The Un-Ending Adventures of Jenny Jumps

I’ve already mentioned that our family was active in our local church community. My father was an active member of the parish folk choir. It was a great group of people. They played bluegrassy style hymns complete with banjo and tambourine.

When membership began to dwindle my dad stepped up and began taking on an organizational role. He assembled binders of repertoire for all the musicians and created a system of corresponding transparencies for the overhead projector to improve participation among the parishioners.

Being Dad’s sidekick, I naturally looked for a way to participate, so I was assigned to be the transparency changer.

I loved the responsibility! The stress of keeping the slides in order, and of knowing when to change them at just the right moment so as not to interrupt anyone’s singing. Knowing when to switch back and forth to remind the people of the chorus’ lyrics made me proud. And when the other children started taking an interest, I relished in being able to show them the ropes.

At home I grabbed my sister’s old child-sized guitar and learned to play along with my dad while he rehearsed. Most of the music was written using only 4 to 6 chord combinations so I caught on very quickly.

I loved that group and it’s music. I loved being so close to the action during the service and I loved being right in the line of sight of all of the parishioners. We had to make sure that we were behaving in a way that set an example for the rest of the church, a responsibility that I took very seriously.

Despite my enjoyment of these activities, I had my eyes set on something else, something more sacred and secretive happening on just the other side of the altar.