Commit Random Acts of Music

Nearly every day, I walk past the Immaculate Conception Church on Derby St. Sometimes at night, I sit by their slender wooden statue of Mary, which sits atop a rock overlooking a goldfish pond, but I have never found my way inside the church's walls.

This morning I passed by Immaculate Conception on my way back from the local herbal shop, and the faint tones of the organ grasped onto the center of my heart, pulling it up through the crown of my head, into another plane. I paused and turned back towards the large wood-panaled doors. They looked closed, and why should they be open on a Saturday morning? I turned around again and began walking home, but another chord, just barely finding its way out of a cracked window in the sanctuary curled its delicate fingers around my inner being, pulling me back.

Again, I turned around and climbed the staircase looming before the door. It opened easily when I pulled, revealing an empty sanctuary with tinted light streaming through stained-glass windows, so well-kept, I felt as though its caregivers were extending their arms towards me, an invitation to worship. I wandered towards the front of the church so that I could look back into the organ's balcony. I didn't see a soul and, when I heard the sounds of chimes and opera singing accompanying the organ, I felt duped to think that some CD and a big speaker had lured me into a Catholic church.

Still I could not leave. I knelt before a pew in the back row. Prayers and tears flowed through me and mixed with the gentle organ tones in the expanse of empty space above. One song flowed into the next. After the third ended, there was a pause. The CD must be over, and God forbid, someone comes to change it and I have to explain myself. I stood up and heard a slight shifting above me. The faintest rustle of papers. I wandered again to the front of the sanctuary, this time at a different angle, and saw the back of a woman's head. She began to play, and when the angelic singing began once again, I noticed her jaw moving ever so slightly.

I returned to the pew and listened to the song before wandering back into the sunshine. Perhaps she will never know that her music was heard by another soul this Saturday morning. I thank her for the blessings carried in her music and pray that my own random acts of music--out at the lighthouse at night, in my yard, at local restaurants, or at the beach, may bring half that much joy to someone else.