church wet dreams

I woke up feeling numb and dark. Yesterday was quite a day for me. I accompanied my lovely wife through a colonoscopy procedure. First let me say for interested parties who might read this, that Eileen’s colonoscopy came out totally good. No polyps.

It was tough to watch and assist yet another member of my family go through medical procedures. The watcher is the helpless one. But Eileen is doing great now.

I went from her bedside to a staff meeting.

Our church has “launched” the daycare service that it has sponsored for years. This means that in the next week or so the daycare will move to a new facility and space in the church plant will be freed up. So the staff seemed almost giddy as people are looking forward to having more room to do their work. Nothing is changing for me, but that’s fine.

It now looks like I am going to have enough parishioner/musicians to perform at least one movement of one Bach cantata this August.

I have a singer, an oboe player, a harpsichordist and a cellist. I only need a violinist to complete the group. As I told the oboe player yesterday, since I have this many parishioners willing to commit themselves, we <will> find a way to do this. I can always hire a violinist if I can’t find a parishioner willing and able. It is an extraodinary group of people in my community and it is kind of amazing that I can even think of doing a Bach cantata movement like this with just parishioners.

I spent a bit of time at the organ yesterday. I am back to learning William Bolcom’s setting of “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.” It is difficult but getting easier. I am thinking I might want to learn more of his “Gospel Settings.”

One of the staff persons contacted me yesterday and asked me questions about doing a U2charist at our parish with live musicians.

She never did ask me what I thought of the idea. I wonder if anyone will. My first notion is to notice that this sort of thing is never about the kids or the musicians.

It seems to be about using music in an odd way to create a buzz in church. I think of it as sort of Sister Act meets the Blues Brothers.

But I also think it’s sort of a boomer wet dream.

But at my church we refer to the young people who go through a sort of passage rite as “celebrities.”

Oy. It’s all very depressing to me. But fortunately I will not have to be the primary dude for this one. At least I hope I won’t. Please God. We have a bunch of talented musicians young and old at my church, but I don’t seem to connect well with them.

As I was doing my treadmill yesterday I began to work on a little project for the Roman Catholic composer group I met with recently.