Asking (June)

Charpentier’s Kyrie goes over ten minutes, depending on how the ‘four choirs’ intend to sing the Kyrie. The feast day at our church is in June, reason for full show of red vestments, plenty of grand music, orderly processions, and well-worded prayers, readings and sermon. Each worshipper’s at work, some fully engaged, some occasionally distracted, some finding a way in or place to connect. The Kyrie’s uncommon length stretches some of us, reminds us to keep doing the only thing we may be left with, sometime, beyond vestments, beyond music and processions, beyond words of any kind: asking for mercy.