There are significant historical and theological differences among Lutherans and Episcopalians.
We were walking in Nashville this morning on our way to Christ Church Cathedral (Episcopal) on Broadway when we found First Lutheran Church. We entered and joined the small congregation that didn’t come even close to filling the sanctuary. It was a good though uninspired service with a beautiful choir, a good organ and organist, and a few friendly people.
Theology had nothing to do with choosing the Lutherans, the issue was temporal. Their service began at 10:30 (we walked in as the service began), and Christ Church didn’t start until 11:00. The Lutherans would get us back on our trail a half hour earlier. Done.
Saturday had been miserable. A line of heavy rain moved across Nashville in the morning and ended about noon, turning to a mere light drizzle. We deemed it safe and began the Nashville capital walk at 1:00. Rather than quietly fading away, the drizzle increased slowly while the temperatures stayed in the low forties. We made our way through seven kilometers of well-planned and interesting walking and, on the steps of the closed-on-weekends Tennessee Capitol (1857), we said, “Enough.” We were cold, wet, hungry, miserable, irritated and irritating, unhappy, depressed, in pain, and operating without any natural sense of direction. We made a line down the capitol steps, over to seventh, down to Broadway, and wound our way back to Comfort Inn as quickly as we could.
This morning, with temperatures in the mid thirties with an overcast but rainless sky, we ate our fill of the motel breakfast and, having during the night recovered our resolve, marched off to be side-tracked by the Lutherans for the sake of half an hour.
It turned out to be a good decision. We needed the time. The entire seven and a half mile course gave us the best of Nashville’s history, architecture, and music. One of the finest capital walks we’ve done, Nashville - for example - directed us into the men’s room at the Hermitage Hotel to view the aqua and black art deco lavatory. A sign at the door encouraged women to view the facilities after making sure no men were, at the time, using them.
Impressed with the Farmers Market complex north of the capital, we warmed ourselves in the food court area and wandered the nearly deserted stalls of a flea market. Nearby, a 95 bell carillon choir played a few bars of “The Tennessee Waltz” on the quarter hour. We would have had to wait until the hour to get the whole song. As an alternative, we hummed the rest. “I remember the night, and the Tennessee Waltz...” Just after the railroad overpass, we set off on a large concrete map of Tennessee, very visible from the Tennessee State Capitol up the hill (the area abounds in steps, hundreds of them), walking from Memphis to Nashville to Fort Knox. The area, besides celebrating and honoring Tennessee, is a memorial to the 1897 Tennessee Exposition and, with commons areas and an amphitheater, is a gathering place during the warm summer evenings.
At Ryman Auditorium, we posed with Minnie Pearl and Roy Acuff before trudging to our finish at the Comfort Inn. Ryman was for years site of the Grand Old Opry. I remember a bumper sticker on an old red Honda Civic that read, “If it’s too loud, you’re too old.” To that candy-assed punk, I say, “If you don’t remember Roy Acuff and Minnie Pearl, you’re too young.” The boy in the Honda is, by now, realizing he has blown most of his hearing on crappy music and will need hearing aids by forty. “Oh Sonny, it’ll get worse.”
Next: How we celebrated the completion of our eighth and final walk of this series and met Rand Paul...
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