Lent lurks!

I had a deliciously Catholic weekend. Yum, yum.  I would be even more happy about it if this blinking computer would stop reverting to size zero font that I have to squint for, but we can't have everything, can we now? Last night my husband and I went to a Natural Family Planning refresher course -- NFP, some elements of which are used by any couple trying to conceive and which is recognized by the World Health Organization as being a 95% effective method of birth regulation, is a method of coupleship-intensive fertility awareness, but also a distinctly counter-cultural lifestyle choice, as the couple, not the woman alone, are in charge of charting and interpreting the signs of fertility together, and the man -- novel thought indeed in today's culture -- has to -- oh, my God, the libido is being squashed, what are we going to do -- actually channel certain energies into something other than the instant gratification always available when his wife is "uh, on the pill, I think." Of course women just absolutely love taking the pill, it's so romantic and all, but I personally find it a little nicer to know that my husband has equal responsibility for birth control with me. Thus far, my shoutout for the awesomeness of NFP. For further information visit the Couple to Couple League at  www.ccli.org.

And no, IT'S NOT RHYTHM. RHYTHM IS UTTERLY ARCHAIC AND HASN'T BEEN USED SINCE THE FIFTIES! GET WITH IT!

Okay! Anyway, it was really nice to meet another NFP couple. Also enjoyed Mass this morning. Just feelin' the love, like a good West Coast granola bar . . . .

Secret Life of Opera Singers rehearsal in Lyme Rock tomorrow! Have toddler! Have baby! Have babysitter! Will travel!

If of thy worldly goods thou art bereft
And from thy slender store
Two loaves alone to thee are left,
Sell one, and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed the soul.

Persian poet C. 1300

Somebody give me an Amen!

What a week! Rehearsals for Secret Life of Opera Singers in Lime Rock on the 25th, planning a salon concert to benefit my younger brother who is fundraising for his first solo album (google "kickstarter Oliver Franklin" to learn more!), tea party for two homeschoolers of acquaintance, romantic dinner for spouse, nurturing of artisic inner child, raising two boys, some semblance of prayer life, and a partridge in a pear tree. I want my mommy.

In solidarity with the breast cancer awareness currently receiving much press, we at Gargoyles offer the following beautiful reflection on St. Agatha, reprinted in full from The Bad Catholic's Guide to Good Living. Her feastday is coming up on February 5th.

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Agatha: A Feast of Breasts

The Christian faith could fairly be described as a theological system for recycling the worst things in life and turning them into the best.  It calls the day when Christ was sacrificed "Good" Friday. The gruesome deaths of persecuted Christians are dubbed their "feast" days. It's in this spirit that medieval Christians began to mark the Feast of St. Agatha, a noble third-century girl from Palermo or Catania whose legend became very popular in that region and spread through Europe.

This beloved Roman martyr could be called the patroness of breast-reduction surgery. Before the Christian notion of marriage as a free sacrament won over the Roman world, the father of a family had the absolute right to marry his  young daughters to anyone he chose. Many early martyrs were women who refused an arranged marriage.  To keep a private vow of virginity, the spunky Agatha spurned a proposal made by a senator, Quintianus.  Roman oligarchs were not used to hearing "No," particularly from young women, so Quintianus pulled some strings and had Agatha arrested for being a Christian -- still then punishable by death.  Agatha was tortured horribly; Roman soldiers cut off her breasts and left her to die. It's said that no less a personage than St. Peter, the very first pope, appeared to the suffering girl with her breasts on a platter and miraculously restored them to her so she could die intact.

To celebrate this wonder -- and let's face it, to satisfy some pretty obscure psychological urges -- medieval artists began to depict St. Agatha standing with her breasts on a plate. (They look like little bells.) To mark her feast day, Christians throughout Europe solemnly blessed church bells, and bakers in Sicely began to make pert little desserts called Minni di virgini, or "virgin's nipples", which a husband can prepare as a special treat for his spouse, honoring the saint, his wife, and two of her most delightful assets.

Husbands, this is a nice day to get your wife a particularly glamorous brassiere at your local lingerie shop.  Don't buy something trashy that you would like but rather something elegant that you know would appeal to her. To make this even more special, you really ought to get the bra blessed.  Swing by your local rectory and ask to see the pastor.  Remind him that this is St. Agatha's day.  Ask him to bless the brasserie with holy water.  It's worth it just to see the look on his face.

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I have been looking forward to Candlemas in anticipation of blogging from one of my favorite books; The Bad Catholic's Guide to Good Living, by John Zmirak and Denise Matychowiak. Hope you enjoy!


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The Purification of Mary and Presentation of Jesus: Holy Groundhogs!


On this feast day the Church has traditionally blessed candles-- made of pure wax from virgin bees -- and distributed them to the congregation to mark the entry of Christ, light of the world, into His Father's temple. From this custom, the day took the name Candlemas.  Set on the fortieth day after Christmas, this feast marks the day when Mary and Joseph took Jesus to Jerusalem in obedience to the law.  As a new mother, Mary came to the Temple herself for ritual "purification"; since the birth of a child, like menstruation, involves the spilling of human blood, each rendered a woman temporarily ineligible for worship at the Temple.  Of course, as smart-aleck kids in catechism class have been pointing out since the first century, Mary herself was free of sin and perfectly pure.  To this, the Church replies that Mary, like Christ, made herself obedient to the law -- citing Mary's own words in one of the apocryphal gospels, "Who am I that I should make trouble . . . ?" (1)

The day also marks the Presentation of Christ. Since every child born carries the legacy of Adam and Eve's rebellion, each son or daughter had to be presented to God and then "ransomed" back with a lamb or some birds, which were sacrificed in the Temple.  As each Jewish mother took back her daughter or son from the priests, she offered prayers for his or her health, fertility, and acceptance into medical school.

Church fathers have pointed out that the child Jesus carried no taint of sin and did not really need to be redeemed back.  Jesus would go on to become the sacrificial Lamb, the ransom paid to God for all the sins of men; so the Presentation of Christ in the Temple serves as a little prefigurement of Calvary.  This makes it a fitting time to finally take down all those Christmas decorations.

Because it marks one of the transitional moments in the calendar, the weather on this feast of lights was chosen to forecast the coming of spring. As the old poem goes:

If Candlemas be fair and bright
Winter has another flight.
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain
Winter will not come again.

German immigrants who came to America in the eighteenth century recalled this ancient tradition but felt uncomfortable with its Catholic associations. So in good Protestant fashion they replaced Our Lady with a groundhog.  That's why Americans think of the Feast of the Purification of Mary and the Presentation of Christ as the day on which Bill Murray romances Andie MacDowell, over and over again, under the benevolent patronage of Punxatawney Phil.


(1) Okay, not really.

Shoutout to awesome colleagues Christine Gevert (harpsichordist) Rodrigo Tarraza (traverso) and Anne Voglewede Green (pianist)!  Thanks to their collegiality we at Gargoyles  have enough music and engagements to keep us out of trouble and off the ledge for the first half of the year (when we cannot perform, we get testy and hard to live with. Ask our husband, although he is much too chivalrous to own it.) This year will find your humble correspondent in rehearsal for the following:

The Secret Life of Opera Singers, presented by Crescendo Berkshires in Lakeville, CT -- February 25th. For more information please visit www.crescendoberkshires.org, or follow Crescendo Berkshires on Facebook.

Lovers' Quarrels from Italy to France, Washington Early Music Festival, Washington, D.C. -- June 9th, and Music Mountain in Falls Village, CT-- June 23rd.

