Jim N. was right. I did miss this prayer. I must not have remembered in years past that you leave “O Heavenly King” out of personal prayers and liturgical prayers until Pentecost.

So am I such a brick of holiness that I actually felt the loss of the prayer to the Holy Spirit, or did it just bother me because I start my prayers on auto pilot and I had to actually think to remember how to begin? Let’s be kind to me and act like it’s a hard question. :-)

In any case, I had one of those moments of small wonderfulness that the Church brings your way. I was helping chant the Orthros service this week, and it felt like an intimate affair. As sometimes happens with Orthros, we have some regulars that come, but many that for some strange reason would rather sleep in a little more than hear me try to do Tone 4 for 20 minutes. And if the Orthros regulars are out, it can really be “two or three called together in My name.” (Or eight, in this case)

Hey, it happens. I’ve been the slugabed too many times myself to make a thing out of it. And besides, I’ve got an ulterior motive: I secretly love those services. In my perfect Orthodox world, everyone would have at least one chance to chant an entire vespers, orthros or molieban service without the self-consciousness you feel with a sizable audience. Because you feel this absolute connection with the words, and just want to do whatever it takes and be whatever you need to be for the words to be spoken.

The Holy Spirit hath ever been, is and ever shall be; for he is wholly without beginning and without end. Yet he is in covenant with the Father and the Son, counted as Life and Life-giver, Light and Light-giver, good by nature and a Fountain of goodness, through whom the Father is known and the Son glorified. And by all it is understood that one power, one rank, one worship are of the Holy Trinity.

So I was reading sometimes, listening sometimes, doing responses, waiting for cues and keeping my place on the page. I was chanting antiphonally with our subdeacon — which is a kind of church dialogue that is indescribable in how much you feel like you’ve somehow reached back through centuries — and when I turned the page for my next chant, there it was:

O Heavenly King, O Comforter, Spirit of Truth, Who art in all places and fillest all things, treasury of good things, and giver of life, come, and abide in us, and cleanse us from every stain; and save our souls, O Good One.

I got to chant that prayer for the first time since Holy Week, and it was like seeing an old friend again. There was that surprise of recognition, and then that moment when the chanting duties become not so much about getting words right as about connecting the words that you knew were there all along with the part of your heart that is usually too private for anyone else to see. And hoping — hoping! – that whatever you’ve done wrong all week won’t keep it all from finding the right kind of expression.

The best part of being choir director is that you have the best seat in the house to witness the magic that sometimes happens when hearts and minds and bodies — plus an unnamable force — come together. When you chant something that you know Orthodox Christians all over the world throughout all the Church Age have been chanting, all that mini-maelstrom of force happens inside of you.

As I said, it was wonderful. So now Pascha has happened and Pentecost has happened. Now the church year gets underway, and chanters and choirs can relax a little and not fear “Special Music.” (Perhaps the congregation will also be able to relax a little. Sometimes “Special Music” isn’t so special.) But it was good to have a little something to take with me. After all, aren’t we all longing for that place that is — in the words of the prayer — “a place of brightness, a place of verdure, where all sickness, sorrow and sighing have fled away, and where the voice of festival is unceasing”?