Replies

Too easy. On the other hand, one can always eat a chocolate egg, if it’s a small egg. A large chocolate egg takes pre-planning.

I just sent an email to my parish’s building committee bigshots, explaining why we think putting the choir at the back of our new church - maybe in a loft? - is a super bad idea. To be fair, it’s the Bishop’s idea, not our guys’.

DP made me cut the part where I said, “How could choir members silently, but with unmistakable gestures, threaten their small children with death and dismemberment if they don’t sit down Right Now? How could they quietly indicate to the Altar Servers, who happen to be their sons, that they should sit up straight and stop playing with their shoelaces, or they won’t get cake?”

Instead, I waxed poetically about the fact that the “music ministers” are core members of the congregation, sharing the liturgy with their family and friends, rather than hirelings who could be replace by recordings that meet “objective” aesthetic standards.

I could have said (but it didn’t occur to me until just now) that they can build it, but we won’t come. If they build a choir area somewhere in the back, we’ll still set up in front or slightly off to the side and nail the blues arrangement of the Responsorial Psalm, with finger snaps and hip wiggles ... even if it’s pure acoustic.