Friday evening's choir rehearsal - which went well - was enlivened by a visit from the bat, or one of the bats, I don't know how many we have. For some reason, we only get a fly-past on odd occasions. I'm assuming it's to do with bats having fabulous hearing and perhaps carefully honed musical tastes. Whatever the real reason, when we pactice in the west-end gallery of St. M's at a certain stage of the rehearsal we are lucky enough to get a swift inspection by one of these odd little creatures, apparently on a whim.
Until I joined the choir, whenever bats came up in conversation I had a mental shudder. Now all of a sudden I find myself feeling protective towards them and find their fleeting visits rather endearing.
St. M's is a lovely mixture of several periods and styles of architecture with wooden ceilings in some, not all, places, and a variety of possible nesting places for our 'flying mice'.
For some reason, after a Friday critical hearing we usually seem to have a better than usual performance by the choir on Sunday morning. Probably pure coincidence but this week we had two services, one the Candlemass Eucharist in the morning, and in the afternoon a special commissioning service for Lay Pastoral Assistants. Both of these services were rather well sung (in my opinion) and added to the enjoyment of the day.
Whether the bats influence the performance, or vice-versa I really don't know, but if anyone else does I'm happy to learn.
Seeing a bat flying inside a church must be quite a sight. I saw a photo on someone's blog of 5 little bats wrapped up in dusters - they were rescues from the Queensland floods! It's funny how I can tolerate the idea of bats in church but not mice.
ReplyDeleteOh how I agree. Bats Is quaint. Mices aint!
ReplyDeleteRodents make my hair stand on end - a sight not be missed - and spiders even more so.
I feel God must have had a bit of an off-day/moment when he created these two, and perhaps wasps too.