I recently guest soloed at a city church in Danville which can best be described as an “aging” church. By this, I’m not referring to the building (which does date from the late 1920s), but instead the average age of the congregation, somewhere in the upper 60s, with the upper range into the upper 80s (sounding kind of like a weather report). So it was appropriate that for a soloist they had invited an aging tenor (just the tenor, not the voice).

After I turned onto the church’s street, and during approach, I became aware that the houses on the street were going from “seedy” to  “seedier,” then to “seediest,” directly across from the church itself. That area seemed to have made the journey from promising 1950s “suburbia” through a Faulkner-esque-type decadence to “seediness” in the short matter of 50 to 60 years.

When I pulled up to the church, there was no seediness about it, and I was impressed by its brick, steepled, “churchly” splendor. It had stood up well to the extremes of summer and winter, and I thought about this when I later beheld many of the congregation using canes and walkers. (I was on both for a two-month time during an arthritic flare-up a couple of years ago, so I can relate to them.)

Since this church, despite the fact of having to put up with those great outside temperature variations over the course of the past 90 years seemed to be “weathering” the years better than its congregation, I got the idea that maybe constantly fueled, 98.6-degree “furnaces” have a greater “wearing out” effect upon those relying on them.

The church set the time for service at 9:30 a.m., wisely using some of the night’s remaining coolness to keep down the power bill.

There were a few visiting children present for the children’s sermon. These consisted of visiting grand and great-grandchildren of some of the aging parishioners.

When the children went up for their sermon, I wondered if they were aware of and appreciative of their “uniqueness” in that sanctuary. I thought of fresh seed cast upon aging, but still nutritious soil.

The minister pulled out a “Cat in the Hat” hat and donned it. She then held up Dr. Seuss’s “The Lorax” and read from it. (Just now, I can’t recall the exact chapter and “verse.”)

The sight of the “cat hat” brought a few chuckles, and I felt as if the minister’s guise were rejuvenating the congregation a little (although not Presbyterian, most every member of this congregation could be referred to as an “elder” of sorts). I thought of when I had read Dr. Seuss and the Berenstain Bears to my children, and the members of the congregation were probably thinking likewise about theirs.

The Lorax carried over into the sermon, with the minister tying the themes of our being shepherds of the environment and how better things would be if all groups would stop shouting “sign slogans” at one another and engage in conversation, giving each other a good listen. While she spoke, the “cat hat” lay on the pulpit, and I half expected to see it worn again ( the “kid” in me), but it wasn’t.

For my solo, I sang, “Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling” and was genuinely surprised when the congregation gave me a round of applause!

After service, there was Coca-Cola, fudge, cake, and cookies in the fellowship room. I got the feeling that the theme there was “A1C be d–ned,” and with my choice of sweet goodies that day, I d–ned it too. (I use hyphens, because it is church.)

On the way out, I passed a table full of ripe tomatoes, evidently grown in the city by one of the members and brought for the congregation. I decided not to claim one, thinking they should be for the members only. There was no Communion that day, but some of the tomatoes were the deep red color of Communion wine; and looking back, I regret not having partaken.

They told me to come back and sing again, and I must, because as I always say, someday my sinuses will be clogged with soil, making for very poor resonance.

Around 11 a.m., driving back by those dilapidated houses and unkempt yards seen on my way in, I imagined “human seediness” caught up in bright, late-morning, zenith-bound light.