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(Incidentally, this song has been redone in a screamingly funny “literal” version you really must watch.)

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(Beware the hair!)

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Cheating with this one, as it comes from 1991, but this, to me, is the classic “night” song. Every time I hear it I am transported back to a blue Ford Tempo Galaxy at 1 a.m. as I was leaving Taco Bell after a closing shift.

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There you go! How’s that for a trip down memory lane, 30/40- somethings? What are your old favorites?

For those who might be new visitors from the carnival, meet my daughter: wall-demolisher, universal charmer, mommy-mind-reader, a conduit for Heavenly beauty, and now–aspiring flute player…just like Mommy!

Uh, sweetheart, you might need to turn it around.

She is never more excited about Mommy than when I pull out my flute.  But I will never let her touch it, which makes her less than happy.

Good thing Mommy has a flute student who’s less protective of her instrument. Maybe that’s why Miss K. got the hug of the century.

Sunday at church, I went to the piano to cover for Christian so he could go to Communion, and to my horror, amid “Taste and see,” I saw Julianna lifting my, um, let’s just say as-expensive-as-a-used-car flute off its peg. Is it acceptable to leave the congregation hanging in order to save an expensive repair bill? Fortunately, Christian saw as well, and rescued my poor flute from the clutches of my over-eager daughter.

(Sharing today at Angie’s Wordful Wednesday roundup , at You Capture: Fun with I Should Be Folding Laundry, and at 5 Minutes For Special Needs: Special Exposure Wednesday)

It is sometimes suggested that what I describe crosses into irreverence. It is called banal, feel-good, happy-clappy, and so on. People I deeply respect in all other areas use the word “beauty” to mean “high church,” unable (or refusing) to acknowledge that beauty crosses aesthetic lines, finding itself equally at home amid chant, praise bands, contemporary ensembles, solo cantors and classically-trained choirs.

Only in the constant frustration of trying to moderate the online rhetoric do I finally realize how blessed I was to grow up in a small, rural parish where there was little pretension and a great openness to all forms of beauty in music (even though, being a small parish, we were incredibly limited in what we could do). It wasn’t until much later that I realized how strongly so many people equate God with solemn, humorless sternness. I’ve never understood it. Why must reverence equal silence, holiness equal formality? Why do we shush children, try to make them behave (defined as sitting still and being silent, things utterly not in their nature, things which cause them to yell “church is boring” and help them not at all along the road toward understanding what’s going on and becoming active in participation)—why, when Jesus very clearly said “Let the little children come to me” and “whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it”? Why do we use worship as another venue to drive wedges between people, to separate them into groups that can be labeled “Us” and “Them”?

Don’t get me wrong. You know how I crave silence, how I find God in it. I think the lack of silence in modern life is a real problem, one that people are reluctant to address. And certainly I’m not suggesting that we should abandon the pomp and grandeur of high church. I know, without a doubt, that the ideal held up by the aforementioned people has real power to lift the heart to God, when it’s well done. But so do other forms. Look around the world. God created kangaroos and slugs, mountains and valleys and deserts and oceans, skin in black and white and all variations in between, and inspired people in all of them to create unique forms of beauty. How can we claim that there is only one way to worship the God who created such diversity? When any of us try to set up our own personal preferences (whatever form they take) as the only way or even the best way, we put God in a box.

Well, thank God He won’t stay in that box, that’s all I have to say.

What I experienced in that dream would be hard to achieve this side of Heaven. But it reminds me yet again that the human race, in all its diversity of custom and culture, truly is good.

Today I am grateful for all the things that support the song of the people of God:

hand drums and drumsets

electric guitars and keyboards

pipe organs and glorious trained choirs

chants and Renaissance polyphony (okay, so that last doesn’t support assembly song, but it can still lift our souls)

Handel and Haugen

Pope Gregory and Rich Mullins

for the inSpiration that touches all artists, whether they choose to make good use of it or not

for the constant renewal of the Church in the gifts of its members

for the constant tension between embracing what is good from contemporary culture and holding on to truth—however imperfectly the balance is held

for online arguments that remind me never to take for granted the blessings I’ve been given

Counting to a thousand with the Gratitude Community at A Holy Experience

Image by D.S.B via Flickr

I’ve been singing the national anthem at sporting events for six or seven years–on again, off again, depending on the state of my exhaustion level on the day of tryouts. And I’ve been a pastoral musician for two -plus decades, which means every time I get up to sing the anthem, I want nothing more than to start out by saying, “Please join in singing…”

On Super Bowl night, I was cooking sausages and onions in the kitchen when I heard Christina Aguilera flub up. “Did she just screw up the national anthem?” I said. I couldn’t believe it.

Our national anthem is hard to sing, with words that make no sense, and IMNSHO we ought to be singing something like America the Beautiful instead. However, that would take an act of Congress and we all know they’re too busy bickering about other things.

