It's all over but the pouting

[Themis]

I hope people realise I really meant 'portions'. There weren't any potions in the church of my childhood.



Still, I'm glad to see that I struck a few chords in my post.

There were a lot of potions in mine, but they were all of sugar variety.

[Gunnar]

Yeah, I hear you, and I have to admit that I have retained certain things from my religious youth. For instance, I'm still moved by the Christmas season, including some of the more religious music. The month of December holds very strong feelings for me from my youth, and I have no desire to jettison that stuff, because they contain some of my best memories of home and family.

And if I'm honest, I liked many of the conversations I had in church. They provided the spark of interest in philosophical ideas. Just because where they landed was BS didn't mean they weren't asking some good questions.

Yours and similar sentiments from MeDotOrg, Chap, Dr.W., et al on this thread resonate deeply with me too. I can't dismiss, nor do I want to dismiss the years of community support, love, and kindness I shared with and still enjoy from most of the family and friends I grew up with during my years of active participation in the Church, though I have come to realize that most of its deepest foundational truth claims are basically nonsense. I still enjoy much of the religious music, especially around the Christmas holidays, with its message of "peace, goodwill towards men."

I loved participating in the annual concert of Handel's Messiah that has been put on by our local Symphony and Oratorio Society, year after year, without a break until the past year's pandemic forced its cancellation for the first time in its history. Many had participated in it without fail every year for decades, either as participants or audience members. There is at least one elderly lady who had either performed in it or attended it for more than 8 decades without fail, even coming back our community to attend every year from the community in which she now resides, more than 50 miles away. I also sang with the Master Chorale group I also belong to in both their annual Spring and Christmas concerts, with the latter consisting, of course, of holiday music, both religious and secular. It was a great disappointment to me that both those concerts had to be cancelled last year, along with (almost certainly) this year's Spring concert. This is one of the biggest reasons I hate this pandemic so much! Hopefully, both the Oratorio Society and the Master Chorale's holiday concerts will be resumed this year. I greatly look forward to that!

I'd only quibble with that to say "my spirituality is kindness" instead. Religion is dogma. Spirituality is practice/action.

That's how I think of them, anyway.

I can't say I thought of it quite that way before I read that, but it makes sense to me now. I think that this is what religion should really be all about, not worship of hypothetical, man made deities whose existence or non-existence is objectively unverifiable by deliberate design.

[Jersey Girl]

Gunnar. Link us to it. No one will be able to identify you. Well, maybe one of us could.

[Gunnar]

Gunnar. Link us to it. No one will be able to identify you. Well, maybe one of us could.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKfiHHDzJDg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK9qHDMnTpM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFmRe1yz-Fs
This last link was our performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. This was the most enjoyable event I ever participated in. The Chorale portion begins at about 58:15. The soprano on the left of the soloists is our Master Chorale Director. She has one of the most beautiful voices I have ever heard. Darn near as beautiful as my sister's voice, which, believe it or not, was even more beautiful. My sister once turned down an offer to sing professionally with the Reno Opera Company, because she decided she didn't want to risk neglecting her large family.

[Jersey Girl]

You know I already did that, right? It's outstanding!

[Some Schmo]

Gunnar. Link us to it. No one will be able to identify you. Well, maybe one of us could.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKfiHHDzJDg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK9qHDMnTpM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFmRe1yz-Fs
This last link was our performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. This was the most enjoyable event I ever participated in. The Chorale portion begins at about 58:15. The soprano on the left of the soloists is our Master Chorale Director. She has one of the most beautiful voices I have ever heard. Darn near as beautiful as my sister's voice, which, believe it or not, was even more beautiful. My sister once turned down an offer to sing professionally with the Reno Opera Company, because she decided she didn't want to risk neglecting her large family.

Pretty awesome, Gunnar. You sounded great.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

- Doc

[Jersey Girl]

Gunnar. Link us to it. No one will be able to identify you. Well, maybe one of us could.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKfiHHDzJDg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK9qHDMnTpM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFmRe1yz-Fs
This last link was our performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. This was the most enjoyable event I ever participated in. The Chorale portion begins at about 58:15. The soprano on the left of the soloists is our Master Chorale Director. She has one of the most beautiful voices I have ever heard. Darn near as beautiful as my sister's voice, which, believe it or not, was even more beautiful. My sister once turned down an offer to sing professionally with the Reno Opera Company, because she decided she didn't want to risk neglecting her large family.

Who taught your family to sing?

[Gunnar]

Who taught your family to sing?

To start off with, my father was very musical. He had a marvelous baritone voice, he played violin, mandolin, piano, accordion, harmonica, organ, guitar, musical saw, etc. You could give him a musical instrument he'd never touched before and leave him alone with it for a couple of hours, and he would teach himself how to play it. He even built his own violins, one of which won second place in tonal quality at a national violin makers' convention many years ago in Arizona.

We all loved to sing together in perfect harmony, including my mother. In addition, my Sister took voice lessons from a truly remarkable voice teacher when she was a high school student, won an all Northern California voice competition and a full scholarship to study voice at San Jose State, but dropped out after her first year to get married. Unfortunately, as I understand it, the only classes she excelled in at San Jose State, were her music classes, including Piano.

My brother plays piano, clarinet, organ, saxophone and has recently taken up cello. He was in the clarinet section of the Beethoven Symphony #9 performance that I linked you to, as well as all The Messiah performances I participated in, and also played with the Sierra Nevada Winds orchestra for many years. Some of their performances can be found on YouTube. He is also a professional piano technician like my father was.

I am probably the least musically talented of my siblings (mostly because I didn't work hard enough at it), but have an excellent ear for pitch and easily learn my parts. I can't honestly claim to have a solo quality voice like my Sister and Father, but I have a wide vocal range and blend in well when singing with a group.

Please excuse me for boring you to tears with all that about my family, but you did ask, so blame yourself!

[Moksha]

There were a lot of potions in mine, but they were all of sugar variety.

What about small vials of olive oil infused with the Holy Ghost?