#321. The background music for prayers.

Sometimes, when the whisper of importance is just not cutting it, your minister will have a little music play in the background while the prayer is said. Usually, it's just some soft piano designed to sweep you away to prayerville. It's almost as if the music is saying "Time to get serious, please slow down, close your eyes now, don't look around, it's prayyyyyeerrrr time." As you can imagine, this whole experience raised a few questions for me. Questions that I felt, were best expressed in numerical fashion:

1. What if you did that with other moments in your life?
Can you imagine how awesome it would be if you could keep a little tape player in your pocket that you played during other situations in your day? Seriously, what if you were giving a presentation at work and all the sudden you put your hand in your pocket and pressed play? Suddenly the dulcitone notes of an "everyone listen up" song would float out of your pants. Or if you sensed you were about to get dumped you could play some emo music from your jeans. That would be fantastic.

2. Have you ever written your own lyrics for that music?
I have. When it comes on, I usually start singing to myself, "This is the music I play, when it's time to pray, I like to break it down nice, and put the moment on iccceeee." Or I sing along to the Counting Crows "Round Here" melody and say something like, "Round here, we always pray with a song, round here, we always pray too long, round here we think the piano hides our words in a musical sweater, as if that makes it better, could that minister's shirt get any wetter?"

3. Who writes this music?
Is there a group of like four people that write all that music? Certainly some of it is ad libbed by the musicians on stage, but are there places that sell music by prayer length? Can you buy a "five minute prayer song with three serious moments and one light moment at the end?" Do other musicians call the prayer songwriters sell outs?

4. Are the drums banned from this?
I sometimes hear the little chimes stroked during the prayer song but no one ever lets the drums sit in on this. Are they banned? Are they like the Rudolph the red nosed reindeer of instruments, sent to live on an island of misfits with the prayer triangle and the prayer maracas?

5. Who discovered this?
I am going to guess Moses invented this, but only because I always guess Moses. Yesterday I wrote about Noah's ark and even included him in that. I guess I'm a big Moseite. What can I say?

I love the prayer song and have to warn you. I might be speaking at a college this summer. If I do, please know that I am going to without a doubt be rocking the pocket prayer music.