When I graduated from college in May of 1973, I knew exactly what I was going to do: come back home to Richland County, Ohio and get busy, composing and writing.

I had no idea how I was going to earn a living but I figured that would take care of itself; and it did.

I signed on for the summer as Aquatics Director at the local Boy Scout camp. Come Fall, I landed my first full-time job, as Music Director at First English Lutheran, the largest Lutheran church in Mansfield, the county seat.

The pastor was demanding. Everything had to be ‘just so.’ He insisted that worship services must be precisely sixty minutes long, never a minute more. If I led the choir in singing an anthem that was a little too long, I would hear about it!

After three years, I resigned and found work as a tutor during the school year and a house-painter during the summer. Then as a classical radio broadcaster for WOSU in Columbus. Then on to other things. All along I composed and wrote, on the side.

Eventually we moved to Cincinnati so that our two children could attend the famous School for the Creative & Performing Arts.

Not long after we arrived, I found myself enfolded and embraced by Mt. Auburn Presbyterian Church. A creative, inclusive, progressive, affectionate, laughter-loving, music-loving bunch of folks. Oh, and NOT obsessed with ending worship services precisely sixty minutes after they began. At least, that’s what I thought for several years.

However, when our services, for a while there, stretched longer and longer past noon, there was some good-natured grumbling. This inspired me to draw a series of humorous cartoons for our church’s weekly email-newsletter. I entitled the series:

"Eight Sure Fire Ways to Lessen the Length of Services at MAPC.”

If you’d like to chuckle at my cartoons, copy and paste the link below into the address bar of your browser:

http://www.sowash.com/recordings/mp3/eightways.pdf

There is something to be said, after all, for a short anthem. My setting of Jesus’ famous admonition, “Where you treasure is, there also will be your heart,” clocks in at just under two minutes. My Lutheran pastor-boss would have approved!

To hear the women of the Harvard University Choir singing "Where Your Treasure Is,” click on the link above.

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

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
July 31, 2016