Moving on

A big feature of our worship in church involves music. It's certainly the thing that brought me into the orbit of religion in the first place - got me, if you like, to a place where things could happen. For other people it's perhaps a background, or, in the Presbyterian tradition of my childhood, the bread in the hymn sandwich of a non-liturgical service. And for most people, even today, the organ is an essential component of this - all of us, that is, who find it hard to tolerate a rock band in any area of our lives.

With all that in mind, it's an unsettling thing when the organ dies at the start of a service. It's a bit like having a heart attack - you're wary of trusting it not to fail again. So it's really exciting to see things moving on - in this case, the new speakers being inserted into the void and wooden remains of a long-vanished pipe organ. Purists may moan that it's some kind of sacrilege, but our organ was removed - or not fully removed - over 50 years ago, and this is the third electronic organ in its place.

It's very exciting, both in sound and in the confidence it brings, not just that the music no longer depends on one cannibalised second-hand switch, but also that people value the music sufficiently to make this happen.

I seem to have spent hours in church today - we had a Vestry meeting there this evening. My new computer arrived, but is still sitting in its box waiting for my full and undivided attention. It may be there for a while ...