Okay, okay, let's drop the royal we now, shall we? Sorry, we just can't help ourselves. It's a crisp January day and I've been keeping the home fires burning (literally -- we have a woodstove the constant stoking of which diminishes the heating bill considerably), gloating over a recently-crafted vignette added to Secret Life of Opera Singers, and playing the piano with my son. ("Mama play piano? James play piano?") It just makes your heart melt.  I feel just horrible, of course, that he isn't getting as much television as most kids his age, but I'm sure he'll forgive me one day.

Just looked up the Saint of the Day and he is one Fabian, about whom little is known except for his, er, remarkable ascendancy to the papacy. He was, when he journeyed to Rome in the year 236 for the election of the new pope, not considered by the College of Cardinals to be a real front-runner for the papacy. For the excellent reason that he was neither a member of the College of Cardinals, an archbishop, a bishop, or a priest. He was a layman and, in point of fact, a farmer.

So of course, the Holy Spirit, known the world over for His mischevious sense of humour, descended upon the head of this anonymous pilgrim in the form of a dove, which caused some attention, and he was declared Pope. Presumably he was ordained first. Perhaps there was a local seminary with an express line. Sheesh. And we thought people were surprised at the election of Pope John Paul II, whom no one was expecting -- I mean, he was POLISH!! What are you, KIDDING?? It is said that one American journalist grinned at the time, "well, maybe there's something to this Holy Spirit business."

Maybe there is, come to think of it.

Hi everyone! Happy Feast of St. Berard! Remember, you too are called to be a saint even if your glorious martyrdom isn't going to involve being personally beheaded by the sultan. Talk about going out with a bang. I'm not even going to go into my family-of-origin's personal repertoire of horrible French Revolution puns, Although they are pretty cutting-edge. Sorry.

I hope, gentle reader, that the blessings of the Christchild linger in your heart and that the new year is beginning auspiciously. We at Gargoyles received a book for Christmas that is proving an unmitigated blessing -- The Artist's Way: a Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, by Julia Cameron.  It is absolutely excellent. It has a tremendous amount of practical wisdom about breaking down your interior barriers and reaching for the unique emotional and spiritual freedom required for the production of any kind of art. As a Christian I think that Ms. Cameron sells herself -- and the reader -- short spiritually by dismissing a priori as irrelevant any questions about Who God is, beyond being The Great Creator who wants you to create as well. Couldn't agree more that God is the great creator and that creativity is one of His manifold gifts to me. But if someone gives you a gift you generally want to know who your benefactor is. I mean, if anonymous envelopes with hundred dollar bills appeared on your doorstep every morning any sane person would want to know who was putting them there. Why would it be any different with the ultimate Giver and the ultimate Gift? So that's a shortcoming, to my mind, but the book is just excellent and I somehow feel lighter reading it . . . as though huge pieces of mortar are falling off in chunks. Ms. Cameron speaks of "blocked artists" in "recovery", which is neither overdramatic nor exaggerated. There is an absolute war waged on us creative types here below, both in our Puritanical, iconoclastic, Phillistine, money-worshipping society and, most ultimately, from slightly lower down below; Satan hates creativity and hates art and hates beauty, because creativity and art and beauty are the footprints of the Father and we certainly can't have that! Anyway, I am benefitting enormously from Ms. Cameron's wisdom (hard-won, I believe) and working slowly through the book in small, bite-sized chunks every few days. I find that I am exponentially more engaged in everything I do; playing with my children, taking a few minutes to play through a song on the piano, reading something I love at the end of the day, rehearsing.

Speaking of the latter, I'm supposed to be doing that tomorrow morning in Hartford -- if the roads don't ice over!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA nighty-night, everyone! May the rubber duckies in your dreams always stay afloat and, as the Irish say, may you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead.

It just felt right, somehow, to be at Vigil Mass last night. The world blares, "didn't get all you wanted for Christmas? Stop in and check out our amazing New Year's savings! Well, the holidays are over! Back to the grind! What New Years' Resolutions did you set? How about more time on the treadmill?" The Church points silently to the creche to which three figures are added, and here is all aright. Just rest in it. You know?

Merry Christmas, everybody!! Remember, it's NOT OVER!!!!!!!!!!! I know everyone says it is. Swim against the tide, people . . . it lasts for TWELVE DAYS!! The Wise Men are still shuffling their feet, represented in our particular flawed attempt at Domestic Church by three gorgeous olivewood figures inching their way across the top of the piano. The Wise Men of this and all generations do tend to shuffle their feet, it is said.

Someone must have misheard my third-day-of-Christmas order as I received not three French hens but three sick men. My nearest and dearest sniffle and honk while I stave the thing off with citrus in large quantities. Even my cast-iron innards became aware of it when I consumed an entire Newman's Own carton of lemonade within a space of twenty-four hours, heh!

My pianist colleague and I are getting back to Secret Life of Opera Singers rehearsals this weekend . . . can't wait . . . and I've been crafting new material for that, which is both great fun and somewhat emotionally turbulent as most of the new material involves   turning extremely painful stories about the roots of my psychotic fear of failure into humorous vignettes with set-up, act-out and punchline. I swear, it's emotionally almost easier to sing The Life of Christ in Song . . . emotional in a different way. Anyway, it's all part of the work of redemption. Is that why I'm stalling? Sans doute. Joy to the world, dammit!

I'm terribly nervous. I have been engaged to sing and play the organ at our parish for Christmas Eve and the fact that anyone would engage me to play the organ is a distressing indicator of how low musical standards are in the United States of America. Singing I can do with confidence, but the organ has all these PEDALS . . . I mean, what is that ABOUT???

I'm singing Minuit Chritiens, more commonly known to American audiences as Oh Holy Night. My mother always used to sing it in French on Christmas Eve when I was a little girl, eternally instilling in me an utter snobbery for the English version. For one thing, she had (and has) a gorgeous voice and sings it beautifully; for another, it's so French. It's gorgeous either way, of course; I mean, there's a REASON people love Oh Holy Night, but after you've heard it in French, it's really hard to go back.  Anyway, wish me luck! Ad majoram dei gloriam and all that sorta thing, ya know . . .

Amen and Halleluiah, I've found something cool on the Catholic blogosphere, a thing I try to studiously and religiously avoid! Yesterday I received my copy of the sacramentally-inspired literary periodical Dappled Things and read a really great feature, "Coming Awake in Love": A Discussion on the Struggle for Holiness and the Writing of Shirt of Flame: My Year With St. Therese of Lisieux by Heather King.

Ms. King, a self-described ex-barfly, sober alcoholic and convert to Catholicism, is an exceptional writer and won my heart by citing a quote from Therese's superior:

"A mystic, a comic, she is everything. She can make you weep with devotion and just as easily faint with laughing during recreation."

Made my day. I love St. Therese of Lisieux and have read her biography Story of a Soul but haven't read extensively about her life from other sources and just think it's marvelous that one of the most universally-beloved Doctors of the Church was a hoot. Makes me kind of feel not quite so weird about having two one-woman shows, for one of which I research the music of Bach and for the other, The Comedy Bible. Speaking of which,
The Secret Life of Opera Singers, my comedic behind-the-scenes one-woman show about the life of a singer, hits the boards again in February in Western CT; I'll keep you posted on details.

Anyway, check out www.shirtofflame.blogspot.com. It's a great read!

Happy Advent, everyone! Are your presents all wrapped? Me neither.

This morning I met another mother in the children's section at the local library.  Within the first three minutes of our conversation we had established that she was from Long Island, that I was an opera singer, that she was a Microsoft software engineer, and that my husband designed the Boeing 787. Vanity, thy name is woman. I was wondering exactly why I leaped quite so, er, wholeheartedly into such an utterly trite contest of one-upsmanship and was both amused and chagrined to realize that if I were perfectly honest with myself it was because, at the bottom of my soul where earthiness lurks, I was intensely aware that she was wearing cuter shoes.

Oh, well! Tomorrow is another day!

