The Payoff Pitch…

In baseball there’s a phrase, “the payoff pitch.” The count is full, 3 balls, 2 strikes, and something is likely to happen, a strikeout, a walk, or a hit(okay, often times its a foul ball, and you’re right back where you started, but still). There’s been so much build up, excitement is happening, and it’s been a loooong at bat.

That’s how Lent V’s choir anthem felt to me, Prayer of St. Theresa, by David Conte. It had the current record for longest time in our folders. We began working on it last spring. It does not hold the record for the longest- that would be How Can I Keep from Singing, arranged by Sarah Quartel, that Wanda started before the pandemic, Nelson worked on, and then I worked with the choir for another year (it was about a 4 year process). Still, working on a piece for over a year can feel like you’ve had a lot of balls and strikes. We’d been not quite ready in the fall, and I decided to pull it back, and then we were all ready to sing it in the winter, and then God’s Zamboni attacked Richmond. We came back and it was like we had never seen the piece.

But, we knew we could do it.

So to finally get to sing it for you, well, I think it felt pretty darn good. I think it sounded great, I hope you agree.

And through all this uncertainty, back and forth, time against a backdrop of this tumultuous world, we repeated Theresa of Avila’s words, as translated into English by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, over and over again…

Let nothing disturb thee,

Nothing affright thee;

All things are passing,

God never changeth!

Patient endurance attaineth to all things;

Who God possesseth in nothing is wanting;

Alone God sufficeth.

Put into some modern language, we know God’s got us, so we know we got this, whatever your “this” may be, a test, that letter you’ve put off writing, or a song that you’ve worked on for over a year.

You can hear it again, if you would like, by checking out the Grace Baptist YouTube channel, at about 19:10