There is a wonderful moment in a worship service when the choir is singing. There’s a brief pause, when the music director turns toward the choir and raises her hands. For listeners, there’s a moment of anticipation. People prepare for what poet Billy Collins described as the “pleasure of meaning.”
The composer intends for the music to add meaning to life through melody, harmony, and rhythm. The person who wrote the text being sung intended the words to add to the pleasure of music’s meaning. Members of the choir have rehearsed with the director to bring her meaning to life.
We’re all in this together: audience, director, composer, wordsmith. And the person who has planned the service as a whole brings Billy Collins’ final pleasure, that of companionship. There’s a moment of anticipation, as members of the choir rise as they are willing and able. The director lowers her hands to the keyboard, and choir members take a deep breath.
Then we all join together in the companionship of music in worship. What a wonderful moment indeed.