The following, from the "That's The Way to Go If You've Gotta Go" Department, I read in Contra Mundum, the journal of the Congregation of St. Athanasius (http:www.locutor.net).

Edmund Campion, the brilliant Oxford scholar, orator, Anglican deacon, convert -- "one of England's diamonds" -- was done to death in London on 1 December 1581 at the age of about forty.  His tempestuous career as one of the first two Jesuit priests in England had lasted but fourteen months; then came betrayal, the rack in the Tower, the Tyburn gallows. He was brought out from his cell, in an old frieze gown, in the splash and mud of a wet morning. Cheerfully he saluted the crowd of spectators: "God save you all, gentlemen! God bless you and make you all good Catholics!" After kneeling in prayer, he was strapped on the hurdle, his companions Sherwin and Briant being together bound on a second hurdle. They were dragged at the horses' tails through the gutter and filth, followed by a jeering rabble, sobered somewhat to see how gladly these men died. Some Catholics present were consoled by a word from him, and one gentleman wiped his face all spattered with mire and filth. Passing under the arch of Newgate, whereon still stood an image of Our Lady, Campion raised himself and saluted her whom he hoped so soon to see.  At the gallows he began with a sweet firm voice, "Spectaculum facti sumus Deo angelis et hominibus" ("We are made a spectacle to the world and to angels and to men" -- 1 Corinthians), but the sheriffs interrupted him, and urged him to confess his treason. He maintained his innocence, declined to join in prayer with the ministers, and asked all Catholics to say the creed on his behalf.  His last audible words were for "Elizabeth, your queen and my queen, unto whom I wish a long reign with all prosperity."

Oh, God. With a final prayer for Elizabeth, too. That's just all class.

Utterly unnoticed by the world, as Father Visitor pointed out in his homily at our parish yesterday, is the figure of John the Baptist, whose exhortation, read at yesterday's Sunday Mass, to make the rough places plain, the crooked straight, and generally Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord, would indeed seem incompatible with the relentless Happy Holidays-ing, elves and tinsel of what some  call The American Christmas Machine.

Me, I like it. Not the materialism (I drew the line at a recent circular from Toys R Us proclaiming "Toys to the World!") or the superficiality (as Father pointed out as well, if you "plug in" the joy, eventually you have to unplug it). I like the beauty of it. I like the glittering Christmas trees at the mall and Starbucks ("our coffee is lousy but our chairs are comfortable") and as a firm adherent to the Via Pulchritudnis (The Way of Beauty) I consider it my Christian duty to enjoy them to their fullest even if I know that retail's adoption of holiday trappings and products are a considered effort to boost end-of-year sales tallies. So what? That's not my problem. I read once, "Jesus may be the one stringing the lights and hanging the mistletoe, if only we have eyes to see and ears to hear." A good friend of mine, not of the Faith, told me recently that she just absolutely loves Christmas lights, that they always make her feel happy. Why should she enjoy them more than I do?

We Christians know that ultimate beauty, like truth, like salvation, isn't cheap, and the exhortation of John the Baptist remains. I am not so good at big things. Grand and lofty resolutions to ammend my life, focus on Christ, and become an icon of joy and hope for all around me tend to crumble in the face of the annoyances of life. I know myself too well to expect a huge interior transformation by the time we really get to sing Joy to the World (which, for Catholics, isn't until Christmas Eve.) But a small thing every day for Advent, that perhaps I could do.

My husband once asked me, when we were engaged and I had asked him if there was anything he'd particularly like me to do for him after we were married, if I would make hot chocolate for him every night. Human nature being what it is, I regret to say that I wondered at the smallness of the request and, once married, promptly forgot all about it. Yeah, it was a small request, a small thing. Kind of like going to Mass every Sunday. All the same, I think I can do it today. "Just for today", St. Therese of Lisieux said, as does every twelve-step meeting in the world. There's a Godiva kiosk at the Mall, right next to the Christmas tree. Both exhort me to prepare the way of the Lord.

It's nice to be scribbling again!! Still on vocal rest after the cesarean (minus the Confirmation Mass the other day) for a few more weeks but am getting back into the swing of things and planning out next year. I want to develop a program to play and sing at Project Rachel retreats -- "Songs of Healing and Hope", you know, that kind of thing -- Project Rachel is a really wonderful post-abortion healing ministry. I couldn't do it this year, for obvious reasons, but now I feel I'm getting closer to the call to plunge in. How I could possibly get through such a program without crying I cannot imagine, but as I have often said to the Lord with varying degrees of tartness, none of this was MY idea. Overly pious I am not, heh! Anyway, more immediately I'm working -- with the assistance of James and Dominic, who have no choice but to listen to me talk through vignettes as we play tractors, change diapers and plough through the copious piles of laundry everywhere visible -- on the newly-revised script for The Secret Life of Opera singers, my behind-the-scenes cabaret act about one musician's encounter with the great art form, which new colleague Anne Voglewede Green and I will perform for a black-tie music fundraiser in Western Connecticut in late February. This has absolutely nothing to do with Life of Christ in Song, but it sure is a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to doing it again . . . and if I can spread a little merriment along the way so much the better. Along with incorporating some new material I'm going through the script with a scalpel, mercilessly cutting out extraneous verbiage, and think it should be pretty tight.

Oh yes, I promised Cecilia Bartoli a few posts ago! Also Cole Porter! OK, here's the Cecilia Bartoli. This computer won't cut and paste, but if you want to rediscover joy in life type in "Cecilia Bartoli Mozart Alleluia" on YouTube. OH, MY GOD, THAT'S the way to present a song, ladies and gentlemen!! THAT's called taking joy in the music. That's what it's ABOUT.

Living as I do in rural New England which (unlike Seattle, Washington, land of upbringing) is festooned with small cemeteries, I've felt rather closer to the Communion of Saints than hitherto; I'm reminded of it at every other road bend.  There's this one graveyard near our house and every time I pass it I always think of Mary Wheeler and her little boy, both of whose tombstones are there . . . may they rest in peace. I wonder where they lived exactly.  I wonder why I think of them and why another name doesn't stick in my mind. I wonder how her husband dealt with her early death. Perhaps this is odd. But why shouldn't I be just as interested in Mary Wheeler as I am in a friend who is, in the corporeal and earthly sense, still kicking? She's no less real to God than I. Humbling. We think of the dead at some level, I think, as being less than we are, shadows of their former selves, peaceful in a sleepy sort of way . . . but among the mysteries of eternity is that we shall finally be ourselves. Finally be fully awake. Finally be real.

In domestic news, I am exceedingly bummed this evening from having missed an opportunity to be the Alto soloist in a performance of Messiah this weekend and am attempting to console myself with the reflection that at the local Confirmation Mass for which I sang and -- Lord help us -- played the organ this evening, I came as close as I think it is metaphysically possible for me to get to actually liking Here I Am, Lord.

 

All hail, friendly blogosphere; we're back! The past month we at Gargoyles have been focusing our energies on the last month's fetal development of Dominic Sebastian Bogue, who made his debut last Tuesday the 18th of October, nine pounds, two ounces, and cuter than cute according to objective report. James Franklin Bogue, aged two, is somewhat skeptical of this development, but things seem to be headed in the right direction, and mommy and oldest son made great strides towards reestablishing familial harmony through the former's reading of fifteen T.S. Elliott cat poems in a row to the latter when the latter was trapped in his crib after a nap and consequently physically unable to run away screaming. 

Coming up: Communion of Saints, Cecilia Bartoli, Cole Porter. Stay tuned!

Good grief, I am awful. I just re-read my last post about cantorial gestures, and I really, really wasn't trying to be horrible or make fun of anyone; truth to tell, I find much about contemporary liturgy to be very distracting  and non-beautiful and the only way I can get through it without getting mad is by trying to turn it into something humorous in my own mind. Anyway, sorry to inflict my self-sedation on the blogosphere; most unspiritual of me. There, now let's talk about something constructive.

