Praise night complications

An update of sorts.

The event is Tuesday. It was originally supposed to be a band, but I lost all my musicians when the date was rescheduled. I have a lot of singers (I think.... hope? gulp), but the instrumentation may just be me, especially if the other guitar players reluctant to take on the challenge of the somewhat more complex arrangements of the selected praise music. We're supposed to have practices on Sunday and Monday. I've got my fingers crossed - one of the numbers is a bluesy gospel number that really needs a full band. I'm trying to swing like I'm a full band on my guitar. I'm quite nervous and worried.

In the meantime... and I'm not entirely sure how this happened... I've been roped into leading the music for a Mass at a retreat. On the team for a retreat like this, there is a team member who is in charge of handling the music. The two most important duties for this person are to (1) sing the retreat's thematic song a few times a day, and (2) find someone to lead the music at the Mass. Seems this fellow wanted the glory of doing #1 without the mundane work of seeing to #2. (My problem with volunteers generally is that they are often too fond of the glorious accolade-earning portions of the tasks they are given, and not the work-oriented portions.)

So on Wednesday night, after Mass, I got asked to lead the music for this thing. I should have escaped from the socializing quicker, I suppose. Two of the songs picked for the thing are things I've never heard. I only have the sheet music for one of them. Now I can sight read on the guitar, but I've always found it difficult to sing from sheet music, so I went home and played it into the computer at home, so I could make a midi file out of it (which I've been listening to, since.)

The other tune, Brian Doerkson's 'Light the Fire Again' - well, there were just chords given to me. Great. That's going to help. Fortunately, it is a fairly popular praise song, and I found a midi file on the Internet. I wish I could hear it sung, but the midi file will have to do.

At any rate, this is all a distraction I did not need right now. I want my praise night - our first one - to go well, and I don't need to be covering up for the laziness and sloppiness of people who want the glory, but not the work! Grrr.....

My place in this world

Christians are known for trying to make converts, and this is an aspect of the effort known as the “great commission.” The great commission is in some sense is the calling of everyone who is a disciple. How actively we go about this, in what way, and with whom, depends on the circumstance. In the Catholic faith, for instance, we have developed (partly in response to our own nefarious history at forced conversions and persecutions) a very tolerant outlook on other religious traditions, regarding the Jews as our elder brothers, the Muslims as participants in the salvific plan, as with all people “who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience.”

In the world of North American society, Christians really don't need to be in the convert-making business, since Christianity is already a majority disposition. That doesn't stop people, of course. Christians spend a lot more time on each other, I think, than on anyone else! (It is amazing the time some invest in trying to convert each other to their specific denominations.)

The truth is that some insecurity lies in the motivations of Christians who witness. But Christianity does not even need to be a majority religion – it thrives in many places without proselytizing. In Lebanon and Syria, ancient Orthodox and Catholic communities continue to pass on an unchanged Christianity little different from the kind observed by ancestors a thousand years gone, in Muslim-majority societies.

But not all proselytizing is the selling of spiritual vacuum cleaners. When St. Paul visited Athens two thousand years ago, he told the Athenians that he admired the fact they were religious, and then proceeded to make a gentle case for God, "so that people might seek God, even perhaps grope for him and find him, though indeed he is not far from any one of us" as he put it.

That's always been my angle. I have no interesting in selling someone something, for spiritual goods are not for sale. But I have noticed for some time how broken so many people are. People long for something - they feel like they are roaming, as Michael W Smith the singer once put it, looking for their place in this world. Why am I here? Why have the things that have happened to me taken place?

In my own life, yes, I try to answer these questions with the person of Jesus. It is difficult to explain - and has to be experienced - but Jesus is a healing figure, a rain of compassion and mercy, freeing to those who have been imprisoned by the unfathomable.

Not everyone can accept or hear this message. But for those who 'have ears to hear' (as we put it in our religious language), it is good news. For me, and I hope for the people I sing for on Sundays, Jesus is a compelling answer to the challenges of life that seem so unanswerable.

How do you get there? What is the final destination? Who doesn't have trepidation when approaching these questions or that finish line? Jesus may be a cross, and he may be a crutch, but whatever he is, he's there – larger than life, always a patina through which I can glimpse darkly at a more hopeful reality – a healing truth that is spirit.

My personal great commission is to try and get all of these ideas – my experience of it – out of my head and into words somehow. I'm not that effective at it in words, and do a little better in song. I have no vacuum cleaners to sell, unfortunately.

