Tonight is the Bach and Prayer service, which occurs on the fourth Wednesday of the month. It only lasts a half hour, and at least half of it is the music of Bach. I’ll be playing three chorale preludes from Bach’s Leipzig collection, also called the Great Eighteen.

This morning as I was on my daily walk, I listened to four different YouTube videos of “Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele,” BWV 654 and one in particular caught my ear. This will be the prelude in tonight’s service.

What I really was interested in, though, were the comments such as these:

This piece honestly has such an uplifting feeling to it; so spiritual

Didn’t know a single organ can have such profound and expressive power until encountering this piece. Superb performance!

Goosebumps. It’s so peaceful and yet so full of introspection and retrospection on conflict, pain and love and doubt and joy and beauty bygone and still present, well, life

Transcending! Such heartfelt longing of the soul! Soli Deo Gloria! (I thank Thee, O Lord, for Luther and Bach!)

I also found this quote about Bach from conductor Emmanuelle Haim: I love Bach’s music because it is so comforting. To me, it feels as if I’m coming back home whenever I play Bach. It feels so naturally written and genuine. There are hidden elements in Bach; for musicians it is very knowledgeable music, but what comes out of it is more of a spontaneity of expression. You can listen to Bach from many points of view: you can admire the science of it, the incredible intelligence of it, but even if you don’t have any musical training or knowledge, you can still enjoy it for the incredible spontaneous life of the melody. It is very well worked out, but it seems almost as if it was written as it went along. Bach is definitely someone with whom I love spending time, and try to do so as much as I can.

In 1981-1982 I was pregnant three times, with complications resulting in my being in the hospital six times, and only the last pregnancy resulted in the birth of my son, Stephen, who was born prematurely at 34 weeks. My first pregnancy in 1981 lasted 7-1/2 months only to end in the death of our firstborn child. My husband said that after visiting me in the hospital he would go home and put on Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion,” which he found comforting.

So what makes the music of Bach so comforting? Rictor Noren says in Psychology Today: The Music of J. S. Bach has the power to lift us out of our troubled times. I turn to Bach when I need to reconnect with the divine, reconnect with myself, and remember what keeps me on this planet… If his biographers are to be believed, Bach was a devout man, wise beyond wise. He created the uncreatable, described the world in terms in which we still struggle. Whereas Mozart floats above the ground and Beethoven, the imagination, Bach sits firmly on every surface touched by man. He is that rare composer who, with no need to mature into his style, holds us… Finding peace through music requires action, and a willingness to put aside old assumptions concerning its power to transport the listener. If you let it, and if you are willing to invest in a quiet space where you can remain uninterrupted, you will find that music, and perhaps especially the music J. S. Bach has the power to invited us to think bigger thoughts, and soften some of the blows thrown at us by daily life.

And it was after the traumatic election of 2016 that I played an all-Bach concert at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley, CA which people told me comforted them greatly.

If you’d like to listen to me play tonight, you’ll find the livestream on the church’s website, lchwelcome.org/streaming or on its Facebook page, facebook.com/LCHwelcome where it will also be archived. If you’re not a Facebook user, don’t be afraid … when it asks if you want to sign up as a new user, click the option “Later.”

I understand that people will also be able to attend in person … so maybe I’ll see you tonight!