Morning Prayers: Senior Talks '22

Julia Paolillo, Morning Prayers 2022
Julia Paolillo ’22, Harvard Graduate School of Education (‘22), Choral Fellow, Harvard University Choir, speaks at Morning Prayers.

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Harvard Memorial Church · Julia Paolillo HGSE ’22 - March 31, 2022 | Morning Prayers

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By Julia Paolillo ’22
Harvard Graduate School of Education (‘22)
Choral Fellow, Harvard University Choir

The inspired text this morning is a selection from Alain de Botton’s book “The Architecture of Happiness”

“It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.

Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind.”

I love when newcomers attend morning prayers. Not because I am any sort of evangelist, but because I love to watch their faces as their eyes wander upwards, taking in – often for the first time – the beauty of this space.

As a choral fellow in the University Choir, I spend a lot of time in this building. From my daily morning prayers seat in the front row over here, usually nestled between Rena and Olympia, I have watched the brilliant sun shine through the notably un-stained glass behind me, tracing its path across the carved organ screen as it rises and hits that Veritas crest just so. In the dark winter months the light doesn’t make it to the crest during morning prayers, and then, as spring approaches, the sun returns bright and early to blind us as we process into the Chapel.

On Sunday mornings I shuffle up to the choir loft at 9:45, coffee and Psalter in hand, to prepare for the weekly service. From my perch way up there, with Henrique on my right and Jonathan on my left, the capitals of these great columns are at eye level, and I can examine the carved Pelican piercing her breast to feed her young, a beautiful reminder of sacrifice. During the sermon my attention will sometimes wander – apologies to whoever is preaching – to the wall engraved with the names of the war dead – another reminder of sacrifice. I study the names of the four men who graduated from the School of Education, and marvel at how different their lives looked from mine, connected as we are by this place.

For much of the Fall these observations, these opportunities to study this place, were a lovely if unremarkable benefit of singing with the choir. Then, one frigid December morning I dragged my feet along the 20-minute walk from my apartment to Mem Church for 8 AM fellows rehearsal. The only thing novel about this quotidian routine on this particular day, was that I was newly heartbroken, and I spent much of the walk wondering if I would manage to make it through that day without crying. I didn’t… but that morning, once I made it to the Church, once I was enveloped by the fellowship of the fellows, and the warmth of our notoriously overheated choir room, I began to appreciate this physical space and the people who fill it in new ways.

My experience echoed de Botton’s observation that “It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.” All of a sudden these small, daily rituals in Memorial Church took on outsized importance, and became the most meaningful part of my life at Harvard. Six days a week, for many weeks now, I make these small journeys between spaces in this building – each one a sort of home.

If there is a lesson here, let it be this: find the little rituals in your life that provide you with moments of joy and respite. Because the thing about being a grad student, and a grad student in a one-year program, no less, is that you understand from your first day on campus that this experience will be fleeting. My first Fall semester was also my last Fall semester, my first Holy Week will be my last. You understand what the world of work is like, and so you can appreciate being a student again: working on your own schedule, enjoying late nights and slow mornings – unless, of course, you’re a choral fellow. Each morning, I zip into my robe, process into the chapel, and take my seat at prayers with de Botton’s “blend of joy and melancholy.” Joy at the perfection I see before me, in this space and in the people who fill it, and melancholy at an awareness of how seldom I am sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind.

Fill your lives with people and places that leave you in awe, and just a little bit sad at the thought of their loss.

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