What’s a Kohen to do?
As the celebration of my first Easter sunrise service at Bald Knob Cross of Peace drew near, I thought best to dress for the occasion. So, last month I ordered myself a couple shofars and an Isaiah 60 “Arise and Shine” tallit. Interestingly, when I was a young child, my father would regularly say that to my older brother and I as a motivating greeting in the morning. I never knew it was from Isaiah until I went tallit shopping.
Isaiah 60:1 “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.”
Of course, I took my new Kudu to the service. Note the beautiful half polished, half natural finish, to symbolize how we material beings are still very much a work in progress. If you look close, you can see the rib was formed with the classic crown design in fitting celebration of the resurrected Jesus.
It gets pretty windy up there on that bald knob, so I figured a tallit clip would be helpful–customized for the occasion, of course.
The beautiful service was attended by about one to two thousand people. The band rocked! I count their ability to play without any heaters up there on stage as a minor miracle.
As you will notice in the clip below, I used the shofar at applause points. This was well received by children of all ages.
If you are seeking God’s forgiveness, do not expect to find it in shofar blowing. You can find the grace of God, the presence the God, and the intensity of being in the moment. But one needs to get right with God before blowing it because that is one seriously unforgiving instrument. Bad notes sound so bad.
I figured getting in some practice would be important. During walks around the Southern Illinois University campus for exercise, I noticed a noisy power plant at the edge of it, not that far from where I live. It seemed like a great place to practice and that’s where I got started. But as it goes, the lip and diaphragm get tired pretty quickly, if you’re new to it, I guess.
All by way of saying, I have discovered that walking around with a shofar makes it really easy to meet the kind of people I most want to meet. What an excellent filter for finding friendly, curious people, especially those with some degree of interest in religion. Until it started to happen, it never occurred to me that people would asked me to blow it for them. Eventually, I learned to offer when the level of curiosity seems right. Some people are open enough to start a conversation but are still shy about making a request.
So, now the art of conversation is getting set to music … sort of.
Often these conversations never get into anything related to Melchizedek, The Urantia Book, or the eclipses crisscrossing in this area seven years apart. The shofar becomes a test to conversation to see how open and interested people truly are. Many just want to hear the shofar and know what it is. About a third to half seem interested in deeper conversation.
Moving to a new area during a pandemic makes meeting people especially challenging. Understandably, for most people, walking around with a Kudu shofar is not going to be the best way to meet and greet. Fortunately, for me, this works like a charm! At first it did not feel so easy, natural, and fun to walk around with the shofar. But then, with the positive responses that started showing up so quickly, it quickly became that way.
Here’s a short segment of the Easter Service that shows the awesome sunrise we got to enjoy this year!
Happy Easter to everyone!