My high school history teacher, Gary Robinette, signed my senior year yearbook by reminding me to remember life’s simple pleasures. According to him that year simple pleasures included sunsets, cornbread, and Queen Anne’s Lace. Before I did anything else with his message as a soon-to-be high school graduate, I had to figure out what Queen Anne’s Lace was.
Most of you probably know this already, but I learned that it was a delicate wildflower tracing its name back to an enchanting story of the English monarchy and a queen who was well known for her passion for lace making. Coach Robinette always had a way to get us to dig a little deeper to find out the stories behind the stories. Perhaps even more, though, he wanted us to pay attention more deeply not just to history but also our lives, each other, and the natural world. I notice Queen Anne’s lace all the time now thanks to him, and it not only makes me smile as I think of him, but it also helps me focus on something simple in nature connecting me to something greater than me.
This is a message I try to embody and bring to my vocation as a college chaplain. It’s what I hope I will leave behind after fifteen and a half years at Oxford College of Emory University. Maybe I’ve even left a trace of it over the years in these articles.
That’s even more important to me now as my family and I pack up the moving truck and cars in less than two weeks for North Carolina for a new job and new opportunities. I’ve been thinking a lot about whether I have paid attention to those simple pleasures enough in this stretch of my ministry.
I had a moment the other evening that sent me down the road of simple pleasure reflecting. Each year I’m invited to offer the prayers at one of the Lessons and Carols services at Emory University. This beloved tradition has been happening at Emory since the 1930s, and people pack Glenn Memorial Church on the Atlanta campus three times to hear the scriptures read and the beautiful music ring out from those talented choirs. That service itself is a simple pleasure. It has much to offer in the way of reflection, but on this night, it was one of the other readers sitting next to me who had me living in the moment.
Each year the director invites back the previous year’s student president of the concert choir to offer one of the readings. By this point they’ve been a graduate of Emory about seven months and love the chance to return and see the familiar sights and faces of the campus and that event. They know the intricacies of the parts and movements of the service, especially the music. If you’ve become the president, chances are you sang in that choir all four years of your undergraduate experience at Emory.
This year’s former president, like the ones before her, was deeply engaged in the service. She read beautifully too. But it was when they sang Dr. Mack Wilberg’s arrangement of “The First Noel” that I really took notice of her. I’ve been to enough of these now to know that they sing the same arrangement of this traditional carol every year, and it is a beautiful arrangement especially when the song breaks into the instrumental interludes between verses. She knew it intimately and what’s more, she felt it deeply. It moved her to tears, not just because the arrangement is beautiful or the way they sang it was powerful but because she had been there before, and she knew those people singing it, conducting it, and playing it on the organ. It was a simple pleasure kind of moment.
The deeper story and yet simpler pleasure in that moment was that I had witnessed that scene before. As I mentioned, they invite the choir presidents to return each year and the arrangement of “The First Noel” doesn’t change. I saw it repeatedly in the faces of previous choir presidents – those tears of recognition of one’s peers working hard to provide the gift of the message and meaning of this service to a church full of people.
For the last seven years I’ve gotten a glimpse of that deep recognition from those past choir presidents but only now have I pieced it all together. Suddenly it became another one of my own simple pleasures that I now carry with me to North Carolina and leave with you here to reflect on in this special season.
That night our hearts were tuned again to receive the message of the one who embodied love and taught us to love by paying attention. My heart was reminded, too, of Coach Robinette whose message of simple pleasures keep my eyes, ears, and heart open to the gift of love.
Rev. Dr. Lyn Pace has been the college chaplain at Oxford College of Emory University since 2009. At the beginning of 2025 he will assume a new position as the Assistant Dean of Religious Life at Duke University Chapel. He is grateful for this community and the opportunity to write for the Covington News since 2016.
