Vivaldi’s “Gloria”: Choir-led Worship
Image: “Coffee Klatch” by Ricardo Levins Morales (www.rlmartstudio.com). Used with permission.
This Sunday, the First Universalist Choir, directed by Dr. Randal Buikema, will lead worship services with a performance of Gloria by Antonio Vivaldi. Hidden inside this seasonal classic is a story of sanctuary. Vivaldi wrote Gloria for Ospedale della Pieta’, a charitable institution established in the 14th century to house and care for orphaned and abandoned children. To support its mission of providing sanctuary for children, the Pieta’ formed a girls orchestra and choir, which became well known throughout Europe. Their most famous teacher and concert master was Vivaldi. You might say that he wrote Gloria to provide sanctuary for forgotten children.
Please join us at 9:30 or 11:15 a.m. for this beautiful and joyous work as we tell stories of sanctuary.
Order of Service: December 16 Order of Service
Offering Recipient: ISAIAH (give here)
December Worship Theme: Sanctuary
In ancient times, finding an inn was more than finding a place to spend the night. Certainly, the inn was a place for the traveler to rest, but it also provided safety and healing to the wayfaring stranger. There were no hospitals in those times, so the inn functioned as one. It was a place to tend to the physical body, and to gather one’s spiritual resources for the continuing journey. When we hear the story of the Nativity, when an innkeeper provided a place for the Christ child to be born, perhaps we could imagine ourselves as the innkeeper, and our church as the inn, a place of respite, and healing, a sanctuary. This is one of our strengths as a faith community. We are a sanctuary, a place one can go to find health, healing and community. When people ask, “What do you believe?” We might respond: “Come with me to a place on 34th and Dupont Avenue South. This is a place where people are nourished, where people begin ministries, where people invest in something beyond self interest, growing in community and ever widening circles of compassion.” As writer, theologian, Gary Gunderson writes: “I may have trouble articulating what I believe, it is easy to say where I believe.” This month we explore the where of what we believe.
