Why

Hello,

Why did I say I would play for Christmas Eve? Some other inauspicious time would have been better. I had just asked the organist if I could play the organ for fun. I have known many organists who are quite possessive of their instruments. She was not only happy to have me play it, but she wondered if I could play for Christmas Eve. It is always easy to say yes when the time is a long ways out. Now I am not convinced that it is best. It is always hard to know what the settings will sound like in a church full of people as opposed to an empty space. I do feel that it is necessary that I play since I learned last night that they have not found someone who can play on the 26th when we will be gone. Now that would have been more likely a low attendance time for me to play.

I am also finding that most of the pre and post service music that I have is really short since I have always played in a small church and did not need to fill much time. Actually no one wanted me to be playing a long time when for instance the offering was already collected.

Because of nervousness I have been putting off the task of actually spending much time practicing and figuring out the stops. One very positive thing is that there are no new hymns to learn. All are old favorites so I am not concerned about that.

I remember that when we moved to Ely, the first time I played was for Easter Sunday. It was apparently the day the time changed to daylight savings time because the organist did not come. At least there, I had been playing in the more recent past and I had spent some time just playing around on that organ. Now I feel as if I have been thrown into the deep end. I am trying to think positively and know that I will do an ok job of it, but a part of me would like to be impressive and that is not likely to happen since I am in survival mode. Then sometimes I try to remind myself that all of this is to the glory of God so I should just relax into it and give it my best shot. God knows how much I have prepared.

Paula