As I’ve gotten back into flapping my arms in front of a group of singers the past fourteen months, I’ve been scouring the net as well as a library of music publications here in my office. I look for any short essay (books are too long) that gives me one good nugget. Then it gets gets clipped and saved in a file in my desk marked “conducting.” Indispensable to me: Gerald Custer‘s column in GIA Quarterly.
Another useful resource is a British one, and this post from their site underscores a very important principle: One Thing At A Time.
I have a few trained musicians in the parish. My second predecessor is now retired and a choir member. She does some work with our psalmists. I often have her take about fifteen minutes to lead off the rehearsal with some aspect of vocal pedagogy. My pianist is a fine reader and experienced church musician. She often hears things I do not. But if I listened to these two ladies on every stumble in our music ministry, we could all be working hard into the late evening hours. Sometimes it’s better to move on, playing the long game.
Last night, after we were working long and hard on an old Mass setting (new to about 1/4 of the people) things were getting a bit sloppy on cutoffs for a Communion psalm. At a pause, my pianist mentioned it. I heard it too. But I told her we were going to skip over it. Ms Hopkins’ advice from that second link above includes:
You don’t have to fix everthing all at once. Rehearsals are a finite length and it’s important to finish on time. You can’t deal with every little point and it’s counter-productive to try. You’ll end up demoralising your choir and yourself. If you’ve planned your rehearsal properly, you’ll already have a good idea of what you want to achieve at a particular session.
All I wanted to do yesterday was get the Mass parts they haven’t sung in three, four years to gel with me, the instrumentalists, and the singers. We worked hard for the better part of an hour to get that done. Mission accomplished. I let the people go home a half-hour early.
That principle of attending to one thing at a time has merit for just about every church ministry I can think of: preaching, soup kitchens, RCIA, wedding planning–you name it.
Come to think of it, it has a lot of merit in one’s personal life. I’ve spent most of the summer revising my diet and losing some weight I’ve allowed to add. I’ve also been noticing that despite feeling better with improved nutrition and less bulk around my middle, I’m still dozing off during prayer or even the occasional liturgy. My body tells me to attend to sleep. It might take me some weeks to reinforce a new habit on that front. But maybe I could start up an exercise program instead. Do both at once? Pah! One thing at a time. I can take heart that it’s exactly the way I would do it with my choir. This Fall is a good time to reinforce a better sleep pattern. I’ll still be alive in two months. Focus on fitness can wait for a rested and refreshed body.od
When Cozy Trumps Courage
Liam described his current pastor in this comment.
My observation was, “Hmm. Your pastor actually sounds very conservative to me.”
Liam replied:
I think our culture finds it easier to categorize people into a single camp. And leave them there. Since politics is the driving force behind so much of what takes place (and I mean not just government, but celebrity, sports, labor/management, extended families, and even theological aspects of religion) it is way too convenient–not to mention comfortable–to put a tag on someone, and leave them there.
Speaking for myself, I am conservative in some aspects of my life outlook. I believe in conserving the natural environment. I believe in conserving virtues, and conducting myself in a realm of personal ethics and morals, and not just when they are personally convenient.
Sometimes, a progressive outlook accompanies this. As a young boy scout, for example, fire prevention was drilled into us. But I know that conservation thinking has evolved as we come to understand the importance of fire as part of the meta-cycle of a thriving forest or grassland. Being open to discovery is important.
In the realm of ethics and morals, I might consider the plight of two people, same-sex attracted. If God made them that way–in other words, if their sexual identity is part of their biological make-up as human beings, and if they seek a life defined by the virtue of commitment–then I don’t feel a compulsion to deny them a legal status that reinforces that. That doesn’t strike me as 100% liberal. Just a personal openness to change.
If I worked in forestry, I would have a problem, to be sure, to drop a lit match onto the ground where an environment was long overdue for a burn. Nor do I have a personal understanding of what it means to be gay, and certainly not the sexual orientation for it, so the idea of sex with another man is not at all appealing to me.
I’m not sure that stance of “personally opposed” makes me a flaming liberal in terms of how our culture defines its politics. But I’m not quite conservative either, despite my indulgence for shirts and ties on weekends.
Liam described a priest in his comment.
I’ve worked with guys like this a lot. We haven’t always worked well together in the long run. Once I’ve gotten to know them, I might offer a gentle suggestion or nudge in a certain new direction. When I was younger, I was rebuffed for being one, ignorant, and/or two, conservative. After a long and frustrating conversation about a related issue I once told a pastor in a moment of mutual honesty that I thought he was still pre-Vatican II in some ways, he responded by declining to give me a cost-of-living raise. Thanks for proving my point, Father Hardly-A-Liberal.
Like Liam, I’ve known lots of people who could be tagged with the label “uber-progressive.” But as you get to know them, some are rather willing to explore new territory. And others have their claim staked, and they are not moving off that patch of land. Mind you, I have no problem with the monastic virtue of stability, even for someone not professing to be a monk.
But please: if you are so set in your ways, there is nothing gravely wrong about that. Just admit it. Concede you have a strong strain in yourself that is most decidedly non-progressive. Hang a hat on issues green, forward-thinking, or even liberal. But just confess that you have a comfort zone and sometimes cozy trumps courage.