In the meantime, soloists routinely butcher songs that ought to belong to the everyone. For days after Obama’s inaugeration I couldn’t listen to news coverage, because everybody seemed so enthralled by Aretha’s performance that they played it over and over and over: “My coun…..(GASP, because it’s far more impressive if I only sing two syllables before I breathe!)…TRY ‘TIS of thee…”

It’s time to stop having soloists do these things altogether. The more life becomes a performance, the less engaged we are. And that’s a tragedy, because over time, as people’s opportunities to sing in community are pre-empted, they come to believe they can’t sing.

And because someone else has already written this argument more eloquently than I can, I direct you to the St. Louis Post Dispatch’s arts columnist, Sarah Bryan Miller. As she says, it’s time to take back the national anthem. And everything else, besides.

Songs that should be banned from Christmas airwaves

• Anything by the Beach Boys. I mean, no amount of jingle bells can make the Beach Boys sound Christmasy. It’s just annoying.
• Most of the 96 million versions of “Feliz Navidad.” It’s not the song itself I object to, it’s proliferation of really hokey versions. Do they play them in a misguided attempt to appear multicultural?*
• “Jingle Bell-(hiccup), Jingle Bell-(hiccup) Rock.” Hall & Oates have their place in pop history, but this version makes me want to run down the street shrieking in agony.
• “I’ll ha-ave a-a Blue Christmas…” Need I say more?

For some reason I cannot fathom, at least one of these songs, and usually more, play every single time I turn on the radio. Of all the thousands of versions of hundreds of Christmas songs out there, every single station feels a need to play these three songs five to ten times a day  an hour. Can someone explain this to me?

Then there’s Rudolph. Julianna’s bus driver decorated her bus with red and green streamers and hung gold ornaments from the center. (We have an awesome bus driver.) She also perched a plush singing reindeer on the dashboard. Voila, Julianna has a new favorite song. She asks for it like this:

"Deer" in ASL

So I’ve been singing Rudolph several times a day hour for the last week or so. And being a song writer myself (albeit nowhere near as successful), every time I do, I gnash my teeth. What were you thinking, Johnny Marks? “Do you recall the most famous reindeer of all”? Come on, if we know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen, why would you even ask if we know the most famous reindeer of all?*

Okay, now that I’ve gotten that particular little bug off my chest, it’s your turn. What songs do you think need to be banished from the December airwaves?

*In posting, I discovered that Feliz Navidad has ITS OWN TAG on Word Press. What the…?????!!!!!

**Disclaimer: yes, I know it’s a song to introduce a reindeer nobody had ever heard of. Fully aware. Leave me alone. I’m ranting.

Image by owlbookdreams via Flickr

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It’s officially National Novel Writing Month. Naturally, this means that this week I had two kids have days off school (different days–naturally) and an early out on a third.

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Nonetheless, I have written 4,268 words so far, and thankfully I got stopped by scheduling, not by dry creative wells. So although it’s going ve-ry sl-ow-ly, it is going. And that’s the point.

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Image via Wikipedia

While I was waiting for Alex at school yesterday, I spent a little time at the piano, fiddling with something I wrote down a few weeks ago. It’s in a brutal key (Eb minor) but I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. I’m afraid most of you with enough musical knowledge to understand why that is a brutal key will simply say, “But Kate, just put it in a different key.” Are there any musicians out there who will back me up when I say that I just can’t, because it loses a major part of its beauty if I do? Key does make a difference. Each key has its own feel and quality to it. Eb minor is like dark chocolate and butter–rich and dark and haunting. Putting this in boring old D minor would strip it of what makes the melody special.

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Once in a while, someone will ask me, “What does it feel like to write something so beautiful?” I’ve never tried to answer that question before, but here’s my attempt: Humbling. It’s by no means a guarantee that simply sitting down at the piano and putting fingers to keys is going to result in something worthwhile. When I hear a beautiful melody, it amazes me as much as it amazes the people who ask the question. Hmm. I might need to blog on that topic sometime.

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We found out some crazy good news this week: Liguori is down to the last 800 or so copies of my book. Wow! Talk about humbling! I’m signing copies all weekend for the next three weeks at the local parishes, and going on the radio next week. I also talked to the editor of the diocesan paper yesterday (while Alex was running in and out with an apparently life-threatening, although completely invisible, boo-boo on his hand), and Christian is working on a placement in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as well. Oh yes, and don’t forget yesterday’s blog tour. Conventional Wisdom tells you that you’ll spend more time than you thought possible on promotion, but even though you believe it, it’s still hard to fathom when it becomes reality.

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Here’s a deep topic for the day. You might have noticed that gay issues are one of the few subjects on which I don’t pontificate here. That’s because it’s an issue on which I feel deeply conflicted. When what I believe to be true crashes into the reality of the gay Catholics I know, each of whom are deeply faith-filled people, I come up feeling that my beliefs are inadequate. This is not an invitation to try to convince me one way or another–only an introduction to this post from a woman with a gay son, which I think makes the difficulty of simple answers clear. I share it because I can’t help feeling that gay issues are a lot more gray than those of us who believe in Church teachings on sexuality would like them to be.

