December 2024

I’ve been searching for the funny story. Pets, tents, holes, and house disrepair notwithstanding, the humor fodder is thin this year. Don’t get me wrong, there is much behind us. But not that you put in a Christmas letter. Nobody wants to read about the water heater going out a week before the holidays. Or the cooling fan kaput from deep in the fridge (ah, so that’s where all those mice were coming from…) Nobody wants three broken bones in a calendar year—separate occasions, all—four trips to Ortho, two to the ER, two totaled vehicles and a pending lawsuit for unpaid medical bills. My partridge needs a new pear tree. Then it fell into my lap. Or yours, as the case may be.

We’re in the balcony at church, where since the pandemic our services have been recorded live for those worshipping remotely and then posted to YouTube for posterity. The incident I’m about to narrate is probably up already. Maybe it will supersede those “Miss Jenny” storytimes of dubious attire also posted in 2020. The reason I’m there and not comfortably installed in a pew below is because, well, the regular guy is away this weekend. There is no one else. Now there’s a tale I’ve heard before–it’s what put me on the App Trail (See I Will Become a Mountain Climber July 2023). From the look of this instrument panel, I could use it to land a jet. Which is good, since I may need a get-away plane after I get through with the “training” Will and I have embarked on every other Sunday. Yes, that’s right. I am in training. Our church “A/V Specialist” who has fearlessly, faithfully, and ever so capably run our dashboard these last four years, is stepping down. Keep that phrase “stepping down” firmly fixed as that will become, er–a thesis, if you will. Soon there will be no-one to keep the remote worshipers connected. The writing is on the proverbial wall. And in our little church there is none to step up. There it is again. Stepping.

The current evolution began in our backyard. Pandemic 2020. The church shuttered, the lockdown dragged, the weather turned sunny and warm. Bill and Will threw up a card table and a stepladder to hold a cell phone camera and a speaker, and they were in business. They zoomed, we worshipped; they were in every sense of the word learning on the fly. Honing and perfecting skills gave the excuse to purchase more high-tech equipment. Now, four years later, Will is a pro. He knows what gain is and what an equalizer does and how to monitor your FBQ feedback detection. I’ll give you “phantom” power. He also runs the digitized organ and has worked in some ambient “cathedral vibe” soundtrack during the service. He’s like a one-man band up there, with extra hands, receiving and managing six audio sources, online messaging the folks at home, and cueing the organ to drop its two-second lag time. The whole service flows seamlessly at his hands. All from behind the scenes.

I’m not sure how I got nominated to replace him, since even operating the “smart” TV or downloading on a Kindle can reduce me to tears. I am not the techie in the house, to say the least. But Will is a teacher at heart and he has great faith in me, so I get the full course, throughout the spring and summer. Since then I’ve had several solo flights, flipping back and forth through a curling, dog-eared notepad following his copious instructions. Mute Speaker 1, unmute Speaker 4, drive down main output, then quick! over to the camera to zoom in or out depending on movement below (procession, preaching, preparing the table, etc.) Audio before visual. “Always mom,” my teacher reminds me, “Audio before visual.” Whoopsie. Hence those Sundays you may have noticed the camera fixed instead of panning out to follow the reader back to his or her pew. Hey. I say, everybody needs live footage of an empty lectern from time to time. Humbling.

Still, on those Sundays Jenny subs in for the master, I do my best. Sure, the video is a little choppy. You might hear Reader 2 rustling her bulletin or turning pages of the massive lectern Bible because unlike Will, I’m not mitigating feedback. Mixer schmixer. The tempo on the hymn may be a little slow or a little too fast because in a million years am I going to touch the remote control for the organ–it’s a pocket sized piece of plastic (looks just like your garage door opener) with all the power to bring down the house. Until the Sunday I am about to tell you about, the biggest blunder of the morning was mistaking (and bringing for the coffee I was hosting after church) the jar of cane sugar for a similarly sized and similarly colored jar of Metamucil. My classy little trio of coffee condiments: the dairy, the soy and the–oh dear!

