Cosmos verses chaos and finding meaning in beauty

We read and compared the creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2 with the young people at KT yesterday, meditating the ordering of cosmos out of chaos, the beauty of creation.
To try to understand the different ways we appreciate beauty, we climbed up to the organ loft and met with one of the organists, Joëlle Gouel, who gave us a taste of the various sounds the instrument can make, and tried to get them to guess the century of the music she was playing or the story behind the music.
None of the young people admitted to particularly liking the organ before we met with Joelle but seeing the instrument in action and learning about how it is made, had quite an impact on them. Later they spoke more freely about their own music - and we discovered we have the makings of a small jazz band.
Towards the end of our time together we made small creations out of clay, spoke about them and read and then sang Psalm 8 together around the first candle on the Advent wreath.
Meanwhile I highly recommend Joëlle Gouel's excellent book "Les Chants du Pèlerin" which offers an overview of hymnody in French, including hymns she's translated herself from beyond the francophone tradtion.