Grace like Snow - Jammin' with the Overtones

The Overtones in Blue Pantsuits

The Overtones with Snow Falling (Janice is in the furry hat)

My High School Choir in our Checkered Long Dresses

I was raised in a church with a strong music program.  It seemed everyone, whether musically inclined or not, was in choir.  Each group of singers sang sometimes on Sunday mornings, had their own musicals and tours, and all combined at Christmastime for our huge "Round the Table Carol Sings," eventually outgrowing our sanctuary and moving the show to the LA County Fairgrounds, where over a weekend we offered seven performances of our Christmas extravaganza.  In 1977 the Carol Sings program was even televised.

Over 800 voices, a handbell choir, living Christmas cards, soloists, an orchestra all surrounded the audience, who sipped wassail, ate figgy pudding and joined in to sing many familiar carols.

At the front of the building was a stage on which the Overtones performed.  In my eyes, there were two kinds of choirs:  the Overtones and the non-Overtones (the Undertones?).  This group consisted of 12 or so super amazing, microphone-holding singers.  They toured internationally and even produced their own album. 

While we other choirs stood in rows on bleachers  around the building's edges, the Overtones, front and center, slid down slides, rode in sleighs, performed advanced, seamless choreography and even had snow falling on them as they sang.  Most memorable and creating the most envy in me was what they wore.  The checkered dresses adorning me and my fellow high-school singers seemed so "square" when compared with the slick baby-blue polyester pantsuits worn by the Overtones.  They were just all-around groovy.

I did enjoy choir, but my finding the right note was a little like searching for my car in a parking lot.  It's not that I couldn't find it; I just had to wander around a few places to get there.  Martene, our director, during rehearsals would pick a note and sing out the words "Today is a beautiful day" while pointing to a lucky chosen person who was to sing back the same words (no problem) on the same note (a problem).  My sister Susan was smart and learned to run to the restroom during this part of rehearsal.  But I sat and suffered through our leader's repeatedly trying to get me to hear then sing back the proper note.

Needless to say, I did not ever hold a microphone, and I was quite envious of the soloists who could produce such beautiful sounds with their voices.  I was in awe.  They seemed to sparkle as they sang, drawing an audience in, touching spirits, stirring souls with their voices.

I did not continue to sing in choir when I became an adult but found ways to serve more in line with my giftedness.  That itty bitty bit of envy of the performers remained, however.  I say "itty bitty," but in reality, envy has been a struggle for me for as long as I can remember.  Feeling "less than" or "not okay," often invisible, has been a struggle for me.  God has shown me lots about Him and me and how He sees me, and I've learned and am learning to live under His adoring, attentive eye, my "audience of one."

He had this super great surprise for me one year at women's retreat. I still attend the same church in which I grew up.  I had not planned to attend retreat, but someone canceled, and I was offered a last-minute spot.  Surprise of surprises, I ended up rooming with a darling past Overtone, Janice.  Thirty-plus years had gone by, but she still shined with that wide, sparkly smile with which she once graced the stage. 

We talked in our room until three in the morning.  I confessed to her my Overtone envy, and I was able to get to know her as a person rather than as a performer, a side-to-side sister rather than someone high on a pedestal (a pedestal created by envious me).  I loved seeing her heart, hearing her stories, and our just sharing with each other what it's like to be us.  We had been influenced by some of the same amazing what we call "pillars" of our church, fed by the same pastors, taught by the same teachers but because of our age difference had not become familiar with each other in the past.

Janice led a small group during retreat, and I was in her group.  We would share after meeting times about what God was showing us that weekend.  Two of the women in Janice's group, I learned, were ex-Overtones!  I had shared with them how God was meeting me in simple songwriting, helping me to find my voice while I learned guitar (I can hear notes better when playing) and what a gift that had been to me.  After our group dismissed one evening, the Overtones ladies, now all in their sixties, remained.  I'm sure they got a kick out of how still in awe of them I was!  We together sang songs.  They listened to me sing and play on the guitar a simple song I'd written then learned it and sang it with me. 

Jill sitting behind a desk drumming away, Addie singing and tapping her foot, Janice smiling and singing loud enough for me to at least feel like I was sounding just like her -- all a bit too wonderful to take in.  So I didn't take it in; I just went with it.  We sang more songs while passing the guitar around.  Just four people, not 800, no stages, no costumes or choreography -- and no disco ball like the one glittering in the center of the fair building for Christmas shows, but we all shone like stars to each other.

In the morning, Addie gave me a letter she had written to me expressing what a gift it was for her to share our souls through music the evening before.  We together ate breakfast, and I told her how our time touched, and even healed, some hole deep inside of me, something invisible, inferior and uncool - like something previously blue checkered transforming for just a time into a baby-blue polyester pantsuit. 

If grace falling can be like snow falling, I'm pretty sure I felt grace flakes gently landing on me the evening I jammed with the Overtones.

Diane Mann, 2014

Here's a link to a video of Pomona First Baptist Church's 1977 Carol Sings