Happy Mother's Day!!!!

I just wanted to wish my Mom a happy mother’s day. I had a chance to stop by MaMa’s house today and got to see Mom (for any who don’t know, MaMa is my paternal grandmother). Anyway, while there I saw a book about Johns Island Presbyterian Church. For those that didn’t know, Mom was the organist-choir director at JIPC for the majority of my life (over 21 years). Were one to read this book about JIPC, one would hardly know Mom did anything. (***Just to be clear... I didn’t do any in-depth reading of this book, I just scanned it but years of scanning the newspaper looking for my name has trained me to be able to pick out “Horres” in any writing***). The majority of the book deals with the preachers of the church. This, I assume, is a problem with all books about churches. Don’t get me wrong, preachers are good. I think they are important to a church (that’s why I am a mentor of sorts to many young preachers). But really, my advice to all preachers is: 1. Keep Jesus first; 2. Make sure you have a good Music Director (many different titles for this, but you know what I mean); 3. Have a good cook (What? I like food... Don’t judge me). Anyway, Mom was at JIPC for over 21 years. Preachers came and went, but she was still there. I don’t want you to misunderstand me here... it’s not like people there didn’t appreciate her. I’m sure some didn’t realize how good they had it, but that will happen everywhere. Most, I would say, knew they had a good thing in my Mom. On the Sunday that she retired, the sermon was about her. For someone like me, this is probably the highest honor. Honestly, this is the kind of thing most people die for. :) But the fact that her name was hardly mentioned in the book bothered me. Maybe it’s because I can remember spending many Wednesday nights with her in that church doing homework while she had choir practice. Maybe it’s because I can remember when she only had 5 – 7 members in the choir and each Sunday she would meet us for lunch and tell us how many men she had in the choir that day (in the beginning, it was only 2). Or maybe it’s simply because I’m her favorite child (oops... I told her I wouldn’t tell Kevin and Teri that). Whatever the reason, it bothered me. The thing is, she only agreed to fill in for a little while. She started with 5 and ended with a choir much, much larger than that. Listen, she’d probably tell you it wasn’t all her (and she’d be right). The few she had when she started were great and without them I’m sure the church would have just decided not to have music. And how tragic would that be?! Preachers are good at teaching, and praying, and helping... but music is what puts the “Worship” in “Worship Service”. You don’t have to take my word for it (though you should). Just look in the Bible and you’ll see examples of this in the Old Testament (Psalms) and New Testament (Peter, Paul, & Mary). HA!

Happy Mother's Day Mom!