Hymn arrangements and the Soul of a DS

Another facet of life for me (is any one REALLY interested in this??? my blog seems to be leaning toward the "susan-focused")--is that I now have a piano in the apartment. (Cana took this this evening) Philip and I still co own a small Kawai grand that I had left in the Liberty parsonage because there was no room for it in the inn...oh, I mean, apartment. For Mother's Day this year, Philip promised to arrange for me to get a spinet since I had a heart felt desire for one, and Philip, pianist extraordinaire, and who knows that I do love music so, would do everything he could to help that part of me flourish. Which meant he had (well, I am sure there is some other way this could have happened, but, being Philip, this is how it did) to arrange for the good folks at Rock Bridge Christian Church (where he was the director of music a few years ago) in Columbia to bring their church's spinet over in exchange for the grand---all are one loan to each of us. Anyway, these are the ways of the Cox-Johnsons. Somebody loved Philip enough over there to help him figure this out. Today, Mr. Knott, the piano tuner came and did his thing with this old, much used Story and Clark from Columbia, and it does sound much better. I am REALLY enjoying it. I ordered four hymn arrangements books online from Sheet Music Plus( The arrangements are "for the late intermediate pianist" the books say) and play them with gladdened heart, if not with exactly the right notes. I also ordered a book of Samuel Barber piano etudes (which much be "for the late virtuoso pianist"because I can't begin to play them) and today I received the complete collection of Joplin rags. I used to could play those---when I was in seminary at Vandy thirty years ago (oh, my), someone stole all my rag books from the commons room. A disappointment for sure. When I was at Kirkwood twenty years ago (oh, my) as minister of Christian education, Karen House (who has just moved with her pastor-husband Keith Morgan to KC after spending all his ministry in St. Louis) was the director of music there and for a short time, I took lessons from her, after having not studied piano for,oh, twenty years before that! She had me playing Debussy and McDowell and I also wanted to play Gershwin so we did a bit. Since the kiddos came, I have not played much---just hymns some. But I seem to be at it again. Sometime I will regale those reading this with stories of Bill McGuire my piano teacher as a child and an adolescent---we had "Bill's chair" at our house that he sat in each week--he came to our house to give lessons---and did it on Monday mornings before school and then took me to school...wow. Bill, who may be reading this for all I know, had us play classical music for preludes in our country church---and gave a grand piano to the church, too. He played both my parents' funerals--my mother was especially fond of him---anyway, I digress.

It was last Sunday evening when I was playing "He Leadeth Me" that a sense of real focus yet real calm came over me in regards to the direction I need to lead with the pastors this year--spiritual formation, love that holds us up and holds us accountable. All of that. And it was a God moment as I actually got most of the notes right to that old hymn with a new arrangement and realized indeed that God is leading the mother sheep to tenderly care and, when admonishment must come, to do it as a form of nurture, because she wants to somehow grow in love.