Dear Friends,

We have an overabundance of pianos. Well, we had an overabundance of pianos. When I arrive in 2021 the Church was shut down, and everything was out of sorts, because no one was in the Church. The narthex was largely used for storage, and I did not get a chance to see how the space was normally used. Before things got going again, we started the parish hall renovation, and when we all got back together after the worst of the pandemic and the renovation was complete, no one really knew where everything was supposed to go. We slowly figured this out, but one piano never found a home. Our organist, Kate Weber-Petrova, told me that it was too nice to give away to just anyone, but it wasn’t nice enough to replace any of our other pianos. The piano needed a good home.

For over a year the piano lived in the hallway of the third floor, and existed to display artwork from the Sunday School rooms, and occasionally Sam Glassman would entertain everyone with the music from Peanuts. This was a worthy existence, but not what it was meant for. Kate and I tried to find it a worthy family, and eventually we announced in a staff meeting that we gave up and were going to post it on NextDoor. Then something miraculous happened; our communications minister (Stephanie Kaye) offered to take it! She lives about a quarter of a mile behind the Church, so all we had to do was figure out a way to get it to her house.

Her house is not far, and the piano has a very sturdy dolly built onto it. Rather than paying a hefty sum to move it we decided to push it aided by a golf cart and a tow rope. Initially, the whole idea kind of stressed me out, and I figured there was a very good chance we would end up in a ditch. A stressful and seemingly reckless task turned into something hilarious, and something we needed. Fr. Celal was behind the wheel of the golf cart while my job was to steer the piano. I think we both could not stop laughing at the absurdity of the situation as we cruised down Bolling Dr.

The trip was not without its setbacks. One of the wheels overheated and broke off when we were over half way to our destination. Fortunately, our parish administrator (Sue Bentley) was able to deliver another dolly and we continued on our way, this time with Sue in her CRV behind us. At the top of the hill, we encountered our AV volunteer Alex Rennick who me steer the piano the rest of the way. We encountered mystified nannies who dutifully walked as far away from us as possible with their charges, and walkers who joyfully joined our makeshift parade.

We accomplished something. The piano will be a vector for the three Kaye boys to learn the piano, and our education wing is slightly less cluttered. More importantly, we got to bond with each other in an accidently team building exercise. Every day we show up with the intention of doing ministry, and this one day we tried to figure out something mundane, like how to get rid of a piano. Simply letting go of the intention and just working together made us closer than sitting around and doing some sort of prescribed task. The whole ordeal was about an hour, and we got back to bulletins, planning events, and whatnot, but I cannot help but suspect that we all needed that silly distraction to breathe life into our little family.

Blessings,

Nick