I am without success attempting to cut and paste Pope B16's remarkable recent address "On Beauty as a Way to God", given at the Castel Gandolfo in Italy in August . . . it is not possible, evidently, to paste into this window, but please, please give it a read by doing a search for On Beauty as a Way to God at www.zenit.org. It is just beautiful and utterly counter-cultural. We American Catholics are too often influenced by the iconoclasm and utilitarianism of our own waspy culture, I would submit, and the result is an extremely unfortunate and pervasive view of beauty -- in art, in music, in liturgy -- as at best a nice little add-on aesthetic perk, but not one that ought to be too indulged in, lest we lost sight of what is Really Important. But Benedict XVI, one of the greatest theologians and scholars of our time, appears to think otherwise.  Do check it out. We at Gargoyles must run; Pax Christi, everyone! The sons of the crusaders will never submit before the sons of Voltaire!

James and I got our pipe organ fix this morning at the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Hartford, where I also learned a new Post-Conciliar Cantorial Gesture to add to my repertoire. I have hitherto lumped most Post-Conciliar Cantorial Gestures -- by which I mean the unique gyrations with which contemporary cantors in Roman Catholic churches attempt to convey to the assembled faithful that It's Time For You To Sing Now -- into one of three categories: The H'ors d'oeuvre Platter (elbow bent, forearm pointed heavenward, with palm flat, roughly at cantor's eye level,  and facing the sky exactly as though it bore aloft a platter of h'ors d'oeuvres) the Welcome to Camp Ticonderoga (one arm flung straight up into the air, elbow about ten inches from cantor's eye), and the Junior High School Choir Conductor (the key here is the imploring look in the eye, although the symmetrically raised hands sawing the air in quick upward-and-downward motions are also an important component). But this morning I learned one previously unknown to me, which deserves a category of its own and which I think I shall call Rising Dough: palms flat down and arms extended not quite straight enough to look zombie-like; the key to this is the gradual rising motion from the cantor's waist to above his or her head during the congregation's part of the responsorial psalm. It was really something.

I was so sorry to not have been able to attend the funeral mass of Dr. Warren Carroll, a great man, convert to the faith, noted Catholic historian and the founder and first president of my beloved alma mater, Christendom College.  Etermal rest grant unto him, oh Lord; let light perpetual shine upon him.

My twenty-two-month-old son has a predeliction for sauces.  He said the word for the first time the other day but we have been observing this marked preference for some months. Unadulterated food is unacceptable to his sophisticated palate and dipping of any sort -- the chip in the guacamole, the apple in the peanut butter -- absorbs all his faculties of concentration and finesse. In lieu of dipping, drizzled sauce is acceptable -- A1, barbecue, hoisin, soy, available in large quantities and available immediately, thank you very much.  Perhaps he shall in later life be attracted to French cookery, one could do worse . . . my maiden name, Franklin, is as Saxon as it gets but I cheerfully admit that no one in his right mind makes a study of post-Reformation English cuisine, for as the Catholic French observe, "the English have a hundred religions and one sauce."

You know, living among nutmeggers definitely gives one a different perspective on the parables. Today is the day of the Parable of the Sower and the Seed, which I have usually listened to with -- I imagaine -- the usual reaction of going right to the spiritual metaphor, which is quite brilliant, the seed being the word of God, which can fall on rocky ground (the person who isn't really interested and in which therefore it doesn't take root), sandy ground (ditto, the seed just flies away as there's really nowhere in the person's consciousness for it to take root) good soil but be choked by weeds (the usual crap of life becoming larger in one's consciousness than God, can't relate to that at all, myself), and the good soil in which the seed doth flourish and grow and putteth forth its fruit in due season, we all want to be that person, now don't we? I imagaine we all have a little of all four types of ground in all of us. It's a brilliant and extremely beautiful metaphor. So far, so good. But this morning, all I could think was, "what sort of dumb-acid farmer would DELIBERATELY sow his seed concurrently upon rocky ground, sandy ground, and not bother to weed?" I am a city-bred gal and farm not, neither do I garden. My mother-in-law does, professionally, and has supported herself by it for many, many years, and I am trying to envision a world in which Carol Bogue didn't weed. Or deliberately wasted precious seed by strowing in upon the pathway!!  So God likens Himself in this parable to a farmer with an apparently bottomless seed bag and very, very impractical ideas about crop management. Man's complaints to God are, I would submit, generally some variation of "THIS IS NO WAY TO RUN A FARM!"

And yet I think of our tomatoes. Most people plant six or seven tomato plants. My husband generally plants around twenty-seven on the theory that we have plenty of room and plenty of plants and some of them won't make it so if we planted lots and lots and lots -- prodigally, shall we say? -- we'd get lots and lots. Last year we had acres of tomatoes. Like Catholicism, which is one of the world's most popular religions and boasts ten thousand shmucks for every saint. Will everyone who receives the grace of baptism exude the glory of God as man fully alive, or will most of us just sort of show up once in a while and slouch towards Bethlehem if we're not deliberately headed in the opposite direction? Probably the second, and yet the Church continues to baptize. Because He said so. And our hope is not of this world, we just have to be faithful, and grace can manifest itself in the most unexpected places, the most rocky ground, you know? Maybe the prodigality of the Father isn't such a bad way to run a farm after all.

Ten p.m. and the world is mine. I feel like a mint. Just rocked the house today with Les Inegales, virtuosic baroque ensemble I've been babbling about lately on Gargoyles and elsewhere, in a concert in the Berkshires. I was as usual so nervous I was hyperventilating and felt slightly ill and the moment my foot touched the stage to go on to the end of the concert I was in heaven (hopefully the audience was not in hell, ha ha!) The best part of it is that my husband and son were there, the latter of whom, who had been thoroughly "run out" on the playground down the street during the first half, snoozed through all twelve minutes of the grand finale, Handel's virtuosic cantata Mi Palpita Il Cor. No one can say he wasn't well-behaved!

Days like this really make umpteen years of grueling voice lessons, frustrations over the expletive deleted higher registers which it took me more years than I can even admit to even ACCESS, let alone ENJOY, and the very long and agonizing process of correcting (though I say it) every vocal technical mistake that it is possible for a human voice to make, chronic terror in the practice room and studio, and more tears than I can count over more failed auditions than I could ever care to recall all at once, worth it. I mean, I can sing great music. Perform it. Communicate it to an audience and invite them into something beautiful. For this was I born; Deo gratias.

Too wound up to sleep, so I am going to prop my feet up and, unapologetically and uncharacteristically, indulge in passive viewing.

Happy Fourth of July weekend, everyone . . . God bless America!

Thank you so very, very much to all who prayed for the swift healing of my back after a minor injury last week!! Be it accounted unto ye for righteousness! Feeling much better just in time for a "Virtuosic Baroque" concert with Les Inegales at the Berkshire Visual and Performing Arts Center in Lee, Massachussetts on the third of July. If you're in the Berkshires area, we hope you can  join harpsichordist Christine Gevert, traverso Rodrigo Tarazza, viola di gambist Anna Legene, recorder Tricia Van Oers and myself for a delightful evening of virtuosic baroque jamming! For further information about the concert please visit www.gobaroque.org. It's an honor for me to be singing with Les Inegales -- amazing ensemble, and gorgeous music. You shouldn't miss it!

I had an amusing practice session yesterday. My son was napping and my husband, who works from home, was in his office -- my practicing, while hopefully generally pretty, is somewhat loud and he doesn't mind it but I just can't bear the thought of potentially alienating teleconferencing clients with my Handelian wails, so I went out to the back barn, perched on the John Deere insofar as a five-months-pregnant lady can perch, and sang Dolce Pur to the woodpile. 