Save the Internet... and win!

Think you've got the genius grassroots campaign that would do the job of educating the public regarding this impending issue? You could be famnous! You could the one to win this prize!

http://pulver.com/savethenet/

Save the Internet

The Internet was originally conceived as a distributed nodal network - no one computer really stood at the root of it. To the extent possible, every new computer added to the network added new resources and capabilities to the network.

In time, this would cause the Internet to lead to the most fundamental technological improvement of the world since the industrial revolution.

Now - believe it or not - there are business groups working to kill it off. Don't let them.

http://www.savetheinternet.com/

Ten simple pleasures

I got tagged for this.

These are ten of life's simple pleasures, little things that i enjoy doing or being.

1. Sitting at the campfire. I enjoy the smells, the sounds, the stars, and the flickering logs and embers. What can I say?
2. Playing the blues: the blues is a genre of music that I don' t really tire of. I love the sound of a tube amplifier crackling with the understated power of a slightly overdriven stratocaster guitar.
3. Picnics by the water: I like to eat, I like to swim. So do the rest of my family. Nuff said. :-)
4. Riding my bike: you can just pick up and go somewhere with no real plan on a bicycle. I enjoy that. My daughter used to go with me. Perhaps she is too old now - I hope not.
   
5. Singing - I sing all the time, for no reason. I especially enjoy singing in a group.
6. Eating popcorn at the movies. You can't have movies without popcorn. And popcorn just isn't popcorn without a movie. Sometimes I am tempted to buy a theatre popper for here at home.
7. Tickling my wife's feet in the morning - it is the only place she is ticklish, and pretty much the only time of day that she is. I don't get to do this and live very often. :-)
8. Shining my shoes - I like shiny shoes. I learned this virtue in army cadets as a boy.
9. Losing myself in a book set in a faraway place. I can forget who I am and just lose myself in a different place and time. Does not have to be a fictional book. A well written history book is even better for this.
10. Star Wars opening night: I enjoy watching all the nerds dressed up in stormtrooper outfits. Exuberance, even in something silly, is always an enjoyable thing to bask in. :-)
    

Better pictures

Being born is hard work

Auntie's first glimpse

Grandma and Grampa

Deleted the picture post

In my exuberance to celebrate, I forgot the fact that the Internet is full of sickos. My wife pointed out to me that in that one picture that there's more on display than I realized in that bleary three in the morning posting.

I'll add some different ones later.

My baby, her baby

After she checked in last night, I went into her room, brushed her hair with my hands, and said, "My little girl... I used to carry you on my shoulders... now you're doing the most amazing thing a human being is capable of." We both cried.

I left before the last exam at eleven. At eleven fifty my wife came and got me, disoriented, in the waiting room. "Hello grampa," She said.

"Really?" I asked.

"Yes, and they're both fine. You can come see her now."

I went in the room, but I couldn't look, they were rearranging my daughter's hospital gown. I couldn't even get a glimpse of the baby. Instead they placed her in my arms. My eyes watered again. Like they did so many years ago, in the same ward of the same hospital.

Avalon has a shock of red hair, almost the same colour as my daughter's. And as I cradled this small and delicate being, yawning and staring out of unfocused eyes up at me, I re-learned a lesson taught me a long time before. You can travel anywhere you want in this world, and set foot in any sacred place. You can learn any knowledge, and master any discipline. You may be the wisest scholar, or the saintliest person.

But you will never ever see anything holier and more powerful than the face of a baby who has just entered this world.

Avalon

1. My daughter is en route to the hospital
2. It is a girl
3. That's her name.

Since I'm on a picture bend...

Take this montage I did last year, replace Yoda with a general or two, and I bet you this accurately depicts events unfolding in the Pentagon somewhere as we speak. ;-)

Lazy old good for nothinged over the hill ancient cat!

You can tell by the way I put that I have a lot of affection for my crusty old feline. :-)

Don't eat my dog!

Please Mr. Mapusaurus, don't eat my Sparky! (You have to click the link and see the picture to know what it is I am refering to. :-)

CANOE -- CNEWS - Science: Largest-known meat-eating dinosaur discovered by Canadian paleontologist

I hope my daughter doesn't do this

Can't they find someone relatively normal to raise this baby, please? Like say, Michael Jackson?