So today, Will is away and I’m in the balcony, my happy place, where for over 27 years I have nursed infants, sung in the choir, and now at the back of the church, behind the congregants and high over their heads, I zoom. We all face forward over the beautiful sanctuary and a large two-story-high cross that hangs above the altar. Sunlight streams in through the stained glass. It’s a beautiful sight, perfectly peaceful and Sunday-morning still. As anyone working worship (my husband, my son, and any member of the Burk fam by this point in our career–lay readers, chalice bearers, altar guild, teachers, choristers, each of us at some point) knows, the aim is to protect that peace. It ain’t a stage play, but some of the same rules apply to the “backstage crew.” Silent and efficient. As invisible as possible. Protect the solemnity and reverence of the service. Don’t, for example, play the organ (Speaker 4) too early, or your next hymn will crash in on the last lines of a prayer. Don’t mute Speaker 1 (the preacher) just as he’s about to give the benediction but DO mute when he’s in the narthex greeting or dispatching Mr. and Mrs. Whoosiwhatsit. (Oops, sorry Billy!)

So far, so good. Right up until the hymn–”Who dost her dear mind loseth?” Remember, I am filling large shoes up here. And even larger height. So the camera is jacked up all the way on its tripod, towering above the balcony and too high for me to reach. I wasn’t very smooth on the zoom in/out to begin with even when the thing is right in front of me, and today it’s even more tenuous. Also, I can’t reach the dials that release the camera to tilt and rotate (empty lectern syndrome), so this will not work. Now you really don’t want me on the troubleshooting team, people, and here’s why. Do I figure out how to lower the adjustable camera height to match mine, where I can reach it? Nope. I decide to leave the camera tall as a wind turbine and raise me instead. Yep. After trying the kneeler (too squishy) and the molded plastic chair (too unstable), I go for a piece of furniture stacked up there away back in the corner and unused for years–yep, a folding chair. An ancient, wooden slatted folding chair. To stand on. Over a balcony.

Well, you know where this is going. And you know this ain’t movement that’s going to happen tactfully during the hymn, drowning out the cataclysmic noise that ensued. Bill said it sounded like I was tossing a dresser. Or perhaps more like I was landing a plane. Because the balcony is a solid half-wall, much of the scene would have been hidden from the stunned congregation now decidedly not facing forward, but rather turned and beholding the camera, tripod precariously being held up by a single hand. Like a puppet theater. Minus the puppets. Except for one hapless appendage–my hand–signaling life to the onlookers as I desperately tried to push the camera tripod back onto a filing cabinet while lying flat out on the balcony floor. Many of them didn’t even know I was up there. Had had no reason to look. Now, man down. Now? Whole new meaning to the terms “behind” and “scenes.” The folding chair did what it does best when the weight posed upon it shifts, snapping shut like a clam (how’s that for feedback?) and I went down, so down that I almost took the entire camera set up with me and managed to launch, as I understand it, the many parts of a ballpoint pen that were found in the pews below. 

Once I had righted myself, and the camera, and managed to stand and wave to a sea of shocked faces below, I had the unfun job of explaining what in the place of no mention (particularly on a Sunday) had just transpired. Blank stares on crickets. Well geeze, that’s not in the bulletin. My face red, my decorum shot, I return sheepishly to my station, and to a half dozen “chats” on the laptop that the image is down. The at-home response is lively in the chat bar: “cant see!” “Screen is drk!” Hastily I message back: “K!” and “thnks!” (Never give away your NPC status by using complete sentences.) Took me six minutes to realize I had ripped out the USB cable on my way down and (somehow) turned off the camera on its almost-plummet. Will would have been mortified. How he’ll edit out this choral interlude I don’t know, he may have to scrap the whole thing.

Speaking of editing, I’m doing that mightily because a Christmas letter must not runneth on. There is more to the story, posted on WordPress.com along with other (I hope) funny stories. Speaking of scrapping, there’s been a fair bit behind the scenes this year. I hope you will read my blog, which is my attempt (to use Will’s lingo) to filter. Mute speakers June through October. Or maybe that’s where the good stuff lives. In any event, keep your feet on the ground this year. God bless your coming and going, your digging and your filling in again, your climbing and your coming down, and above all, your restoration. Happy 2025!

Love from all the Burks 

PS. Anybody want to go to church with us? I hear the sound and light show is really something. Just type this into YouTube: “Episcopal Church of the Creator Mechanicsville.” Just skip over last Sunday! :0)