Sunday morning commenced with every shade of gray layered from the low of the horizon to high up in the sky. These overlapping grays looked to be the work of a landscape painter making due with only black and white after running out of his favorite colors.

I headed south on CR 700 West towards Delphi and noted the sun hanging low and east in the sky. It was making a valiant, but futile, attempt to burn through the myriad gray clouds blocking it from view.

I flipped through radio stations across the dial and landed on FM 92.1 out of Rochester. The program sounded like a live broadcast from a local church. The hymn was not familiar but comfortable and predictable nonetheless: “I have de-ci-ded to fol-low Jesus.”

I hummed along.

Up near where we live there are three country churches not far off of CR700. The auto traffic coming towards me looked mostly to be churchgoers headed for 9 a.m. Sunday School close by. Though I was pointed away from their respective destinations, someone in each car passing by managed a friendly wave of the hand.

It all made for a gentle way to start off the day.

At church the hymns were old familiar ones - five of them and the singing was hearty, or so I thought. From where I sit at the organ, I can’t tell who is singing and who is not. My wife says many of the college kids don’t sing. These young folks feel more comfortable singing the contemporary “praise music” I only play one Sunday a month - otherwise it’s guitars and drums and a different beat.

I’ve accumulated a variety of hymnals over the years. On the piano at home, both stacked and spread, the Presbyterians appear bound in navy blue, the Methodists are a subdued red. The Christian Science hymnal is a serious brown, and the Disciples of Christ volume from Morgan Park Christian is a soft green.

Many hymnals of different denominations seem to borrow from one another. Sometimes different text appears with similar music. It makes for an interesting study of similarity and contrast. I am an amateur authority.

I started playing hymns for Sunday School when I was about 12 years old. That was two hymns a Sunday- for a total of 100 plus a year. When I was in high school I played for Sunday School at my home church and then I drove a mile to the church where my dad attended. At that church I played the pipe organ. By the time I graduated high school I had played a minimum of 900 hymns for congregational singing.

There was a soup lunch in the church basement on Sunday. An easy, warming meal for a gently unfolding day. After lunch we managed a few errands, took in an afternoon matinee and found dinner in the drive through window at Steak and Shake. The shakes, for the record, were rich and splendid down to the cherry lying at the very bottom.

Back at the farm, a little television seemed in order to wind up the day. But we only get one television station (channel 18) and the “Amazing Race” was amazingly unappealing.

I sat down at the piano and played a few hymns from memory. My wife joined me at the piano bench. I scooted over, and she sat down to join in singing. Seated in a recliner, nursing his ailing back, our son Jeff sat. I watched him for a while and soon enough he had joined in - with an impressive memory of words and verses.

Charlie Brown says that “happiness is singing together when day is through.” And Charlie Brown is indeed correct.

And in splendid harmony, we bid our Sunday good-night, in the same gentle way it had greeted us earlier that day.