It Might Just be Your Thing…
Many years ago, there was an off-Broadway show that tried to weave together Shakespearean dialogue and gangster rap music into one bold, experimental performance. The ambition was admirable — the actors were talented, the music was energetic, the language was rich — but it just didn’t quite hold together. The parts never quite fused into a whole. You could tell what they were going for, but the vision never fully emerged. Many left with great respect for the effort, but with the quiet realization: this just isn’t my thing.
That’s not a dismissal. We all have our things — the artistic forms, liturgical textures, and spiritual cadences that bring us most deeply into communion with God. For me, one of those sacred spaces is found in the idiom of Anglican liturgy: words and music, prayer and silence, shape and beauty. That’s why coming home to the Redeemer always feels like coming back into alignment — where the altar is lovingly tended, where the choir lifts our prayers in song, and where the world slows down enough for the soul to breathe again.
And I want to name one particular service that captures this beauty every single week: Choral Evensong. For nearly four years, this Sunday evening service has offered a quiet, transcendent rhythm of prayer and song — and yet I’m sure many in the parish have never experienced its astonishing depth. I don’t say that as a criticism. I offer it as a possibility.
Choral Evensong at the Redeemer is unlike any other service in the Diocese. The familiar texts of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis are set alongside seldom-heard readings from both Old and New Testaments. Nigel and the choir prepare new anthems and soaring organ works that seem to rise even beyond our soaring ceiling. It is stunning. It is prayerful. It is most definitely my kind of thing.
If you’ve never come to Choral Evensong, I heartily invite you to join us at 5pm this Sunday. Yes, BBQ and Bluegrass will follow at 6pm — but why not begin with beauty? Come center yourself in one of Anglicanism’s most breathtaking traditions. Come and see.
It might just be your thing too.
Choral Evensong is offered every Sunday evening at the Redeemer at 5pm from the first Sunday after Labor Day until the Sunday before Memorial Day weekend.
