Evensong

On the radio this morning I heard a male voice announcing a choral Evening Prayer service this Sunday at the Church of the Incarnation in Dallas.

Before my first trip to London, a clergyman in Downers Grove, Illinois, told me, “After you’ve seen the Westminster Abby, be sure to go back at five o’clock, when the church is closed to tourists. Tell the guard at the door you want to attend the service of evensong.”

A tall gentleman in black escorted me down the long nave and up into the choir, where I was given a seat near the high altar. A few minutes later the organ filled the great vaults with majestic music, as down the center aisle came a procession of about 20 boys in crisp white tops over floor-length red cassocks. The choir boys were followed by an equal number of men in black robes. The choir took places behind me, a 40-voice choir for a congregation of perhaps 25. The combined voices of men and boys sang familiar hymns, moving me more deeply than any choir I'd heard in Episcopal churches in Illinois, Michigan, or Texas.

The Evening Prayer service was especially beautiful in that magnificent church. I was grateful to the Illinois clergyman who told me about it. Ten years later when John and I were in London in July, it was a different choir. After the service, a verger apologized,.”Westminster School is on summer holiday. In summer we have guest choirs from throughout England, and sometimes they are . . .”

“We attended a church service in Ipswich,” John said. “The 14th Century church was beautiful, but the choir. . . “

The verger just shook his head.

One reason I enjoyed traveling was the serendipity. As a student of history, In Europe are many places where I felt I was stepping back into the past. But even in Westminster Abby, surrounded by a thousand years of history, the experience was different each time I visited. I learned to “go with the flow.” Still, without the Westminster choir, attending any service at Westminster Abby was exalting.

My initial feeling was that it was too bad most tourists do not know that evensong is sung every night in all the cathedrals in England, usually to congregations of fewer people than are in the choir. On second thought I realized, selfishly, with few others praying in the majesty of those ancient spaces I felt the Holy Spirit, which I never felt when surrounded by hordes of other tourists.