/or food. It turns out that a lot of hymns mention bread, but they are mostly communion-centric, so I ruled them out. I did find some good ones though and, armed with a list of appropriate songs, I marched myself into the church feeling prepared, nervous, and excited. There were five teenagers in the music group, and I introduced myself to them with gusto as they stared listlessly around the room, possibly imagining that everything around them was food. I had visions of hungry cartoon characters staring at each other and suddenly seeing roast chickens and whatnot. I’m not sure if they thought I was food or not, but the energy was low and I decided to just get started and hopefully they would come alive at some point later.
I pulled out my list of hymns and rattled off a few, looking for validation or approval from this group of hunger zombies. I wasn’t supposed to be planning the music, but rather facilitating their planning of it, so I could suggest things, but ultimately it was all up to them. “What about “All Who Hunger?” I asked them, singing the first few bars so they could get a sense of it.
“Well, we’re definitely going to do at least one Coldplay song,” I was informed by one of the girls. “Maybe two Coldplay songs.”
“Oh, okay…” I said, seeing that I had clearly prepared in the wrong direction. “Which Coldplay song were you thinking of?”
“You wouldn’t know it. Nobody really knows it. And you won’t find it on the internet either.”
I quickly pulled the song up on youtube and started playing it. “Is this the one?” I asked.
“Well, yeah, I mean if you want to go to youtube,” she scoffed. I’m not sure what happened there, but clearly I was being uncool, so I asked her if she could play it on her guitar. When she admitted that she could not, we all decided to go in a different direction.
“Does anyone else have any ideas?” I asked the rest of the group.
“I can pretty much play anything except for Mumford and Sons,” a second girl told me. “I don’t know how they do that. I mean I tried to play their stuff before, and it’s pretty much impossible.”
So we had narrowed our search down to “not Mumford and Sons” and “not that one Coldplay song.” And somehow a large amount of our time seemed to have gone by. And also I really wanted a Snickers bar.
The other three members of our team were younger boys who all had either violins or violas with them, and they wanted to play Pachelbel’s Canon in D, because they had just heard it recently for the first time and it was amazing to them. I remember quite clearly being a teenager and hearing Pachelbel’s Canon for the first time and being completely amazed and deciding right away that it would be played at my wedding, and I went out and bought a CD (because that’s what we did back then) of the music and just fell in love with it. And so even though I have now heard it about 4 bajillion times, I was brought back to my youthful days of wonder and it was decided that we would quickly arrange the piece for piano, violin, and two violas, and we would open the service with it.
Meanwhile we still needed a hymn for everyone to sing (at least in my opinion), so I sent girl #2 off to practice playing “All Who Hunger” on the piano, while girl #1 flipped through the Billboard Hot 100 charts online, looking for something to play on the guitar to close out the service. I did veto “Locked out of Heaven” by Bruno Mars for being service-inappropriate, despite having the word “heaven” clearly displayed in the title of the song. She eventually settled on “Carry On” by Fun., because everybody on the planet knows it and would sing along to it, and she went off to practice that while I worked with my string trio on the Canon in D.
Overall I would say that these were talented kids who were very hungry, and had we had more rehearsal and less wooziness, I think we could have been flawless. But we work with what we have, and I think that the service was a success. Pachelbel’s Canon went great, except for the piano player (me) forgetting to play for much of the end bit, apparently thinking that the thing was over with. This could have possibly been solved with a Twix or something, but I guess we’ll never know now. “All Who Hunger” was a rousing triumph, played wonderfully on the piano by someone who is not me, and everyone sang along as planned. “Carry On” was less of a success, due partially to the fact that not everyone in attendance sang along like we thought they might, and also due to the fact that the guitar never actually came in and played anything, for reasons still unknown to me. So basically we had the words printed on the screen in front of everyone, and we all mumbled the verses a bit over some piano chords, but sang quite lustily on the chorus. Which, come to think of it, makes it a success as well.
When all was said and done, I just sat there in awe of these kids. They raised a lot of money during those 30 hours, and they collected a lot of food. Even with no food in their bellies, they put on a pretty great service. There was a skit, and some readings, and one girl read a pretty amazing rumination that I am still thinking about days later. It really was everything you could want in a worship service. And even though I am old and uncool, and I was not nearly as hungry as everyone else around me, it was still a moving experience, and I hope they ask me to help out again next year. And I will arrive with Coldplay songs arranged for viola. That will show them how cool I am.