Below is Martin's reflection of 2020 from the perspective of liturgy and music.  All are encouraged to read it as we continue to process what 2020 meant for our St. C's community.

Liturgy and Music

If Saint Columba’s Episcopal Church can be said to have “normal” years, then 2020 started out as one. We’d just finished a Christmas Eve service that featured three choirs of our community: Sudanese, Congolese, and our own St. Columba’s Singers.  As more staff time was devoted to working to make these liturgies more expansive and representative, we began assembling a bulletin proofreading team to help check through the bulletins before printing for goofy mistakes.

What was also normal were our celebrations: due to a fortunate timing of the calendar, we had our burning of the greens and Epiphany party on Epiphany Eve (January 5) itself. We marked Shrove Tuesday with a liturgy and pancake party. We continued to offer a healing Eucharist on Wednesday nights at 6:30, with Al, David, and myself trading off weeks in accompanying those gathered, continuing to use eucharistic prayers written by some in our own community. 

If there was anything in early 2020 that felt different from previous years, it was our work to explore ways for the cultures of all of our diverse communities that make up the greater ministry of St. Columba’s to be distinctly expressed in our liturgy and music. To this end, we choir singers were working very hard to learn to sing songs in French such that we and the Congolese choir could share in music leadership on the Sundays they joined us - with much help from Jean-Paul Yafali, Paula Mayfield, and Hester Malonee, all of whom know far more French than your music director! (Merci à tous!) On the last Saturday in February, many members of our community visited the Sudanese church’s worship service to experience their culture of worship and hospitality.

It was that very week when we heard rumblings of change. Sometime right around that time, I remember meeting with Mother Alissa in her office, where she shared with me news of impending school closures, saying that parents were being warned of something like “significant disruptions to daily life.” By my records, Sunday, March 8 was the last fully “normal” Sunday we had in 2020. By the middle of that week, emails were circulating and Skype meetings were happening about how much would be closed or cancelled: choir, Sunday School for the kids, and what else.  Yet by the end of the week - Thursday, March 12 - the decision had been made to cancel in-person worship services. St. Columba’s Singers had become its own buddy group. March 15, the Third Sunday of Lent, was our first Sunday of livestream worship with a skeleton crew of two clergy, two musicians, and a producer. 

Fear was high at that time, and yet, we continued to do what the church has always done: we prayed, we preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we organized ourselves to meet human need. For all who say the church seems to never change, I will tell you - change and adapt we did - to something that felt more like what had been the Diocese of Olympia’s TV Eucharist for those unable to worship in person due to illness. We revamped our Lenten “open space” time of exploring stations of devotion with a group meditation led by Mother Meghan - something that received rave reviews during a time of such extreme anxiety. We purchased new audio and video equipment over the coming months: cameras, microphones, mic stands, cords, and so much more. We set up something of a succession system of musicians should either Paula or I be unable to work due to illness. 

Eventually, our Sunday liturgy was streamlined in text, prayers for times of national tragedy were included in bulletins for use at home, service music replaced with more verses of comfort and lament. Alissa made the complex and difficult decision to continue to offer the Eucharist, and we began including prayers for those not in attendance to participate in the Church’s historic practice of “Spiritual Communion.” The service gradually became more simple, with fewer and easier hymns sung and optional parts of the liturgy eliminated to streamline the service. Our Wednesday Healing Eucharist became an intimate zoom service of Evening Prayer followed by a “hangout” where people could come together to check in with each other.

Lenten services became even more spare from what we might remember from previous years. Yet it was Holy Week that perhaps felt the most off-kilter, but still strangely beautiful. Instead of the usual Palm Sunday liturgy, moving from celebration to the drama and pain of the crucifixion, we did a morning liturgy focused on Jesus’ entrance to Jerusalem. Then, for that Sunday night, Meghan had assembled a team of people to record the Passion, and Alissa and I worked together to create a simple Order for Worship in the Evening service to frame it and let it do its work for us. The Triduum (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil) liturgy likewise was trimmed to the starkest essentials, reflecting both the liturgical themes of the liturgy and the felt experience of worship during the pandemic. For Maundy Thursday, the footwashing was left for families to do at home; for Good Friday, all sung music eliminated; for Saturday night, the first Eucharist of Easter moved to the morning service, with a shortened set of readings followed by a simple Liturgy of the Word and Renewal of Baptismal Vows. 

