Topic: Easter

Thom Dunn

          An Easter Rising

Whenever Bob Stanhope and I were home from college, home for Easter for example, we showed up at Parkway Community Methodist Church to sing in the choir. It was quite the usual thing. Come home. Show up Sunday. Put on blue choir robes and process down the aisle to take our places in the choir loft and sing, sing, sing.

      Halfway down the aisle, one season, I thought of our Minister, Doctor Pierce, a kindly older gentleman who well represented Methodism Lite: preaching peace, never raising his voice. That said, he had fought in World War II (Or was it the Great War ?) getting into the army by cheating on his hearing test: Deaf in his left ear, he judged the time it took for the tested to click two quarters together before saying "There !" And so he made it into The War.

       Now we knew him to be processing behind us as we made our way to the choir lofts, men on one side, women on the other. Then it was I thought of a choir I was in long ago: same church but I was
 considerably younger: 3 or 4, I think, and singing:

        "Jesus loves me , this I know,
          For the Bible tells me so,
         Little ones to him belong,
         They are weak but he is strong

          Yes, Jesus loves me,
          Yes, Jesus loves me,
          Yes, Jeses loves me,

          The Bible tells me so.

Our choir robes then were virginal white, with a blue bow (for boys), pink for girls.

It was an "Awww" moment for the congregation....and we knew it even then.