The Daily Record - NEWS - CRUISE: I'LL EAT MY BABY'S PLACENTA

What I've been doing the last few days

“Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term. Yet, as Genesis has it, all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece.” John Paul II, “A Letter to Artists”

Holy Thursday was beautiful, as always. I got there early, and got to sit and rest for a bit before we began. “So....?” one of the musicians said to me as she arrived, alluding to my daughter's delicate condition. “Not yet,” I said, smiling. One of the guitar players came in limping. I felt badly, because the day before my amplifier had fallen on his foot, as we tried to ascertain why it was squealing.

We were told after the last strains of the music faded away that the night had moved everyone to tears. After Mass, we went over to my daughter's new place. My wife and my sister in law put the crib together. Me? Exhausted by the evening, I fell asleep on the couch – which had been our old couch in the basement. At two in the morning, we went back to the church for an hour of meditation and veneration.

Good Friday was a very busy day for us. My wife, in a fog of fatigue, cooked bacon. As nonchalant as I could, I picked it off. “Oops,” she said, when she remembered what day it was. Bacon refrigerates just fine, by the way. We went to the sombre Good Friday service, and then we had one last dress rehearsal of the play. We had been told to bring sandals. Rummaging through the basement in the morning I had found mine, in a bin where the summer shoes all had been put. Some folks were not so lucky, and they had to go upstairs for the rehearsal barefoot on the cold marble floor.

I was a Roman centurion. The centurion costumes were rented. My wife, along with a couple of others from the RCIA team, had been busy sewing 'civilian' costumes all week, but an enterprising fellow in the RCIA group had rented the the centurion outfits, since they were a little more ornate. In addition to being told to wear sandals, the centurions had been instructed to wear black T-shirts and shorts. After changing, I took a look in the mirror in the adjacent men's bathroom. I decided I did not look too undignified – not quite Russell Crowe's Maximus, perhaps, but not Marvin the Martian either. :-)

During the play it was my job to whip Jesus, played by our priest. I've done it before, and he always tells me to be rough and tough with him. He had no idea! During the play, as he was processing up towards our 'calvary', I was whipping him in earnest when I tripped over the cross, sending him tumbling, cross and all to the floor. Now – fortunately for the play – this is actually supposed to happen at some point on the via dolorosa. Unfortunately for him, it wasn't the planned action that was supposed to happen ten paces later.

I gulped, wondering what I had done, but he was alright and got to his feet, and nobody other than he or I was the wiser. I have a big bruise from this, and he likely has a bigger one. I don't like playing the Roman guards, to tell you the truth. And it isn't just that I don't like whipping a person playing Jesus. It is also that I don't like whipping and cajoling our pastor. He is a good man and I consider him my friend. Though some of my friends joke about me being lucky that I can push our pastor around, I know that he finds the role uncomfortable physically and mentally, and it is no small suffering for me to inflict cruelty on people, even when “the play's the thing.”

After the play, the cast stood in the lobby as the congregation came to pay their respects to the actors. I'm not a gregarious person by nature, but at times like these, I force down my shyness and make myself friendly and warm, to the extent I have it in me to do.

Saturday was the vigil. My daughter and her guy came – motivated partly because they didn't want to be out of contact with my wife for as many hours as the vigil is. But I think my daughter is beginning to feel the siren call back to the faith of her childhood. She will need it someday. The young do not always see it, but as you get older, life often makes a bit more sense through the prism of religious faith – particularly when nature takes its course, and babies come into the world, or aunts and grandmothers leave it.

The vigil began in the dark, as always – lit up with candles. Then through the story of creation, the Exodus, the promises of the prophets, we journeyed in the candlelight, until, with the Great Gloria, the church lit up. Then, when the readings were done, we sang the Litany of the Saints, and the new catechumens were baptized and confirmed. I love the ancient rhythms of the vigil – it is my favourite Mass of the year.

We went to Sunday brunch out near my daughter's. My nephew joined us. He told me about all his progress learning the guitar (I've been giving him lessons.) And he explained how he's been starting a reptile breeding business on the side (he's a herpetologist at work, too, but not as a breeder, rather an educator.)

“Having reptiles is actually good for my dating prospects,” he joked. “I can quite safely say to people, 'I have the largest snake in Ottawa – and it takes a professional to handle it!'”

I got to lead the music for the Easter evening Mass. There were only three of us in the folk group, and everything that could go wrong did. The speakers hummed with feedback as I set up the microphones. I broke a string thirty seconds before Mass began. My guitar strap fell off five seconds into the opening hymn.

