When I was in seminary...
Illustration
When I was in seminary, I lived on West 121st Street, in New York City between Broadway and Amsterdam in a wonderful old turn of the century building with tarnished brass door knobs, cracked mosaic floors and a teeny old elevator that was more often than not stuck between two floors. So I had to hike up the six flights of narrow stairs to my apartment, grocery bags under arms, books on my back, and I'd arrive at the apartment breathless and bushed.
The last year in seminary was a particularly intense one with the thesis hanging over every moment, coursework bogging me down, and a Sunday school class that adored diminishing me. So I was grateful on Easter eve when a friend arrived with a bunch of lilacs in her arms and a bottle of wine. She thought we ought to take our study break outside. So we crawled out the apartment window onto the fire escape. We sat huddled, looking out over Harlem, apartment lights, street lights, bridge lights beyond. I was weary ... and just at that weary moment the voices of the choir of the Corpus Christi Church below, began to sing the Easter Vigil, midnight mass sung a capella. And so it was, the haunting beauty of the music carried us to the Risen presence of Christ, where we'd been all along, hidden with Christ in God.
-- Steffey Morrow
The last year in seminary was a particularly intense one with the thesis hanging over every moment, coursework bogging me down, and a Sunday school class that adored diminishing me. So I was grateful on Easter eve when a friend arrived with a bunch of lilacs in her arms and a bottle of wine. She thought we ought to take our study break outside. So we crawled out the apartment window onto the fire escape. We sat huddled, looking out over Harlem, apartment lights, street lights, bridge lights beyond. I was weary ... and just at that weary moment the voices of the choir of the Corpus Christi Church below, began to sing the Easter Vigil, midnight mass sung a capella. And so it was, the haunting beauty of the music carried us to the Risen presence of Christ, where we'd been all along, hidden with Christ in God.
-- Steffey Morrow
