Evensong

The day is fading in the West
Our weary souls and bodies wait for rest
But to Your house, O Lord we come
To raise our voices in Evensong.
We sing Magnifcat, and Nunc Dimittis
And O Gracious Light
To ask that you, Lord, remain with us
Through the darkness of the night.

We did indeed go to Evensong this evening, and sang in the choir. We had guest musicians, a trumpet player and an organist, both professors at a local university. The music was lovely.
Afterwards, a few of us choristers had an impromptu birthday party for one of our own in the parking lot. A man walked up (we are in the middle of downtown after all,) and asked for phone call money to call his sister to get some gas 'cause he ran out. We looked at him and decided he probably wasn't going to use it for booze or drugs, so we gave him some of the cider we were drinking, some birthday cake, AND phone call change, plus a few bucks in case his sister couldn't bail him out with gas. Hey, it was a Church parking lot, after all, and we are His representatives, like it or not. This sort of thing happens a lot in Oklahoma. People help each other out. If the person looks too obviously in need of love that does not involve cash to support a destructive habit, we can hook them up with St. George's Guild, which will see to their material needs and help them get help for their bigger problems, too. Nearly all folks in Oklahoma will do that. Most go to church, and know where to refer people for help if they fear cash gifts would only make the situation worse instead of really helping. Of course, you kind of have to have a radar for dangerous people. You don't want to get involved in a situation that could endanger yourself or others. Most folks around Oklahoma, at least in my experience, have been pretty tame, and usually just like this guy, they ran up against an unlucky circumstance, like they ran out of gas or something.
In other happenings, the weather is cooling off again. A brisk wind is blowing out of the North, bringing cooler temperatures, and granting us a chance to open the windows and air the place out.
My brother was on TV last week. (Well, PBS Wired Science). I just found out when he emailed me tonight. I got to watch it online. Pretty cool. He still looks good. Haven't seen him in a long time. (That happens when your family is all over the country. I keep telling my family that I am centrally located here in Oklahoma, and they can always come by on their way someplace else. It has been way too long since I have seen them all.) This is the brother that I tell people is MY big brother and nobody else's. He is, after all. He was the baby for 12 years and then I came along. He's a pretty cool big brother. Even if we did fight a lot when I was little and he was home from college. He taught me how to identify tools, and read the numbers on sockets and wrenches. I could tell a crescent wrench from an adjustable from a "dog bone" from an early age. And I could be counted on to find the right size, because my sister taught me to read before I was 3. I could also identify many parts of an engine that other girls didn't know anything about because Walt let me "help" him when he worked on cars, and he patiently answered a lot of silly questions. (Pop did, too, but I remember pestering Walt the most.)
Well, that's about enough out of me tonight. Voice lesson tomorrow!