Honoring their father and mother

Paul and Sally Westermeyer are used to attending special church events. If the event doesn't involve their son Tim, executive pastor at St. Philip the Deacon Lutheran Church in Plymouth, it's likely to have something to do with the many students Paul Westermeyer has taken under his wing as a professor of church worship and music at Luther Seminary in St. Paul.

But last Sunday they got blindsided. Thinking they were going to a regular service at their son's church, they ended up being the center of attention at the debut of a hymn commissioned in their honor.

The tribute was cooked up by Tim Westermeyer and his three siblings -- Chris Westermeyer, Rebecca Westermeyer and Rachel Wright and pulled off with the help of Timothy Mahr, a professor of music at St. Olaf College and its band director. The piece, "Homilies on Rise, O Church, Like Christ Arisen," was premiered by the Minnesota Symphonic Winds. All of the siblings either have been or currently are part of that ensemble, and all four of them joined in the premiere.

The best part, Tim Westermeyer said, was watching his parents' reaction.

"We felt like we had won the Academy Award without knowing that we had been nominated," Sally Westermeyer said.

The Westermeyers, both 70, were so taken aback that they didn't publicly say thank you at the time. Sally worried that they might have seemed rude, but her husband said that under the circumstances, it probably was best that they kept their mouths shut.

"We would have sounded like blubbering idiots," he said.

There have been a lot of those years. The red-brick building tucked against the northwest corner of the Minneapolis Convention Center was built in 1891. It was included on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, which noted its "Byzantine architecture with foliated flourishes at the tops of arches, towers and gables." The sanctuary is topped by a stained-glass dome that the register called "both grand and intimate."

Following a merger with Central Park United Methodist Church in downtown St. Paul, Wesley no longer houses a congregation, but it is used for community events. The documentary grew out of efforts by the Minnesota Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church to find ways to keep the building open as a community resource.

If you have any photos to lend to the project, contact the Rev. Suzanne Mades at smades@charter.net or 952-888-6070.

Getting out the vote In January, we wrote about Bloomington photographer John Noltner, who has launched an online website promoting the notion that we should try to do a better job of getting along with one another. On the site, A Peace of My Mind (www. apeaceofmymind.net), he interviews people about peace -- whatever the term means to them -- and posts their audio responses, along with photographs.

He makes no money on the project, but ever since he launched the site, Noltner has dreamed of creating a traveling version to bring into schools and community centers. Now he has a chance to do that, but he needs help.

To vote, go to www.refresheverything. com. The competitors are sorted by topic, location and size of the grant. To find Noltner's project, click on the icons for "Arts & Culture" and "$50,000" and then use the drop-down menu to click on "Near you." You can vote once a day for each project, but you can vote for as many projects as you want. So while you're there, noodle around for other worthy causes.