Well, back in "Ordinary Time", but we went out with a bang on Trinity Sunday! When I was a kid I found the concept of the Trinity to be somewhat dry, the feast  anticlimactic after Easter, and just didn't think about it much. I loved the part in the hymns where we'd end with something like "praise Him, all ye heavenly host, Father, Son and Holy Ghost", because it was a nice note of finality, but as someone said that "the Holy Spirit usually ranks last in the psychology of the believer", the Trinity was definitely last in my psychology. I imagine that's true for most Christians. To quote a witty and astute Anglican cleric, "It's an incomprehensible mystery. The Father's incomprehensible, the Son's incomprehensible, the whole damn thing's incomprehensible."

Very true!

And yet.

Why on earth would the Trinity be important? Three Persons in one God, I mean, what does that matter on Monday morning when the plumbing is leaking, or, come to think of it, when a hypothetical Catholic blogger is in bed for the second day with a stupid sprained back a week before an important concert? Why does it matter at ALL?

It's one of those things that is easily dismissed by the world as "all that doctrine" that some people get too picky about and hung up over when all that really matters in Christianity is being nice to each other and focusing on social justice issues. In the face of all of the suffering in the world, I can understand such a reaction, and yet -- sheesh, if we were friends, had been friends for a long time, had a real relationship, and one day I were to say to you, "what was your name again?" you would probably get upset with me for forgetting your name, and it wouldn't make you feel better if I were to say, "what does it matter what your name is as long as you're my friend and you're a nice person?" Why should it be different with God? If, as Christianity asserts, He has indeed told us His name through Revelation . . . let us into the secret of His name, so to speak . . . how can we pretend that it doesn't matter? Your name matters. Mine matters. And God's name does too.

I think too that as weird as it is, it makes sense that there should be some sort of distinction between three Persons dwelling together in eternal love. If there weren't some sort of distinction.  . . well, we teach in Christianity that "God is love", but who is there for Him to love? If there isn't some distinction within God of Persons that love each other, then He would need creation in order to have something to love. So creation would have to be eternal. Which it isn't. You know?

 The Trinity is stamped into the created order and into human consciousness. It whispers to us all the time, because there is just something about three that is RIGHT. The "divine madness called laughter", as Chesterton calls it, that gift which most sets us apart from the animals and points to our Sonship . . . reason sets us apart from the animals, too, of course, but the misuse of reason can get us into a lot more trouble than laughter can, I would submit . . . comes the hardest at the third variation of the joke. It's the first rule of comedy. Interesting, n'est-ce pas? Yeah, I think so too.

Two major projects this summer! On July 3rd, I sing Handel cantatas with the baroque ensemble Les Inegales (Christine Gevert, harpsichord, Rodrigo Tarazza, traverso, Anna Legene, viola di gamba) in Lee, a small town in the Berkshires -- more details soon!

Just confirmed details for a recording project here in Hartford in August; I'm very excited to be recording an art song series based on the poetry of Gerard Manly Hopkins (convert to the Faith and past master of the English tongue) written by my aforementioned friend Dr. Kurt Poterack on the occasion of the 30th Anniversary of Christendom College, my most esteemed alma mater, in 2007. There was a live recording done at the concert but Kurt would like to do a studio recording of the pieces now, so I get to sing them again, which will be a real pleasure. Kurt will own the recording so I don't know if it will be available to the public or not, but will keep you informed!

If you will excuse me, my son has played with everything in the kitchen and is currently making choo-choo trains out of my newly-acquired posse of sterlite boxes; clearly, storytime is called for. Ciao!

We're home! I'd planned to blog on the road with witty updates on our zany adventures but a nine hundred mile roadtrip five months pregnant with a toddler in hundred degree heat is conducive to naught but sleep in one's down times, of which you don't get none. But we had a lovely time discussing the Good, the True and the Beautiful with our colleagues of great sacramentality and artsiness in venues as diverse as the Carlyle in Shirlington (James approved of the pork tenderloin), Pat Troy's Irish pub in Old Town Alexandria (James enjoyed watching rugby on large screen) and La Madeline in Alexandria (James was indifferent to the quiche).

In Life of Christ in Song news, we are very excited to be expanding the oratorio-based program with two new art song cycles; one on the Luminous Mysteries in the works by composer and friend Mark Nowakowski, and -- this just in -- one on the Glorious Mysteries by composer and friend Dr. Kurt Poterack, Music Director of Christendom College. Both of these gentlemen are truly amazing composers. I get to pick the texts for the latter and am starting research this week so if you know any cool Resurrection poems just send 'em my way!

More news as well, but if you will excuse me, my nesting hormones are kicking in and I am going to take another and much shorter road trip before the heat of the day to a local discount store to obtain Sterlite in large quantities. Stay tuned!

Got my pipe organ fix last Sunday at the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Hartford . . . glorious!!! It put my soul in tune, somehow.

Next week Master James and I are taking a road trip to Virginia seek new climes and visit friends and colleagues -- I am in the fortunate position of having every colleague I shall see on this trip being a friend as well. I hope to see my agent, my two wonderful composer friends who are partners in crime expanding the musical program of Life of Christ in Song, and several other friends of artistic and spiritual awesomeness. Woo hoo! Can't wait to fly the coop . . . I was born under a wandering star and my idea of prenatal nesting is taking my unborn child to a new state to absorb the culture through the intrauterine wall. Besides, this is probably the last trip I'll take with one carseat! Soon we shall be four! 

I'll be staying with a musical friend of mine from a very long time ago, from Seattle Girls' Choir days, in fact . . .  watching a friend dance a ballroom dance competition, and I hope on Sunday to be able to worship with the Anglican Use congregation in Arlington (ah, my people).  So excited!

I recently read an excellent article on the issue of women's ordination to the priesthood on the website chantcafe, written by a priest with whom I went to college. It set me thinking.

There can be no doubt that the Church's exclusion of women from candidacy to Holy Orders galls the contemporary mind. In this era of celebration of, and genuine respect for, groundbreaking feminine accomplishment in every conceivable field, in which women are cheered on, from the cradle, to be anything they want to be and pursue anything they want to pursue, and in which Equality of Opportunity as a value is irretrievably emmeshed with our cultural concept of Personal Dignity and Worth,  the prohibition looks ridiculous, the last intrenchant corporate glass ceiling -- and worse, a SPIRITUAL glass ceiling; how awful can you get? The Church must not like women, our culture sometimes concludes. The Church wants to Keep Women In Their Place. The Church is unprogressive in matters of gender equality.

Totally understandable conclusions. And yet I think there's more to be said.

I've personally struggled with this issue for years, and it's a good fight, because it's rooted in the mystery of sexuality. Anyone who thinks sexuality is not a mystery has clearly never had a conversation with anyone of the opposite sex. (How could you possibly have interpreted me that way? How could there possibly have been any other interpretation? How can you possibly focus on macroissues when clearly microissues are the ones at stake, and what hidden clause is there in the sacramental marriage bond that would entitle one party to unrestricted and casual use of the other party's razor?)

So let's start off with the relationship between men and women being an unsolvable but eternally intriguing mystery, OK?

But it's a damaged mystery. The relationship between men and women, somewhere along the line, has gone terribly wrong. Men abuse, abandon and betray women, and women undermine and belittle men and trash their fragile little egos. We don't GET IT about the other, and worse yet, we often don't CARE.

