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# The service was purely tonal.
- URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/sermon/
- Published: 2020-01-12T09:47:00.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-15T03:50:51.000Z
- Author: James A. Reeves
- Tags: Notebook

I went to a 700-year-old church on Sunday morning and the service was purely tonal because I don’t understand Finnish. It was the most moving sermon I’ve ever heard. Bowing my head, I remembered a line from the poet [Anne Carson](https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5420/anne-carson-the-art-of-poetry-no-88-anne-carson?ref=jamesreeves.co): “I’ve come to understand that the best one can hope for as a human is to have a relationship with that emptiness where God would be if God were available, but God isn’t.” Perhaps this is enough. That, and the grandeur of a pipe organ reverberating across a vaulted stone ceiling while candles flicker in the gloom.