As we came to May and the season of Easter, we began to hear concerns about singing in worship. Based on the best science available at the time, and conversations among leaders in the choral music world, the decision was made at that time by the Bishop’s office that any type of group congregational singing should not take place. It was during the late Easter season that a number of us began learning how to make recording and editing of multi-part music from home. Paula would record and edit the accompaniment, and using that, musicians from St. Columba’s would record themselves playing or singing. I would then edit and mix each of the audio tracks, syncing them with the video recordings. While this was highly time-consuming for both Paula and myself, taking perhaps as much as forty hours of work between the two of us for each song, we were able to produce several lovely virtual choir anthems over the year using this method. Becca DeShaw, Jean Balogh, Al Francisco, and David Brand also all recorded and submitted music. We also began offering recorded organ preludes or postludes a couple times a month. 

 In the summer, at a time when we missed so much of what we might usually do, we did a survey of people’s favorite and most comforting hymns to sing. As we moved through the remainder of the year, we learned through informal and formal feedback - and through our own experience of virtual worship in other places - about what felt balanced and integral to virtual worship. While attendance ebbed and flowed, the choir continued to meet virtually on Thursday nights to check in with one another, and several stepped up to fill in as soloists on Sunday morning, as did Alana Hammer. With a promising decrease in COVID spread metrics, we made the decision to begin socially-distanced outdoor worship services, moving the livestream service to 9 a.m., followed by an online coffee hour, and outdoor morning prayer at 11 a.m.

As the COVID metrics took a concerning turn, along with the weather, we cancelled outdoor worship. Yet we were very much alive as we kept ourselves very busy in the areas of music and liturgy. In September, we heard about a church in Seattle that was closing and selling their organ, and they approached us about the possibility of taking it from them and refurbishing it. After consulting with several people in the congregation who appreciate organ music, and after examining the organ, the Bishop’s Committee and I both agreed that this organ was not the right fit for us at the current time. Fortunately, some electrical issues that had been causing problems with the organ seemed to subside after I had done some troubleshooting-level maintenance on its electronic components. (This also may have been helped by electrical improvements done when installing the new HVAC system.) 

Even as COVID concerns prevented return to worship in person regularly on Sundays, we continued to celebrate festival liturgies in our distinctive St. Columba’s ways. For St. Francis’ Day - the first Sunday of October - musicians put together another virtual choir anthem and we featured a virtual pet parade of pet (and plant!) photos submitted by congregants. For  our All Hallows’ Eve liturgy, we did a modified, outdoor version of our service with spooky Bible readings. On All Saints’ Sunday, we celebrated the first baptisms during the COVID pandemic, following the strict and sensible guidelines of the bishop’s office and state government. It was also in the fall that we purchased a 3-octave set of hand chimes that can be used when we are able to return together in person - if we cannot have choirs that sing, we hope to have choirs that ring!

As the staff wondered about how to make Christmas as special and as meaningful as it could be, even in the midst of rapidly rising COVID numbers, we decided to do something very creative: a service in the glass-walled narthex that would be both live-streamed on Facebook and broadcast over FM radio in a small radius to the St. Columba’s parking lot. All of the staff were involved in planning for the occasion throughout December. In place of the traditional carol-sing, Christopher Wagner, our livestream broadcast producer, developed a script for a nostalgic radio show. We set up nativity scenes and decorations all around the narthex, inviting congregants to either sit in their cars or, remaining socially-distant, sit or stand near the windows to watch the service happen live. The service concluded with singing silent night by battery-powered candlelight, in cars, in chairs, and in the narthex itself. 

If there is one song that I think captures the sense of this year, it is one we began singing in February before the pandemic began. It's a song from Taize, that sings, “Within our darkest night, you kindle a fire that never dies away.” Personally, this was the year that I have worked harder and longer than any in any of my 10 years at St. Columba’s. This is not surprising given everything that has happened, and I expect every person - lay or ordained - who is employed by a congregation or diocese feels the same way.  Others in various professions no doubt have had a similar experience. Please thank them for all they do, as so much of it is unknown and unseen, and perhaps unloved. These have been dark times, and yes, this year was anything but normal - even strange. But it was beautiful, too - in many ways, as beautiful as it could be.  For us at St. Columba’s, it was godly and holy. Even the darkness is kindled with the fire that never dies away. I pray that the Lord would give you and me the strength of that fire - that eternal fire - in every dark time. 

- Martin Pommerenke, Associate for Liturgy and Music