Providential Fogginess on Pentecost Sunday

So now on Sundays, our parish is continuing to live-stream the services, as we have been since mid-Lent; but we have re-instituted in-person, socially distanced, mask-wearing services. For music, we're continuing to have a cantor (yours truly) for the psalm and the alleluia verse, and four or so choir members (sitting far apart in our loft at the back of the church) singing along on hymns and service music, to assist the service. Next week, Trinity Sunday, has traditionally been the last service "with choir" for the summer, with the choristers taking a break until the bishop's visitation near Labor Day. Some years, like last year, the choir sings a few times throughout the summer, without vesting.
I've been trying to wear a mask while singing the hymns, although I have to take it off for cantoring. (Again, the loft is high up and I'm standing back by the organ, well over 10 feet back from the balcony rail/edge of the loft, so I'm pretty confident this is safe for the folks down below.) A side effect of wearing the mask is that my glasses fog up, at least for most of the service.
In chanting the Alleluia verse, I looked at the very familiar music, and what came out of my mouth was some other tone entirely. I don't know exactly what it was I did, but at least I didn't stop in the middle but went on, ending in a different cadence but not a different key. The second half of the verse was completed as written. I'd like to blame the fogginess for that, but it was mind-fogginess, I suppose, not foggy lenses.

After the offertory organ music in lieu of anthem, today being Pentecost, the offertory hymn was No. 506, "Praise the Spirit in creation" (words by Michael Hewless, tune Finnian by Christopher Dearnley. This will be familiar to Episcopalians and other Anglicans from its inclusion in The Hymnal 1982. We were supposed to sing vv. 1–2, 5–6. That was printed in the bulletin, at the top of the hymn, just after the title. Somehow I missed that entirely, and the organist forgot, also, because she played not four verses, but five. She and the congregation finished, and I started the first word of the sixth verse, "Praise," but immediately shut up when I realized no one else was singing. MAYBE the lenses were foggy when I stood up to sing, but I think really it was that I just overlooked the instructions. If this had been our choir as normal, one or two people would have reminded each other about the omission of verses, and I'd have noticed it. But we were safely spread out, socially distanced. Luckily, it isn't apparent, exactly, on the recording—I listened and couldn't tell, exactly, which verses were sung. I suspect it was a mix downstairs as well as upstairs. My one-word solo is mercifully inaudible on the YouTube recording of the live-stream, so maybe only those of us upstairs heard it.

However, I used the word "Providential" in the title of this post. That's because I was unfamiliar with verses 3 and 4 of this hymn, and as I was singing them, I thought that they were a good example of modern hymn writing, with straightforward language, direct and timeless like the best of the old hymns, clearly praising and displaying the work of the Holy Spirit in our world, and reminding us of the miracle of Pentecost, the coming of the wind of heaven as well as flame on that little band of people:

"Praise the Spirit, who enlightened priest and prophets with the word; his the truth behind the wisdoms which as yet know not our Lord; By whose love and power, in Jesus God himself was seen and heard.

Tell of how theˆascended Jesus armed a people for his own; how a hundred men and women turned the known world upside down, to its dark and furthest corners by the wind of heaven blown."
So my mistake was a happy one for me, something gone a little astray that enabled a little blessing. A little comfort in a troubled time.