From The Living Church-Bob Dylan has performed six times in Richmond, Virginia, during his 50-year career. This year, a month before Dylan and his five band members took the stage again at Richmond’s Landmark Theater, the members of St. James’s Church gathered for their first Dylan Mass. Mark and Virginia Whitmire, who oversee the music and choirs at St. James’s, do not pretend that Dylan would have added bluesy riffs on his Hohner mouth harp had he been in town a month earlier. They mention honest doubts about whether Dylan would be pleased at their liturgical use of his songs. But they stress that the Dylan Mass rises from their adult conversion to the Dylan fan base, an eventual discovery of what Mark Whitmire calls Dylan’s “authentic prophetic voice.”
The Dylan service was part of a rotation of contemporary music sung by the parish’s West Gallery Choir, which already has adapted bluegrass and jazz to blend into contemporary settings of the Holy Eucharist.
The Whitmires and the Rev. Carmen Germino, assistant rector, spent hours finding common themes between the readings for March 3 and Dylan’s lyrics. “We started with the lectionary and it was providential that the service was in Lent,” Virgnia said. “It was Burning Bush Sunday.”
More here-
http://www.livingchurch.org/dylan-wakes-worship
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