It's the real understanding of Christianity, Catholic and Protestant, that Jesus Christ came to make all things right. Really. Not just to die on the Cross for expiation of our sin (although, you know, thanks)  but to redeem what is broken about human nature and about every single human relationship that has ever existed in the history of time. Every single one. Everything. Really. That's why it's important that He's God, because only God is big enough to do that. Jesus being God isn't just some fusty old dogma that Christians get all hung up on. It matters. That's why.  That's also why every single little thing that Jesus did, as recorded in the Scriptures, is important.  And I think the differences in the way He spoke to men and to women are incredibly significant and are the only way to really get anywhere on this issue.

As I read the Scriptures, Jesus never at any point opens a conversation with a woman by giving her a direct order. Ever noticed that? There's a respect there, a distance, a chivalry that has His attentiveness to their freedom at its core. He tends to open His conversations with women with questions about them and their immediate situation, or requests that invite them into relationship. To the Samaritan woman at the well, can you give me a drink? To the woman who touches his robe, who touched me? To the woman caught in adultery, who has condemned you? And to the woman who pours pure nard over his feet and wipes them with her hair, an incredibly beautiful feminine act of offering her beauty to His service, not a word personally, He just proclaims to the Apostles, who (like so many) Don't Get It, "she hath annointed my body for the burial . . ." in German, the translation is much more profound than the usual "she did what she could" -- I mean, that sounds so namby-pamby, don't you think so? In German, it's "she hath done a Good Work." I bet she straightened up under the praise, looked up at Him and saw that He loved what she had to give. He loves our beauty; He sets us free.

And to men, how does He open the conversation? Follow me. Follow me. Follow me. Follow me. Follow me. Follow me. Twelve times. Exactly the same words. He opens the relationship by giving them an order. That's why being ordained to the priesthood is called Taking Orders.

Jesus doesn't give women orders, because the best men know that you don't give a woman orders. That's why the Church doesn't give women Orders. 

It is a beautiful, clear, sunny day but I am having faith issues. Thrice I have implored, as Paulinely as in me lies, for the Lord to vouchsafe to remove the current thorn in my flesh; namely, the fact that strive as I may I cannot get "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar out of my head.(For appalled Andrew Lloyd Webber fans, I apologize for offending your sensibilities. Any chords other than G, C and F are indeed superfluous. Andrew Lloyd Webber is the composer of the century and a paragon of massive studliness, but the fact remains that I cannot stand "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar.) I receive no consolations from above or promise of relief however remote. Concerned parties with proposed home remedies, emetics or novenas please email. God bless you for your support at this trying time.

I just happened to be re-reading one of my favorite books, the magnificent The Bad Catholic's Guide to Good Living -- we're always giving away our last copy so Dave purchased a spare for us along with a copy for our nephew's First Holy Communion gift -- and ran across another possible description of R.C.I.A. (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, an educational and formational process leading up to the sacrament of Confirmation) -- Repelling Converts In-Advertently. I nearly died laughing.

As promised, St. Matthew, the Replacement Apostle! The following was preached by Fr. Stirling Bradford, pastor of the Anglican Use Congregation of St. Athanasius in Boston, on St. Matthias' Day, 2004.

Christianity is a messy religion. That is because it is true. If it were a made up religion we'd only have one early leader named James (aw, c'mon. The more the merrier, I say! --editor), and only one Mary, and we certainly would not have scripted that our Main Leader would have carefully selected as a close follower one who would betray Him and then commit suicide! But we don't have a made-up religion. And so we have Saint Matthias, replacing Judas Iscariot as an apostle. Truth is always more interesting than fiction.

Have you ever wondered why Our Lord Himself did not replace Judas during the forty days between the Resurrection and Ascension? He had plenty of time for other things: giving the Holy Spirit to the ten apostles in the upper room; then coming back to Thomas a week later; then restoring Peter to his primacy. Why not fill the vacant 12th seat?

And the answer is that all during these forty days the Blessed Lord was getting His followers used to His being seen and then sometimes unseen and still with them. He was preparing them for the time when He would always be with them unseen. And when that time came, after Ascension Day, they would have to act in His name as He empowered them to do. Filling the 12th seat was something Our Lord did not do . . . deliberately. After all, we can't say He forgot! And He left the seat empty so that the Apostles could select an apostle replacement. And the Church has been doing that ever since.

There is something else about Matthias. It is something subtle.Matthias was one of the disciples who had kept company with the apostles and the Lord Jesus beginning from the early days with John the Baptist, and right through the Ascension, and therefore a witness to the Resurrection. It is a happy commentary on Matthias and his faithfulness as a follower of Christ that he was never important enough to be mentioned by name in the gospels. And yet when the time came, Matthias was nominated without doubt as being worthy of the rank of apostle. Matthias then is the special example and inspiration of all who are faithful to the duties of our faith in hidden ways, and who never get singled out for attention. And that great and silent number is testament that faithfulness has its own rewards in the service of Jesus our Lord.

Yesterday's Gospel was the story of St. Thomas, the apostle who refused to believe that Jesus had actually risen from the dead until he had personally seen the evidences of His crucifixion on His resurrected body. Generally, the "Doubting Apostle", as he has been dubbed, gets somewhat short shrift in the estimation of most Christians, certainly of most homilists. We tisk and tut and dismiss and our aphorisms imply that if Thomas has Just Been More Spiritual and Trusting (like the other Apostles, ha ha! or us! ha ha!) he wouldn't  have Needed Any Proof.

Being a feeler and something of a natural bleeding heart, I used to think that. Before I married an engineer. Who says, and I agree, that Thomas is the apostle for scientists. The more I reflect on that, the more I agree, in fact. A healthy respect for empirical, verifiable, scientifically-analyzable data is not only not unspiritual, it is NORMAL. We are corporeal beings, for heaven's sake. If, as Christians assert, Jesus Christ did indeed -- as they say -- Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone  Before, namely the Kingdom of Death -- in order to redeem all men, all women, and His entire created order, a decent respect for the laws of the created order (I'm beginning to sound like the Declaration of Independence, but bear with me) would seem to require that He bear in His resurrected body some marks of the struggle, some scars. I mean, EVERYONE has scars, emotional, physical, whatever. It's human to have them. That's how we know someone is real, is wise, has lived, because they have scars and can tell you the story behind them, can tell you what they've been through. Why should it be any different for He Who Became Sin? It would be natural to want to see that.

Almost everyone quotes Jesus as saying, "You have believed because you have seen, but more blessed are they who have not seen and have believed." But in every Bible I've looked at He doesn't say "more." This is incredibly significant. He doesn't set up any qualitative difference between those who believe because they have seen and those who have not seen and have believed. Elsewhere in the Gospels He says, "Go and tell John what you see and hear; the blind recover their sight, the lame walk, the dead are raised to life, and the poor have good news preached to them!" Our Lord is just fine with a basic trust of sensory knowledge as a gateway to spiritual knowledge. If you're more comfortable with a religion that begins its metaphysic with a distrust of the senses and with the fundamental goodness of created matter, for heaven's sake, go to India. Which, come to think of it, is exactly what Thomas did.

Up next: Matthew, the Replacement Apostle! Stay tuned!

Happy Easter Octave, everybody!! Our happy little family is celebrating by getting bad colds. Except me. I just never was fashionable.

I do of course realize, as a matter of doctrine, that the universal efficacy of the One, Perfect and Sufficient Sacrifice is not dependent upon my musical response thereto; nonetheless, at some level, I just don't FEEL like Jesus Christ is really risen unless I have, personally, sung all three verses of Jesus Christ is Risen Today. It's just a quirk. I'm not saying we didn't raise the roof on all six verses of The Strife is O'er, the Battle Done at the Easter Vigil at Holy Apostles Seminary. We did. It rocked. Just indulge me here, alright?

