From our Music Director,  Rev. Gary Jon Cooper

It happened shortly before the events that took me to the hospital.  It was a "blue Monday" the week after Thanksgiving and I had just put up the Christmas tree by myself, lights and decorations, the works.  How Evelyn loved that and, of course, thats what generated the blues.  I'm not ashamed to tell you, because I am simply joining you a very human experience, I sat near the tree, red-eyed and wet-cheeked, trying to remind myself that these feelings would pass, so just go with the flow, and fake it till you make it.

Then a little voice came into my head.  It was 'the still, small voice" that I have learned to recognize comes not from inside my head, but into my head from the outside. "What do you tell your cancer care-receivers when they are in the place you are right now?  How many times have you said, you need to get into doing something for others right now!"
Well... it so happened that we had just finished the baking of the Annual Gingerbread Boys for the Food Bank  (the family has baked more than 400 cookies for ourselves and others).  This was another of Evelyn's Christmas favorites.  So those Food Bank cookies sat waiting to be iced. 

Out they came, out came the icing, and four hours later they had their icing, raisins and were hardened enough to go into their plastic bags and into the freezer to get to church in time to go out on the 15th of December distribution.

So here's why I tell you this story.  We've reorganized the Bell Choir and Lent is just around the corner for the Chancel Choir Singers.  It has always been good advice, a lot of problems are made easier by doing something for others.   We need you, and I suspect that you need us.  No harping or preaching here.  You have the picture, you have the invitation.  15 of your fellow BPC make an awful lot of music for their small number and have found an activity worth being regularly involved in.   Done.  

Gary Jon