Johann Sebastian Bach’s The St. John Passion was first performed on Good Friday in Leipzig, Germany, some 280 years ago. I heard it for the first time this week in a small Lutheran church in Houston, Texas.
The libretto combines the text of John’s Gospel, stanzas of old church hymns, and poetic text. It is not known who ordered the words to accompany Bach’s achingly beautiful score – perhaps he had some hand in selecting them; perhaps not.
As they were sung in German, I followed the English translation in my lap, but I could have closed it – and my eyes – and still understood. The familiar story unfolded on a current of sheer emotion, carried along by the music’s inflection and intensity, and the sometimes harsh, sometimes hushed interplay of voices.
A few months back (late August actually) I wrote a piece called “Finding feathers,” because for a week or so I was. Finding feathers. They made me think of hope, and they still do, thanks to Emily Dickinson’s lovely line: “Hope is the thing with feathers/that perches on the soul/that sings the tune/without the words/and never stops – at all.”
Oddly, I’m seeing feathers again. Only now, instead of spotting them one at a time, I’m finding feathers in scatterings of seven. Seven perfectly matched feathers; all within a few feet of one another, at various times and places. I’ve found five sets of them so far, each slightly different from the one before it. I know this sounds ridiculous and strange, but at the risk of being thought ridiculous and strange – bear with me.
Every Friday morning between 7:30 and 8:00 a.m. I meet my Dad for breakfast at a drugstore/café called the Avalon Diner, a short drive from my house. Unless one of us is out of town or under the weather, it’s a standing deal. We only call if we can’t make it – not to be sure the other one is coming.
We haven’t always met at the Avalon. For a while we convened at a diner closer to my old apartment, then at a trendier place that dad endured but never really liked, near my former office. The place has shifted over the years, but the routine hasn’t. It’s become something reliable I can count on.