Tuesday, April 6, 2010

AND THE BEAT GOES ON ...

I had an experience yesterday which brought me up face to face not only with my mortality, but with my immortality. And yours, too...

The days' work having been finished, I was lurking through the virtual halls of the Facebook site. The Omnipotent FB Server had recommended that I friend a person, so I clicked on his photo to browse his profile. The words "Ephesus SDA Church" jumped out at me. I had installed an organ in the very same church. And we are talking ancient history here, folks. This was wayback in about 1975. Why, that makes me almost as old as god. Not as wise, though...

So I quickly recounted this connexion and hit Send. Within minutes, comes a return email from one Lawrence S. granting me the beneficience of Friend status (Hail! Omnipotent Server), and telling me how he as a 12 year old boy stood on the curb watching a crew unload his church's new pipe organ console.

Then it hit me. Hey, wait a minute. I am sitting at my desk with an email originating in year 2010 from a man in California recounting his exprience of watching ME unload an organ console on the streets of Harlem in the 1970s...well, who would'a thought...

Aside from a few prescient authors, who of us could have foretold, of a hot summer's day in 1975, that something called a computer would have become such a pervasive force in our individual lives less than 50 years hence, thereby assuring each of us our ubiquitous 15 minutes of fame whilst simultaneously confirming the fragility of those moments....

Has the Internet affected your life today? More than you know. More than any of us knows or could have imagined just a short 40 or so years ago...and in another galaxy far, far away...

Olivia

Sunday, April 4, 2010

LOST LOVES

Alec Wyton once described the two professional certificates awarded by the American Guild of Organists as being the AAGO (Also a good organist) and the FAGO (Formerly a good organist)...

I never got that far. I was just a BPO (Basic Parish Organist)....

Likewise with flying little airplanes. If you are instrument rated you get to fly IFR (Instrument Flight Rules), and if not, you fly VFR (Visual Flight Rules)...

Again, I went back to the basics and flew SOP (Seat of Pants)...

I loved doing both things. Thy each had their moments...

There is little else like leading a large congregation in a familliar hymn, frantically grabbing for any stop or coupler that ain't already on and wishing for the miraculous appearance of a Chamade Trompette while the people are singing for all they are worth and threatening to sonically obliterate you...

There is not quite anything like sitting at the end of the runway, running the throttle up to its limit while you are standing on the brakes and the airplane is quivering like a wet spaniel. Then you pop the brakes, pull back on the yoke, and suddenly you are on your back going almost straight up at only 4 or 5 knots above your rated stall speed...

What a rush! Both give one a great FOP (Feeling of Power)...

I haven't played for a congregation nor flown an aircraft (unless you count riding in the back on Delta) in close to ten years. Mercifully, I don't remember the last time I did either, which is perhaps just as well...

In both cases, I had no choice because of my physical condition, but perhaps God was telling me it was time to move on before I crashed a perfectly good airplane or got fired for playing the hymns too fast...

I did learn something from both experiences: The trick to aging gracefully is to move on to other pursuits while they will still remark "So soon?"

Easter Blessings to y'all...

Olivia