But stressed as I was, nothing could defeat my joy. Our best singer had come out just by chance. We opened by roaring through “Oh Happy Day” (yes, the Sister Act hymn.) And we went out on an exuberant “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.” So I broke a string – God may have a sense of humour, but just as surely, it all worked out. :-)

He is Risen Indeed!

Is there anyone who is a devout lover of God?
Let them enjoy this beautiful bright festival!
Is there anyone who is a grateful servant?
Let them rejoice and enter into the joy of their Lord!

Are there any weary with fasting?
Let them now receive their wages!
If any have toiled from the first hour,
let them receive their due reward;
If any have come after the third hour,
let him with gratitude join in the Feast!
And he that arrived after the sixth hour,
let him not doubt; for he too shall sustain no loss.
And if any delayed until the ninth hour,
let him not hesitate; but let him come too.
And he who arrived only at the eleventh hour,
let him not be afraid by reason of his delay.

For the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first.
He gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour,
as well as to him that toiled from the first.
To this one He gives, and upon another He bestows.
He accepts the works as He greets the endeavor.
The deed He honors and the intention He commends.

Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord!
First and last alike receive your reward;
rich and poor, rejoice together!
Sober and slothful, celebrate the day!

You that have kept the fast, and you that have not,
rejoice today for the Table is richly laden!
Feast royally on it, the calf is a fatted one.
Let no one go away hungry. Partake, all, of the cup of faith.
Enjoy all the riches of His goodness!

Let no one grieve at his poverty,
for the universal kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again;
for forgiveness has risen from the grave.
Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Savior has set us free.
He has destroyed it by enduring it.

He destroyed Hades when He descended into it.
He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh.
Isaiah foretold this when he said,
"You, O Hell, have been troubled by encountering Him below."

Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with.
It was in an uproar because it is mocked.
It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed.
It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated.
It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive.
Hell took a body, and discovered God.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.
O death, where is thy sting?
O Hades, where is thy victory?

Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!
Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down!
Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is Risen, and life is liberated!
Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead;
for Christ having risen from the dead,
is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be Glory and Power forever and ever. Amen!

St. John Chrysostom, ca. 400 A.D.

Cheetas never prosper? This one has!

I've actually seen the glades in Florida (Wakulla springs) where the old Tarzan movies were filmed.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Tarzan's chimp Cheeta reaches 74

Long time

I know I haven't posted in a long time. Holy Week is a killer, if you are a church volunteer. I'll have to be brief, too.

My brother in law is a grandfather - my niece had her baby. He phoned me to tell me from the West Coast. It was a difficult labour, but everyone is fine - the baby is a girl, unnamed as of yet. While he was on the phone with me, a Tim Horton's burned down across the street from him. Fire trucks came rushing over.

We're still waiting. Thursday is the official due date - which if course is Holy Thursday, our big event. I hope the baby - much as I'm excited - comes next week. Too much adventure to pack all into one week.

In case, I'm not back, wishing Irina a happy Passover - since that comes Thursday too! Happy Easter too, for those of you who mark that holiday.

This turkey wants to eat YOU!

Millions of years ago, you'd be the one fearing Thanksgiving!

New dinosaur a turkey - World - theage.com.au

Sing praise

Sing praises to the LORD with the lyre, with the lyre and the sound of melody! (Psalm 98)

Holy Thursday is coming. I look forward to this all year. All the church musicians join forces into one super-choir. It is always beautiful, and the credit does not go to us. The rehearsals can be rough, but when we get to it - a recreation of the Last Supper, with footwashing - there are no dry eyes.

The only sad thing about it is that it only comes once a year, and for we the musicians, nothing else this moving and inspirational happens any other time!

As Palm Sunday approaches...

I often wonder what it would be like to take a trip into the past and wander the streets of Jerusalem as it was when Herod's temple still stood, to see Kidron brook and the garden of Gethsemane and the mount of olives as they looked in the days when these events took place.

Interestingly, an urban architecture project took this on, and it is possible to get an idea. Welcome to Jerusalem - as it was in the time when Jesus came.

http://www.ust.ucla.edu/ustweb/Projects/israel.htm

The whisper of a lost name in the wind

The IgNoble Experiment, a.k.a. Live Dangerously!: Fun At The Cemetery

I was moved by this entry, in which Irina speaks of "a chance to those who didn't live long enough to have descendants." It got me reminiscing about a particular incident. (I may have blogged about this before, but my wife says I am senile, and I believe her because I frequently forget details like this. :-)

Near where my parents had their farm, in a town called Delta, is a wonderful little beach and park. My parents used to bring us to the beach all the time when my brother and I were teenagers. When my kids were younger, my wife and I used to take them there all the time. We even camped there once or twice.

