Sowash: "Where Your Treasure Is” for SA choir

When I graduated from college in May of 1973, I
knew exactly what I was going to do.  Come home to Richland
County, Ohio and get busy, composing and writing.

I had no
idea how I was going to earn a living but I figured that would take
care of itself;  and it did.

I signed on for the summer
as Aquatics Director at the local Boy Scout camp.  Come Fall, I
landed my first full-time job, as Music Director at First English
Lutheran, the largest Lutheran church in Mansfield, the county
seat.

The pastor was demanding.  Everything had to be
‘just so.’  He insisted that worship services must be sixty
minutes long, never a minute more.  If I led the choir in
singing an anthem that was a little too long, I would hear about
it!

After three years, I resigned and found work as a tutor
during the school year and a house-painter during the summer. 
Then as a classical radio broadcaster for WOSU in Columbus. 
Then on to other things.  All along I composed and wrote, on the
side.

Eventually we moved to Cincinnati, specifically so that
our two children could attend the city’s famous School for the
Creative & Performing Arts.

Not long after we arrived, I
found myself enfolded and embraced by Mt. Auburn Presbyterian
Church.  A creative, inclusive, progressive, affectionate,
laughter-loving, music-loving bunch of folks.   Oh, and NOT
obsessed with ending worship services precisely sixty minutes after
they began.  At least, that’s what I thought for several
years.

However, when our services, for a while there,
stretched longer and longer past noon, there was some good-natured
grumbling.  This inspired me to draw a series of humorous
cartoons for our church’s weekly email-newsletter.  I entitled
the series:

               
"Eight Sure Fire Ways to Lessen the Length of Services at
MAPC.”

If you’d like to chuckle at my cartoons, click
here:

There
is something to be said, after all, for a short anthem.  My
setting of Jesus’ famous admonition, “Where you treasure is,
there also will be your heart,” clocks in at just under two
minutes.  My Lutheran pastor-boss would have approved!

To
hear the women of the Harvard University Choir singing "Where
Your Treasure Is,” click here:

To
see a PDF of the score, click here: