Some people have asked that I share with you a poem by Fritz Fritschel, written for last Sunday’s celebration of my thirty-five years as Organist at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu, so here it is:

On a Day of Celebration

Those little black marks on the page
Neither move nor make sound,
Lying dormant, locked within a barred, lined cage
Until a proper key be found.

In time emerges a weightless, invisible tone,
A resurrection, following some rolled-away stone,
Of harmonies expanding in a once-silent tomb
Lifting spirits, bodies, people out of gloom.

The great mechanical beast’s mighty lungs
Burst out, emitting melodic strains
Urged by deft touch on black and white tongues,
Voices now released in glad refrains.

Dressed in angelic white with skirt of cassock blue,
[One is told it’s Mary’s hue],
She gives witness to the mysteries of new birth–
Marks once lifeless between papery sheets,
Laid out in cadences of various beats,
Now liberated for sounds of feeling ’round earth.

Music is the sound of feeling, he said,
The Poet of the world who feels the feelings of all
In organic sympathy.  Organic sympathy, we say,
On this day,
Music inspiring harmony for all,
Organic sympathy within this hall.

Not without human touch and human hands
And human care and human arts
Reaching toward all nature’s beating hearts.
For which we give thanks, among others, to Kathy’s clan,
Promising to continue this organic plan.

Fritz Fritschel, 2013

If you would like to view a photo album of pictures taken at the party and program, you can click here.