I’m a front row guy.

At church, after I’ve done my part in the tenor section, singing the morning’s anthem, I exit the chancel and position myself in the front-most pew, ten feet in front of the pulpit.

From there I can take in the sermon, hearing our pastor’s natural voice, not the amplified voice that comes through the church’s sound system. I can examine the her face, sensing the emotions behind the words. Too, my view is unobstructed by the backs of the heads of my fellow congregants who, if I seated myself halfway back, would be on display in the pews in front of me.

I honor and respect my pastor. By sitting in the front row, I’m gifting her with an audience that is, for her, immediate, tangible, intimate. Having given thousands of talks over fifty years, I know that an audience assists and supports a speaker when seated in close proximity. Contrariwise, a speaker is hampered by a physically distant audience.

When, arriving at a venue where I am to give a talk, I find that the meeting planners have failed to grasp the primacy of proximity, arranging the event so that the nearest auditors are twenty five or thirty feet distant from my podium, I abandon the podium and, microphone in hand, advance upon my listeners, planting myself about eight feet in front of the foremost row.

Imagine yourself in the role of a speaker. Would you feel more comfortable speaking to friends clustering round a dinner table, a living room, a campfire? Or would you prefer to be isolated, distant, removed from your listeners, a little puppet pontificating beneath a far removed proscenium?

I suppose your answer might vary depending upon the content of what you hoped to communicate. You might want to be close up for intimate sharing, distant for dispassionate instruction.

Sermons always interest me. There’s so much going on. Out of their own experience of life, someone is attempting to convey wisdom by explicating an ancient text. All of our regular pastors have been gifted speakers but even when our interim or guest pastors offered sermons that verge on the turgid, I’m interested because I try to analyze precisely what they are doing wrong, where they are going astray. A sermon, even one that fails to rivet, can teach us much.

When I’m struck by a phrase in a sermon, I jot it down on my copy of the church bulletin for that Sunday. I show these to Jo when I get home (Jo is not church-y) and sometimes I set them to music.

That’s what I did with three aphorisms uttered in separate sermons by our former pastor, Steve Van Kuiken.

Here they are:

“We are all made from the ashes of dead stars.”

That is, the particles of carbon comprising our bodies’ bulk were once found among an unimaginable number of other carbon particles, comprising an ancient star. The star burned out, the carbon was released and eventually reassembled into … us! And where will those particles go after we are disassembled? Stars, as yet unborn. Matter being indestructible, “such stuff as we are made on" is eternal. Now there’s a thought!

Another time, Steve said:

“The important question is not who you are. The important question is who you are becoming.”

Like the carbon comprising our bodies, our true selves are also in the processing of becoming …. what? Well, that’s the important question, isn’t it? What is the trajectory of all our wanderings, individually and collectively as the human race? Another thought well worth pondering!

Steve often said,

“We are all on a journey and none of us have arrived.”

It’s a humble admission that the preacher is no more qualified to pronounce upon the Eternal Verities than any of the rest of us. I make a point of quoting this line to my students. They are learning, hopefully, but so am I. We’re journeying together.

Then one day (as storytellers say), I realized that these three aphorisms, taken together, sung one after the next, might make a powerful anthem In 2001 I set to music these thoughts of Steve’s and we sang the anthem while he was still our pastor. A few weeks ago, two pastors later, we sang it again.

It’s a challenging piece. Mastering it was difficult. But we nailed it in the end, thanks to the persistence and skill of our beloved Minister of Music, Chris Miller.

It’s been performed only twice, heard only by the congregants who were gathered in the pews at Mt. Auburn Presbyterian Church on those two occasions.

Today, I’m sharing it with you, a piece of music that has been, to date, reached only a handful of listeners. As you listen, imagine yourself sitting in the front row, close enough to see the whites of our eyes and the pinks of our lips!

To hear "From the Ashes of Dead Stars” sung by the Chancel Choir of the Mt. Auburn Presbyterian Church under the direction of Chris Miller, click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.