Jesus Christ is risen today, Alleluia
Our triumphant holy day, Alleluia
Who did once upon the Cross, Alleluia
Suffer to redeem our loss, Alleluia

But the pains which He endured, Alleluia
Our salvation have procured, Alleluia
Who endured the Cross and grave, Alleluia
Sinners to redeem and save, Alleluia

Sing we to our God above, Alleluia
Praise eternal as His love, Alleluia
Praise Him, all ye heav'nly host, Alleluia,
Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Alleluia!

Okay. Fait accomplis!

Good night!

Holy Week.

We began it with a trip up to Boston for Anglican Use Mass for Palm Sunday (glorious). On Monday we had the great privilege of assisting at a Jewish Passover (I think that's the old-fashioned word for what deacons do at Mass and I like it, so why not assist at a Passover?) -- it's just mind-boggling to think, as we sat dipping bitter herbs and noshing charoset in my friend's apartment in Hebron, Connecticut, that we were doing exactly what an eccentric itenerant preacher and his quarrelsome, arrogant, dim-witted followers did one Passover night in Palestine a while back, when one of them got what the modern world would call a strong and deeply-felt personal spiritual impulse and left the Passover ceremony a little earlier than usual. So we're off on the adventure . . . .

Got to evening Mass today, which was delightful. The priest is a fantastic homilist and on fire with zeal for the Lord; he charges right into his homilies before we've sat down from the Gospel reading, which always gives me a kick. Today's Old Testament lesson was about the Moses' uplifting of the bronze serpent which only to look upon would cure from snakebite. Powerful. Only to LOOK upon it. In a way, sometimes, the Lord asks so little of us; only to LOOK, for instance. Instant healing. Just LOOK!!!!!!!!

After Mass we went to do what some call grocery shopping (I prefer to think of it as retail therapy you can eat), and I had the pleasure of a few errands in the Kosher section for my modest contribution to an upcoming Passover celebration. I felt WASPY and Gentile indeed staring bewilderedly from brand to brand of Matzoh and gefuiltefish, but I think my eventual purchases did not bring too much disgrace upon the family name. We can but hope.

It's early for this, I know, but in view of the impending Easter season of celebration and plenty and the ironically concurrent end of The Girl Scout Cookie Season (there is no justice here below), we at Gargoyles offer as a public service the following (scroll down to the Wednesday, March 16th entry)

/sugarandcharm.blogspot.com/search/label/Sweet Recipes

Now get back to your Lenten penances. No fasting for expectant mommies! Ha ha!

My son had his first chocolate ice cream cone today and also discovered the joys of playing in a sandbox, in consequence of which new experiences he was in great need of a bath. His response to the tub has not historically been particularly joy-filled -- the phrase "grim and stoic endurance"  comes to mind -- but on our last bathing occasion he had such a good time putting his bathtoys in the tub and watching it fill with bubbles that he was actually drawn to get in voluntarily, be joyful oh heavens. In hopes of a replay of this I began filling the tub and thought I'd do a little full-out singing as the water rose.  I was ill-advised enough, however, to close my eyes for exactly two seconds in emotional response to a great phrase from Copland, during which window of opportunity James filled the tub not only with diverse parts of Thomas the Tank Engine Bath Toy and several rubber duckies but also with a toilet paper core, a bar of Irish Spring, two bathtowels, the toilet brush, the toilet plunger,  five shampoo and conditioner bottles, his father's leather shoe and a pink Nike. I believe I'll go back to doing most of my vocal work in the car.

Three projects this summer to get ready for: in June, My Other Show The Secret Life of Opera Singers in a midatlantic state (stay tuned!), in July, first performance with Les Inegales at the opening of a new arts center in the Berkshires, in August, a recording session with Dr. Kurt Poterack, composer and Music Director at Christendom College.  First trimester fatigue has abated and I'm ready to get to work. But not during bathtime.

Darn it all, I've got to start reading the callboards earlier.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/white-house-to-hold-second-auditions-this-week-for,19900/

You rock, Father -- let's hear it for the Dominicans!!!

http://www.catholicsentinel.org/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=35&ArticleID=14726

Yesterday I had the very great pleasure of attending a class on the Book of Revelation at Holy Apostles Seminary (only my friend Dr. Alphonso Pinto, a baroquely styled and multilingual Renaissance man somewhat out of place in central Connecticut, would describe the coming Judgement of the Nations as something that will be "a very aesthetic event"), which was my theology fix for the week, that and perusing B16's brilliant Truth and Tolerance, which I happened to find languishing under the sofa and thought I'd read again. Absolutely compelling contemporary apologetics with a finger spot on the intellectual and spiritual climate of the times. Nummy, nummy. I can begin to appreciate why a good friend of mine calls me "the only Vatican geek she knows." Although I have absolutely scarlet nothing on some folks I've met down in the D.C. area, known for its high-level young-adult Catholic culture, who set their alarms for 3:00 a.m. because that's when the Pope's new encyclical will be posted on the Vatican website. I mean, I love you, Dad, but I need my sleep.

Today was a  thoroughly artistically satisfying day. Recorded for three hours with Les Inegales, a dynamic trio of harpsichord, baroque traverso and viola di gamba, and yours truly "on vocals" as they say in Band World, recording Handel's Mi Palpita il Cor. It was great fun and I can't wait to perform a full program with the group in Massachussetts in July. Stay tuned for details!

My UTTERLY WONDERFUL FRIEND ELLEN accompanied me and took care of James in the non-sanctuary part of the church, where he had a wonderful time running about from door to door in the large church hall ("door? door?") and making the acquaintance of every toy in the nursery. Talk about room to spread out. Bless you, Ellen, you're the greatest. I owe you one lunch at Max Amore, complete with the salad with the warm polenta croutons as per agreement. And please let me babysit sometime, because your son is so cute.

Pax Christi, everyone!

Hi everybody!! I've enjoyed some downtime today teaching a few lessons (one voice, one piano) and hanging out with a dear friend of mine and her utterly cute ten-month-old. A bit tired after an awesome Handel rehearsal up near the far western Masssachussetts border yesterday. James had a great day, though -- I took him with, of course -- and thoroughly enjoyed the attentions of not one but two beautiful, thirteen-year-old, golden-haired babysitters, private students of mine with whose families I barter lessons for babysitting and au pair services. (Bartering rocks.) The young ladies (homeschoolers both, hence the flexible schedules) got to see and play on a harpsichord, too, which my colleague very kindly demonstrated to them. That was pretty neat.

In case anyone would like to hear the cantata we are working on, here is the first half of it, sung by the really remarkable countertenor Andreas Scholl:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGaUpiLE8kU

Cool, isn't it?

And just for fun, this is a beautiful piece of what I call "High Mommy Art" from one of my favorite bloggers, Kari Ramstrom -- absolutely inspiring!

http://artsymama.blogspot.com/2010/04/welcome-to-strawberry-land-party.html

And while we're at it, an announcement -- James is going to be a big brother!!! Keep us in your prayers for a safe and healthy pregnancy and delivery on or around October 23rd-- St. Anna and St. Gerard, pray for us!!!!!!!

A delightful evening just me and my son -- my husband is off engaging in manly and sporting activities, which I always encourage -- and after lasagna and root beer floats we traded banging hymns out lustily on the piano, crafting cadenzas and melismas in a Handelian fashion, and watching black-and-white concert footage of an artistically groundbreaking four-member vocal and instrumental ensemble.

There are those who say that the modern musical world is an amoral place, divorced from Christian values. This may be so, but I think it an absolutely remarkable example of Christian kindness, artistic humility and the magnanamity of the human spirit that, in their Washington, D.C. concert, one of their first in America, the Beatles let Ringo Starr on the mike.

