Pater Noster

I recall, with particular fondness, listening to this version of the Lord's Prayer during an especially turbulent period in my life almost three years ago. It would be an exercise in futility to count all the laurels of the Philippine Madrigal Singers, one of the most foremost, if not the foremost, choir in the country. I first heard this interpretation of John Pamintuan's Pater Noster, sung at the European Grand Prix 2007, in September of 2008; it was a time of severe trial, as I have mentioned, for a variety of reasons I am still uncomfortable talking about. It was in the dead of night, when the feeling of abandonment was at its most oppressive, that I first listened to it. And like a gentle rain falling down on parched, dead earth, I somehow felt the reassurance of hope blossom in me again. Like the sweeping tide of a calm but unconquerable sea, I remember it washing over me and drowning away the fears and sorrows which gnawed, with gluttonous delight, at the core of my being. It still puzzles me how hope, beauty and the like have always come to me in such fragile and delicate forms, and with such resounding force.