A view from the pew

Singing makes you happy. Singing brings joy to the heart. Singing heartily is like a work out and warms you up. So when my daughter inveigled me into joining our church choir, I agreed. Do you sing?
 Ours is a small choir, usually only three or four of us plus the organist. Our organist organises us, suggests pieces, and she gets us to rehearse. We learn to sing in parts: bass, alto, soprano. Our organist has a lovely clear alto voice that you can hear every week at the Saturday evening mass. We also sing at special masses.
We've sung some special masses in the last year, such as our parish priest's anniversary of his ordination. For these special masses, we've practised what seem to me quite difficult pieces, like Bruckner's Locus Iste, The Deer's Cry and Mozart's Ave Maria. This week we sang at the November mass for the dead. After the communion, the choir sang two pieces: The Deer's Cry and Jesu, lover of my soul. They sounded beautiful. The Jesu has four verses, which we harmonised.  The Deer's Cry  requires a solo voice with a choir later in the piece.  Listen to Rita Connolly sing it, or come to our church and hear our organist sing it.
If you came to that mass for the dead you heard and saw us light candles for and read the names of those dead of the parish. You heard and saw our parish priest's blessings over us at the end of mass, and you heard some of the loveliest singing. You'd have felt at peace, blessed and happy.