During the past twenty years, millions of radio listeners
have become acquainted with the folksy Minnesota Public Radio program
“A Prairie Home Companion.”
This one-hour charmer has introduced east-of-the-Mississippi residents—like
me—the pleasures of storytelling about the fictitious Lake Wobegon,
authentic folk-style music performed by authentic folk musicians and
an immersion into a lifestyle that is as charming as it is nonthreatening.
The weekend of October 10, 11, and 12 gave new meaning to me of the
word prairie and the life that is lived on the prairie.
I was one of two “out-of-town dudes” brought in to teach
and sing and be part of the fifth annual Sacred Music on the Prairie
conference. The brochure has a buffalo as its logo.
It took place at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Cheyenne, Wyoming,
the diocese that encompasses the whole state of Wyoming.
(I will never complain again of making a “church call”
to our most distant parish in the Diocese of Greensburg. It is a one
hour and thirty-five minute drive from our diocesan office building
to the far-flung church.)
The church musicians who gathered that day numbered Roman Catholics,
Episcopalians, and a healthy contingency of Lutherans. Unlike the
Lutherans in Lake Wobegon, these people were cheerful and ready for
a celebrative dinner.
With no exception they were practicing music ministers who demonstrated
one of the strongest commitments to do their best to help their people
in their worship that I have ever experienced.
The struggles they face on a daily/weekly basis are no different than
we all face: recruitment of volunteer cantors, instrumentalists, and
choir people; unsupportive clergy; pitiful organs; comatose congregations—hardly
anything new.
The day was filled with a lot of words from the other “out-of-town
dude” and me. He was the wise man from the profound Midwest
and I was the wise man from the not-so-exotic East.
More than just talking, there was a great deal of singing. In my mind,
the mark of a successful church music conference is the amount of
music sung, not the amount of verbiage spoken and endured.
What was different about these folks from most of the other groups
I’ve encountered in the past is their incredible willingness
to learn and their openness to new music and new thinking.
Their incredible innocence was so obvious in their easy acceptance
of the two dudes who had them sing songs they didn’t know and
who had them rethink how they ministered with their musical craft.
Each one had stories we heard before. Each one described challenges
that were familiar ones. Each one exhibited grace, however, that can
only be divine in origin and incarnational in practice.
Maybe it’s because they live in a society that is so close to
the earth with the prairie encircling their homes and churches that
they can be so open and hospitable.
Maybe they haven’t lost the hospitality that the settlers of
frontier America showed to strangers . . . probably because a hundred
and fifty years ago those strangers were few and far between. All
were welcome.
For whatever reason, the lot of them gave up their Saturday to drive
for hours to attend this conference. I only wished there were twice
as many.
The day closed off with all of us singing a text by Mary Louise Bringle,
“When memory fades,” to the tune of FINLANDIA, George
Frederick Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus,” and “A
Blessing” by Margaret Rizza.
Not too shabby for twenty singers.
. . . And I didn’t hear one discouraging word, and the skies
were not cloudy both days.
