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Showing posts from April, 2014

Hearing the Call: David Spanagel, Minister of Music

“I am an atheist— yet my decision a dozen years ago to join the choir at First Unitarian has opened a gigantic window of personal (dare I say, spiritual?) growth for me, and, though I shudder to hear myself say it, I think that I have become a ‘minister’ of music as a result”.  David Spanagel My family began attending worship services at First Unitarian when our son reached kindergarten age.  Having been unchurched myself, the weekly Sunday ritual started out very much as a chore that I had little desire for.  The one dimension of weekly worship services that did really brighten my whole outlook was the music I heard and shared at First Unitarian.   I gloried in the power of the organ chords as they penetrated the entire space of the sanctuary, and I marveled at the ambition of the choir’s classical music repertoire.   Occasionally, I even felt a transcendent chill of beauty and truth in the sounds that emanated from the soloists’ voices, or from the collaborations I witne