Bonjour! Well, a most interesting and informative family gathering today -- whew, I'm tired, but a pleasant sort of tired. A schedule change has moved Handel Rehearsal #2 from tomorrow to later this week, and I'm rather glad as it'll give me more time to work on my da capo ornamentation, which my colleagues assure me needs work. Also, driving four hours with toddler and babysitter in tow is always a bit of a marathon and it's just as well to have a few days betwixt. So it's an ill wind blows nobody good, as they say . . . tonight I'm putting my feet up! Ah!

The idea of a Catholic Movie Night was suggested by one of my sisters-in-law tonight as we were all chattering after dinner and I thought it was absolutely superb. I'm busily racking my brain for examples of sacramental cinematic art, and I don't mean Sister Act, not that there was anything really wrong with Sister Act, it was kind of cute, it just doesn't quite plumb the depths of the sacramental worldview, ya know what I mean? Yeah. Anyway, I'm getting some good ideas although pickings are scarce . . . I think there is more great literature to be had than great movies, thus far anyway! Well, now I'm in Book Mode, so here are my all-time-fave Books To Convert By (some of which would make GREAT movies, come to think of it!):

Fiction
The Power and The Glory by Graham Greene (my dad once said he can handle this book about once a decade and I don't blame him)

The Hint of an Explanation by Graham Greene (short story. It would make an absolutely superb short movie if it were really well-done and allowed to be edgy)

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. (Already a movie, starring Anthony Andrews. Excellent.)

In This House of Brede by Rumer Goden (it's about a convent, and is the most insanely deep, insightful, psychologically brilliant book I have ever read. The first time I read it I literally could not put it down for three days. Actually, I don't think it's great movie material, it's so internal, but I think you should read it.)

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis (I know, I know, everybody says you're supposed to like The Lord of the Rings better because it's less overtly allegorical, but I don't, so nyeh nyeh nyeh)

Revelation by Flannery O'Connor (short story in which the main character is sort of a "church lady" type who meets her metanoya after a pimpled adolescent girl calls her "a warthog from hell" in a doctors' waiting room. Eloquent.)

Meat by some author whose name I don't remember, a short story recently featured in the Christmas issue of Dappled Things, a Catholic literary periodical. Really, really fine writing.

. . . This is fun! Pardon me,  I think I'm going to need some leftover Swedish meatballs before I continue here . . .

Drama

A Man for All Seasons, by I think Robert Bolt, about Thomas More. Great play!! Bolt was an atheist, interestingly, who so admired Thomas More's courage and integrity that he wrote a play about his martyrdom even not sharing his faith. I think that is pretty neat.

St. Joan by George Bernard Shaw. That's right, George Bernard Shaw.

Joan of Arc by Mark Twain. That's right, Mark Twain. She really reels in the big fish, that one.

A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. It makes me just bawl.

......... more later! Pax Christi, everyone!

Hope everyone had a wonderful St. Patrick's Day! My husband, son and I celebrated by parading enthusiastically about the house to Gaelic Storm and zydego music, hastily-grabbed Mardi Gras paraphernalia fluttering triumphantly.

Tomorrow, I'm trucking out to Lakeville, CT, to rehearse a Handel cantata. The day after tomorrow, I'm entertaining eighteen in-laws. Or therabouts. On Monday, another Handel rehearsal. On Tuesday, I am taking to bed.

By the way, St. Patrick was an Englishman. I'm just saying . . .

Just spent an absolutely glorious hour listening to and watching Cecilia Bartoli and Placido Domingo on YouTube and am reminded why I was born. Oh, God.

...
Whose arm doth blind the mighty wave
Who bidd'st the mighty ocean deep
its own appointed limits keep
Oh hear us when we cry to Thee
for those in peril on the sea.

Oh Savior, whose almighty word
The winds and waves submissive heard
Who walkedst on the foaming deep
And calm amid its rage did keep
Oh hear us when we cry to Thee
for those in peril on the sea.

Oh sacred Spirit, who didst brood
upon the chaos dark and rude
Who bad'st its angry tumult cease
And gavest light and life and peace
Oh hear us when we cry to Thee
for those in peril on the sea.

O Trinity of love and power
Our brethren shield in danger's hour;
From rock and tempest, fire and foe
Protect them whersoe'er they go;
And ever let there rise to Thee
Glad hymns of praise from land and sea.

Hi everyone! The Lenten season has begun! Evening Ash Wednesday services were awesome at our little parish here in central CT and my husband and I have been amusing each other with proposals of outrageously inappropriate penances for the season -- giving up answering the phone, taking out the cat litter (so distracting from the spiritual life), in my case adopting a strict vegetarian diet (just kidding, Betsey), and on and on. James looked so cute with his little dab of ashes on his forehead, although I did wash it off later as I don't want him to rub it in his eyes or digest any of it by night. He's sick with a cold today in consideration of which we spent the morning watching Disney's Fantasia together. Gosh, it is just a brilliant piece of work. Beautiful.

My, I have been absent from the blogosphere -- to the great detriment, I am sure, of the renewal of Western Civilization in Christ! Ha ha, only kidding! Anyway, I've missed scribbling and have a few moments to spare, so back at it!

It never rains but it pours. Musical projects have been at a very very very low ebb for the past year and this year things are exploding, as is my poor little head. My agent is working like a fiend to get Life of Christ in Song bookings in the D.C. area as well as another show of mine, The Secret Life of Opera Singers, so last week I sang on a cold to put together demo cd's for that. The Biber with the Nutmeg Symphony Orchestra is this month. I have the great honor of working on an unbelievable program of great baroque yumminess with Les Inegales, a wonderful and seasoned duo of harpsichord and baroque flute, plus a viola di gamba player (yummy!), and I just heard a confirmation from D.C.-area composer and good friend Kurt Poterack that we will indeed be doing a recording project this summer. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA but would I have it any other way? No.

Excuse me, my son is chirping.

Another Fun Catholic Discovery recently . . . a good friend of mine sent me a copy of the excellent Catholic literary periodical Dappled Things, named for the Gerard Manly Hopkins poem which begins "glory to be to God for dappled things", which I once sang a really beautiful setting of for a concert honoring the 30th Anniversary of my alma mater, Christendom College.  I grin as I remember myself memorizing the words. I'd be out back in our acerage stacking wood (not a regular activity of mine, but I've done it on a few occasions and am actually not bad at it), with a copy of the poem folded in my jeans pocket. I'd stop stacking from time to time to glare at a particularly recalcitrant tongue-twister of a line, mumble, fold the paper up for the umpteenth time and go back to flinging wood, shreiking, "flesh-firecoal -- fresh-firecore -- expletive deleted -- FRESH-FIRECOAL chestnut falls, flinches -- Frenches -- flinching -- expletive deleted -- FINCHES' WINGS. Fresh-firecoal chestnut falls, finches' wings. HAH!" -- and a loadful of kindling would land on the pile with a triumphal thwack. Nothing like multitasking. Anyway, Dappled Things is very good, a high-level compilation of fiction, poetry, essays and criticism celebrating the sacramental imagination. Check them out at www.dappledthings.org.

And speaking of the sacramental imagination, I'm very excited that Mark Nowakowski. Life of Christ in Song's composer-in-residence (well, he lives in Maryland and Eric and I live in CT, but it sounds good, don't you think so?) is nearing completion of the second song in the Luminous Mysteries art song cycle. The first one is gorgeous, and I can't wait to hear -- and perform -- the second one too!! You rock, Mark. Particularly doing this between DMA work duties and nine thousand other projects. The world is full of awesome people. You know?

I have an oratorio audition in NYC tomorrow. My lineup is the following:

Oh Thou That Tellest Good Tidings to Zion
Handel's Messiah

Fac ut Portem
Pergolesi Stabat Mater

Woe Unto Them Who Forsake Him
Mendelssohn's Elijah

Ah Golgatha-Sehet Jesus Hat Die Hand
Bach's St. Matthew Passion


Pray for me at 1:30!!!!