Prelude — Toccata in E minor (opening)
J. S. Bach · organ
Bach throws us into the deep end — unresolved and unsettled. This is where every trial begins: before you know the shape of it, before you can name what is happening to you. Let this music settle you into the discomfort of not knowing — the sacred space where transformation has not yet been revealed.
Introit — Les Barricades Mystérieuses
François Couperin (1717) · organ
These are the trials you cannot see through and cannot go around. How will we navigate the barricades? What will be revealed within us?
Opening Hymn — We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder
HPP #454, vv. 1, 2, & 4
Answers can come when we least expect them — in the wilderness, on the run, with a rock for a pillow. We climb because the ladder has already appeared.
Selections from Once Upon a Mattress
MoCo Arts
Music of Reflection — On the Nature of Daylight
Max Richter (2004) · organ
This is the music of after — once the trial has passed and you are beginning quietly to understand what was revealed. Not triumph yet, not resolution, but the first gentle light of comprehension.
Offertory — It Is Well With My Soul
Horatio G. Spafford (1873) · Kathleen Leinau and Paul Vincent, duet
Spafford wrote these words having lost nearly everything. What remained was something the trial simply could not reach.
Closing Hymn — Simple Gifts
Elder Joseph Brackett (1848) · HPP #391, all
The Shakers believed that simplicity was not deprivation but liberation — that shedding what is unnecessary reveals what is essential. “Till by turning, turning we come round right.” The gift is what you find when you stop trying to be anything other than what you are.
Postlude — Toccata in E minor
J. S. Bach · organ
Where the prelude gave us Bach’s unsettled, unresolved beginning — the trial before you know its shape — the full toccata carries us through to its triumphant conclusion. The trials that began our worship will leave us changed — and triumphant!