singing by lamplight

About 20 miles west of here is the Old North Church, which was the cultural and religious center of a farming community from 1835 until about 1900. The community is long gone, having clustered into North Danville and Danville over the last century. The church building, however, has survived through it all and is now a state historical landmark.

Our efforts to find this place suffered due to lack of a good map! We spent over an hour trying to find it, never being more than 4 miles away, never closer than a mile, before finally our approach was successful. It turns out we had driven in circles, plus a couple of wrong turns, before the circle became a spiral that brought us to the destination.

I won't go into the details of the church architecture, partly because it is available on line - see

http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM67JC_Old_North_Church_Danville_Vermont

and partly, lacking electricity, detail was somewhat obscured in the dim twilight of the kerosene lamps. It featured a pump organ nd pews that only a puritan might find too comfortable.

Just one interesting historical tidbit. The church was originally constructed by 4 denominations, who rotated Sunday Services. In 1868, the Methodists became the sole owner. Their first change was to remodel the front choir loft into a kitchen! (How could there be Methodist church without food!).

The Taize service was short, which seemed to make the roughly 100 folks there happy, for they were really there for the hymn singing. I'd never seen the hymnbook we used, It was similar to our Cokesbury book, and there were enough familiar hymns that I felt right at home, even without selections by Charles W. Except for one song that no one seemed to know either tune or words, the congregation was pretty enthusiastic about singing . Before it got too dark for those not by a window to see the words, we managed to sing about a dozen hymns. I suspect many would have stayed for longer singing first verses in the lamplight as long as the organist could read the music.

The Methodist Church I've been visiting in St. Johnsbury is big on modern praise music and has a good praise band as an integral part of its service. However, praise music just doesn't match the beauty, either in lyrics or music, of these old hymns. As much as the 175 year old building, these old hymns testify to the faith and values of our forefathers.