We Sing a Song of the Choir of Paul (hymn parody)

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original lyric “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God” by Lesbia Scott, b. 1898
Episcopal Hymnbook 1982 #293

Following a year finding ways to make music under COVID restrictions, the choir sings to interim director Paul Kelley on the eve of a well-deserved vacation.

1. We sing because we’re the choir of Paul,
patient, and brave, and few.
To take off our masks and to get off line,
we did what you said to do.
We sang in the balcony, sang in the hall,
and we sang in procession though it was small,
and we even came in for a nine o’ clock call
and stayed for the postlude, too.

2. Now hymns are out and the masks are in.
We’re socially distanced, too.
You’ve got your chance to escape to France,
so we come to bid adieu
to a full-time organist, full-time veep,
and a full-time father who needs some sleep,
but while you’re away, all we, li-ike sheep,
will be on Zoom missing you.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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On Easter Sunday, our part-time interim choir director Paul fortified our choir with paid guest singers and a professional trumpet player. For the best-attended service we've had since April of 2019, the music was grand and moving -- tearing up, I had to stop singing the anthem. This makes a good time to post a tribute to Paul while I work on new material.

Sung to Paul at a bon-voyage party last year, my lyric is a parody of a children's song, but it's an accurate account of painful experience. For more than a year of COVID, group singing was impossible, and membership in the choir eroded, though we tried to keep interest up through social gatherings on Zoom. During that time, when clergy live-streamed services from the empty nave of St. James, Paul invited Lanie, Leslie, or me to sing hymn tunes. To comply with COVID directives, we either wore a mask or isolated ourselves in the hall or the balcony.

During the summer of 2021, choir started up again, but Delta and then Omicron hit. For a time, every adult I knew had a case in their immediate family. It was then that Paul took his grown son on a long-postponed trip to France. - WSS