Open The Gates Of The Temple

Palm Sunday - that triumphant arrival of white Jesus on a donkey, his long curly light brown hair streaming down his back, his carefully shaped beard and his steady, serious unsmiling eyes, though the people are throwing palm branches down and praising him. No worries about the poor donkey get his feet tangled in those sharp edges of the palm fronds. And the people shout Hosanna - to this day a buzz word that says CHURCH in my vocabulary. And by Friday (Good Friday they call it though it was the day Jesus died) he would be nailed to a cross after having to carry it through those same streets. Funny the memories we carry of the traditions of the church seasons.

Pastor Warren talked about change and memories yesterday at the Presbyterian Church. And in that familiar space, my church for all these 70-plus years, there was little Janie Heimel, crowded into the front pew off to the side of the sanctuary, gazing up at the choir loft where my dad, in his dark choir robe, was hidden from my view - a different angle than from the Heimel pew.

That's the Palm Sunday I remembered. It was the day the organist had prepared our Junior Choir to sing a special song. The youngsters and the Choir - with a capital C. Choir with Daddy, Uncle Roy and Dr. George and Mrs. Gosnell, the tall, stately woman my brothers said sounded like a sick cow. 

We were robed in the starched white smocks, puffy like the maternity dresses the moms wore and I was grateful it was only Palm Sunday and my new Easter dress wouldn't be covered up.

The song was "Open The Gates of The Temple"  and we sang "Open, O - O -pen" at the beginning, softly with our children's voices, standing in a group on the steps, joined in the verses by the the grownups,  the organ soaring over all of us.

I went looking in the music files at the church yesterday, after Pastor Warren had talked about change though I admit my thoughts strayed during the sermon, recalling that 1950s kind of church.  I wanted to see if my memories were true for we all know we cannot necessarily trust those thoughts that surface much like dreams at night. But I didn't find it, though many of the other pieces filed under Lent were familiar from later years, the years I was in the choir loft in my own long choir robe.

But then there was this published in The Potter Enterprise March 29, 1961.

How delightful to find myself in this photo - and singing as enthusiastically as I remember.

... And the editorializing in the picture tag line is likely to be a future blog post as our world today is certainly shuddering again.