Beside the park is Delta's cemetery. On days when I was feeling quiet and contemplative, I used to wander through the cemetery, hoping I might connect with the dead. In that place, there seems to be great peace, and although a cemetery is the scene of many tears, a sense of calm prevails in this one. Perhaps it is the setting, perhaps the breeze, perhaps the sound of children laughing in the nearby park.

As I wandered through one day, in the early nineties, I noticed fresh flowers and a wooden carving at one of the stones. The carving was a wooden heart, and pyrographed onto the maple heart was one simple word - “Emily.” The stone said about her simply, “Taken into eternity November 23, 1987.”

You can tell a little about someone from her grave. Her married name was on it, but her maiden name featured most prominently. She was only twenty three – someone who had just set out to begin their adult life, much as my own daughter just has – and it was cut short.

It is very important that the memory of people continue in this world. I do not know why that is, but I know it in the heart of my being. And so I have kept a memory of this Emily with me. I have no idea who she is, other than to imagine that in the small town of Delta, I surely passed her on the sidewalk or in the park one day. But the memory of Emily matters.

And because it matters, I remember.

And then there were three

We did a noontime run with the kitchen stuff. My daughter had to call a half dozen people to figure out where they left the keys. The landlord finally told her they were in the cupboard over the stove. My daughter said, “Oh – I'm a bit short. I didn't see them.”

The elevator had been put in service, and the two younger girls held the door while I ran boxes into the lift. By the time we had driven back home, the son in law and his family had already picked up all the boxes and stuff we had packed into the garage the night before. So we drove back out to the apartment and we got there just as the moving truck arrived. Between all the men (including myself, my son in law's dad, his other sons, and a friend), the move was done faster than you could blink.

That night I brought my guitar to the open mic night at the local pub. There was nobody there, so I didn't play for a crowd. I ordered dinner instead. The pub owner, a woman from Jordan, came out and talked to me about the huge investment they had made in this pub. Over the course of our conversation, we found out we were both Latin rite Catholics. She belongs to a Melkite Catholic parish at the moment, because they speak Arabic, but she missed her church, she told me. She told me how they would raise eighty thousand dollars for the poor in one day on Palm Sunday, there had been such spirit there. I played Ave Maria for her.

As she was leaving, and her son offered to play pool with me, she said, “When you are here, come at six. You can play the love songs for them, I don't care. But for me, you can play Ave Maria.” I found it comforting in a strange way to share so much with someone from the other side of the world. We came from two totally different places, and yet we shared the same culture – the same events on the same church calendar marked out the days of our lives. Being Catholic is cultural in a way I never really noticed before.

At home, I walked over to my younger daughter's room, to peek in on her and make sure she was asleep. The empty room in the hallway was jarring. I may never get used to that.

As I write this morning....

My daughter is under my roof. By the end of the day, she will not be. It is a very simple thing that seems enormously difficult to fathom. They won't even be living all that near to us. We live in the south end, they will be living near the river in the west end. It is at minimum a forty minute drive.

I won't have a lot of time to dwell on it, of course. Moving is the kind of physical task you kind of do without thinking about it. Last night, we moved all of her stuff down two flights of stairs into the garage. You would not think that someone that young could accumulate that much stuff! We hauled boxes and boxes of books, clothes, glasses, and cooking pans, and my wife and her friend cleared a huge space in our garage so we had somewhere to put it. We spent about four hours at it, just getting things ready to go onto the truck. Note that not a thing has yet left the house!

I am convinced I will live longer than my son in law, by all this. I was running up and down stairs twice as long as he was, and I don't think I ever got half as out of breath as he did. A lot of people these days are... inert. Yes, inert, the only word I can think to use. I have a feeling the only one running around the park with my granddaughter will be me - I'll be the only one energetic enough!

My brother in law might come by this morning to do an early run of boxes. It is a two hour drive for him to get here, but I know he'd like to be involved. Moving out is a profound moment - not quite as profound as having your first child (that one's coming in about three weeks), but it certainly qualifies as a milestone.