Sunday Morning Balcony Prayers

photograph (c) Katherine Brown*

Sunday mornings when I can, when there is time between staff’s pre-worship meeting and worship itself, when there is no class to teach or other meeting between, I go up to the balcony and I sit in the highest, farthest-back pew, and I look out past the rows in front of me, and the balcony rail, over the sanctuary below, and I pray.

Sometimes my prayers are worded. A list of names, of needs, of thanks. A petition that there will indeed be worship in this place, and that I may know it. Sometimes my prayers are wordless. A deliberate setting aside, an attempt at stilling myself, to this particular present, this particular place. The cream-white walls of the sanctuary; the shallow curve of the ceiling; the stained glass in the far front wall.

Sunday morning balcony prayers.

In the chancel below, the choir rehearses to piano accompaniment. The head usher refills the oil in the tall candlesticks set on the altar. Someone else maneuvers a long pole to open the high-up shutters on slender side windows. Now the sanctuary is less shadowy, more light. In the balcony, the AV team opens the console and begins setting up.

I am in the highest, farthest-back balcony pew, slightly apart from all the preparation that continues apace, looking for stillness in the pen on the page. The piano drops out and I pause my pen to listen. The choir sings, ‘Here I am to bow down. Here I am to worship.’ Hear the harmony, giving the melody line richness and depth. Think of all the parts that move, the parts in which we move. Move towards one another, towards that which is other entirely.

I sit and I listen and look straight ahead. The far wall seems to recede as I stare at it, growing slightly smaller and more distant … and the space between, the sanctuary itself, grows bigger, as if it could hold the world. As if it does.

I think of other spaces, other sanctuaries. Flying my bike down the hill and along the nearby line park. The trail curving with the creek and between the trees which stretch so tall, their green canopy a sanctuary ceiling above. Joy in this flight, this path, this place. The amber-watered creek. The marshaled trees. The blue sky. Others also ride and walk; they push strollers and hold leashes, and their presence is part of my gladness. Crows caw roughly and robins chirrup frantically and that loud, clear-water warble is the song of the tiny wren. We are all here; here is all of ours. Life not as possession but as participation, membership, movement.

Back to the balcony. No seraphim-sung Holy, Holy, Holy (Revelation 4:8). People’s voices, here on earth; human bodies moving. Choir now rehearsed. A choir member waves to me (I am apart but not invisible!). The AV team runs mic check. All of these strands being gathered together. Woven into worship. Here. In other churches, other places. None of this mine. All of this ours as we are invited in. Members in the movement and the music.

Lay my pen down. Close the book and fold my hands in my lap and be. Be spun. To be woven again into the whole.

*I waited to take the picture until the path was clear of walkers, bicycles, and chipmunks.