“We will be saved by Beauty.” --Blessed Dorothy Day
Since about October 18th, I have been getting up at 4 AM in Bangkok to watch a few folks dismantle a small pipe organ in the huge Norwich Roman Catholic Cathedral, pack it into what seemed to me to be just an ordinary van, drive through the night, and unload it into an abandoned convent chapel in Ernee France. For about 25 TV hours, I’ve watched them reassemble thousands of pieces, a giant Lego puzzle with an extremely complicated inner mechanism, and all they used were a few sharpies and tape to label the pieces, plus their iPhones to shoot lots of pics of things as they found them. Often I was left wanting to see more. I am amazed.
Not one of them is an organ builder. Only one can really carry a tune and knows middle C on the keyboard, but there are at least 10 ranks of pipes and two keyboards, and they’re all hooked up to the bellows. They dusted off more than a hundred years of dust, wear and tear, and rescued an instrument that had been used to play our imitations of the angelic choirs since about 1850. They call her “Old Girl.” They handle this project with curiosity, love and respect, and seem to be having a great time. They are conscious of their task, the instrument itself, the people who had built and played it as well as the nuns who used to pray in their ornate abandoned chapel in a small city in Northwestern France. At the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, a young bearded priest in jeans and a hoodie whom they call Father Paul was in the thick of it getting his hands dirty and bemoaning the150 years of dust and grime. A young Frenchman called Yannis gives me hope that Gen X still has the stuff to take care of our world. Billy and Michael’s father is completely part of their lives. Their list of friends with benefits is long, perhaps with its own waiting list, and Nick Moon showed what Billy calls the fabulous skill set of nudging pieces together.
I tried to watch “The Crown” and failed. I’ll take the Pethericks over the Windsors any day of the week. They are truly kind to one another. They are real. They are willing to take risks. They share themselves and what they are doing, not some fabricated image of what they should be. They are so respectful of the past, the real past, the country they live in and its religion, as well as each other. I always feel better about my world after 25 minutes of watching ordinary people taking extraordinary care of an ancient pipe organ or a 17th century French convert. It’s certainly an oddball formula but it works. My only criticism is that after years in France, Billy ought to have more than “Merci” in his French vocabulary but he certainly makes up for it with creative ideas about engaging his wide audience. He got me. I’m a total fanboy.
https://www.instagram.com/thepethericks
https://www.youtube.com/@ThePethericks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4y6m7Pu3gM
