Performances by my hand bell choir - crossposted from The Lounge
I participate with a very small Unitarian Universalist congregation, and am a member of the very, very small hand bell choir. There are only 7 of us right now, down from a high of 12. Here are a few of our recent performances. I'm the one with short hair and glasses on the far left, playing the small bells.
A couple of our current members don't play any other instruments and have learned to read music just in order to play the bells. Most of the rest of us have history with assorted wind or string instruments, or voice. Piano, flute/piccolo for me, and just enough guitar chords to play a few folk songs.
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He was a freshman at Carthage College in Kenosha WI. All students at Carthage, as part of their core curriculum, have to take 2 religion classes, regardless of their major. He had an assignment over the 2011 Thanksgiving weekend, to attend a church service different from what he usually did.
Seeing as I did not take my kids to any sort of church services when they were growing up (because I wanted to be the one guiding (or "warping"
them spiritually/philosophically) this could have been just about anything. I knew I would do my best to make sure they grew up open-minded, tolerant and compassionate, and I didn't want to entrust that important responsibility to anyone but my husband and me. Some people home school. We "home churched" (my own term). He'd been to a couple of Catholic masses when spending the night with a soccer buddy whose mom was a regular attender, and a couple of weddings, but that was it.
My son's professor described the Unitarian Universalist philosophy as a healthy religion and he liked the sound of that, so he went on line to find the nearest congregation, which was only 11 miles away. Because he was under the second suspension of his driver's license for having too many speeding tickets, he needed a ride, so I was his chauffeur.
I'd looked up UU ideas several times over several years, and liked the patchwork quilt of ideas and the lack of dogma, so I decided I might as well go to the service, too. I liked what I heard, and the people I initially met, so I kept going back. I joined the bell choir pretty early on. Been going ever since.
Long answer to your short question.
