Well, Amos, if I can sing through tears, I'll do that one for you. But only if I can catch Hardi at home with the violin at a mutually convenient time. So you can hear how we do it in church.

All year long, we often close Saturday night's come-as-you-are service in the big old church, with this dear old hymn. We always seem to see the same thing when we do this one-- people leave replete with calm joy, saying little but looking much.

It has been a poignant part of fall's season turn past harvest, when you can smell leaves on the ground all soft with the beating rain. It's very sweet in the winter, when the old people have braved icy winds to walk by gaslight and to gather near hissing steam heat with us. It's lovely in the spring as darkness settles songbirds to sleep just outside the finally-open favrile windows.

But I think you'd like it most especially as the service closes in the summer dusk, with the big oak doors open to the Green just out front and the courthouse just beyond. People strolling in the park (tourists visiting the Wynken, Blynken, and Nod fountain centering the Green) often are drawn up the high steps to ponder the sweep of the space of our church. When I warm up before the service, that old-timey autoharp sound you've heard goes all the way out across the Green with my good Crate amp, and in those acoustics I don't sound half bad either. (Especially when I think no one is listening but God and strangers!) In come the ladies in soft flowing summer dresses, and their fresh-shaved, chino'd spouses-- on vacation and soaking up our little, old-fashioned, sweet town-- holding hands.

Heck, you can even sing along iffen yew's a mind to.

} : ~ *> = [Christ's peace], ~Susan