Keep Your Sheep out of the Church of the Lost Lamb
It began on a Sunday morning while we were singing “I Was a Lowly Sheep”, which is sort of our unofficial theme song at church since it was written by local composer William Sanderling. No one would admit that our church has a theme song, the same as a high school or a sitcom, but I’ve been attending for nearly fifty years and don’t remember a service in which it wasn’t the opening hymn. We had reached the chorus and the volume was beginning to swell as it always does when we get to the part which goes “lowly flock in wooley fold.” Folks who are prone to get excited about spiritual matters tend to burst into the chorus with abandon, as if the composer had notated “detonate explosives here.” Visitors who don’t know what to expect and sleepers who should have enough respect to stay awake until the sermon begins always jump, grip their hymnals tighter, and sing with additional fervor themselves, producing a secondary burst like an echo, adding to the commotion, and the p’s at the end of “sheep” pop off so loudly that it sounds as if someone is breaking bubblewrap in the auditorium. Pap always said that while the Lord may appreciate the zeal, it’s rather annoying here on earth. The only other time folks swell up that way in church is when there are words in a song which they aren’t permitted to speak elsewhere, such as “Hell”, “damned”, or especially the hymn with the second verse that ends with ”don’t kick against the pricks, brother,” a particular favorite of Curly Dowd when he leads the singing. I don’t remember the title of that song, but it’s #346 in the book. We had just passed the major burst and were nearly through the secondary swell when everyone noticed a baaaaaaaaa sound, like there was a sheep in the baptistry. (more…)
William Sanderling and the Lowly Sheep
My triple-great grandfather William Sanderling was a sheep farmer in the mid-19th century. His stock was directly descended from Thomas Jefferson’s sheep, which he bought from George Washington, who had received them as a gift from the Marquis De Lafayette. So they were French sheep. William Sanderling gave up farming after becoming a successful songwriter, made a wagon load of money at it, and eventually built a whopping big music store where Hibb’s Dept. Store is now located. Known as Sanderling’s Wonderful Music Emporium, at one time it was one of the largest music stores in the country and sold instruments from violins to banjos as well as sheet music of his spirituals, which were shipped to all corners of the earth except for Islamic countries. Many of the church tunes you’ve had stuck in your head, if you go to church enough for them to stick, were written by William Sanderling. Find yourself singing a hymn one Sunday morning with a sheep metaphor in the lyrics? It‘s likely one if his, for he may have left the sheep but the sheep never left him. (more…)
