This post from Episcopal Cafe struck the right note:

Have you ever just kicked back and thought about the beauty of the gathered voices on any given Sunday in your home parish, from the shrieking child to the most elderly patriarch? When I think back to the death of one friend in my parish and the relocation of another friend to another state, I recall acutely missing the sound of their voices among the baseline of the gathered voices–yet at the same time feeling the baseline of our typical Sunday singing simultaneously carrying me through my grief. These days, I swear I hear those people in the background now and then. Sometimes, I swear I hear the heart voices of the people whom I’ve never heard sing an actual note. I think about the times I’ve heard the voices of others be tearful, and the times my own voice has cracked in awe of the beauty filling my ears. I think about the voices I’ve heard grow up in the parish, from little thready sing-song child voices to voices beginning to burst open to reveal the adults they are becoming. Somehow the mystery of all of it–the harmony and the dis-harmony, singing in tandem–works out to something bordering on saintly.

Link: Speaking to the Soul