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Whew, that’s a lot of ground to cover for one Quick Takes post. I have to say, lately these are getting to be my favorite posts. I used to be looking for things to fill them; not so much anymore.

Have a great weekend!

It’s been almost a year now since the moment I heard music peeking out from between the notes of a noodly warmup. It electrified my body, as a new melody always does, and with a hasty apology to my poor voice student, I hummed it out two or three times so I wouldn’t lose it before I had a chance to scribble it down.

I wrote the refrain within a couple of days, and then got stuck. Every so often, I’d return to it, banging on the wall of cliché’d ideas and trite truisms. I wrote a book about Advent. Several articles. Finished a novel. Began querying. Wrote another song, top to bottom. Started a new novel, a new book for Lent.

Then, yesterday afternoon, I went downstairs to revise a Mass setting at the request of the parishes who want to keep using it after the changes come down the pike next fall…and finally, the wall crumbled.

A finished song, ready to be put in the computer, ready to go winging out into the world to be sung, to be approved of or rejected. Enough to make a day worthwhile all by itself.

Linked to SteadyMom’s 30-minute blog challenge and

Yes, I’ve got a lot of links today. But they’re awesome!

1. My kids are famous lately. Julianna and her PT got a writeup in the school of health professions’ magazine, (see pages 21-22), and the county electric coop did a writeup on a local farm, which Alex’s preschool class happened to be visiting on field trip. On page 2, he’s the one with the overall strap falling off his shoulder. On page 3–can’t miss him. What’s up with that face???

2. If you’re a mother of little girls, check out Hairbows For Life. I long to have a daughter I can gussy up. Someone please confirm what my head tries to reassure me–that even a typically-developing sweetie would pull hair bows out and hurl them everywhere?

4. Last night, while visiting blogs, I stumbled upon a site called “The Customer Is Not Always Right.” As a person who spent eight years working in the service industry under the motto The Customer Is Always Right, I couldn’t resist clicking. Absolutely hilarious! Please check it out. I promise it’s short.

5. Last night, I read this short blog entry from 5 Minutes for Special Needs. This was me last Mother’s Day, while Julianna was in the PICU. Except I was feeling a lot sorrier for myself than this woman.

5. I am pumped! I “finished” (***) a new song this week. Not the one I was trying to finish, mind you, but a song nonetheless. And in keeping with my current year-round focus on all things Advent/Christmas (my book is due out in the next month!), it is a song for Epiphany.
(***Note: The word “finished” is an arbirtrary one. In this case, it means I have a melody and a text, which may or may not get tweaked while I play the song several dozen times on piano, keyboard and Finale, trying out different accompaniments and choral parts and instrumental obbligatos. This is my favorite part of the composition process.***)

6. …

Mmmmmmmmmm......do I *have* to share?

7. Finally, considering Alex’s recent birthday party, I just want to share this gem from Legoland Chicago:

I am the Dark Knight. Do NOT mess with me!

Have a great weekend!

Ears popping, rising ninety-five floors above overtired children, train schedules, bad bus directions and the guy on the street corner screaming about the end of the world. And at the end of it, the doors opened on this:

It was our tenth anniversary dinner, six months late, the first of two dates we set up in Chicago this weekend.

All morning at the planetarium, watching the top of the Hancock tower appear and disappear in swirling clouds, we wondered what we would be able to see when we went to dinner that night. But the sky retreated a bit, and we sat beside the soaring windows and chatted softly, minds and bodies slowly easing into the moment. It was almost seven before I remembered that I hadn’t left a menu list for Christian’s brother and sister-in-law, who were watching the kids back at the hotel.

The meal? Oh, of course, it was absolutely amazing. I didn’t expect anything else. But it was the respite, the chance to re-center and rediscover two made one, that made the experience what it was. And on toward sunset, the light around and below us shifted from smoldering gray to clear blue-white.

And although we went right back to the world of late buses and almost-missed trains, the quiet buzz remained, and carried me off into a deep sleep almost as soon as I hit the pillow.

Part B: Fifty minutes.

Date #2 was not so amenable to public transportation, so we drove downtown, leaving far too early for an 8p.m. concert because our hosts/babysitters didn’t know how bad construction traffic might be. Fifty minutes after we left the hotel, we pulled into a parking lot snugged up against the wall of the Symphony Center. With an hour and ten minutes left before the concert, we set off to visit Buckingham Fountain.
 

It was a relaxed, though windy and chilly, walk, and at the end of it we returned to Michigan Avenue…

…and made our way to our seats in the front row of the gallery, where we settled in for two hours of sheer musical bliss.

Any classical concert is a balm to my soul, but to watch one of the best orchestras in the world, on its home turf—that is a dream come true. Check it off the bucket list, and savor the moment for years to come.

What did you do for Mom’s Day?

At 8:15 p.m., I was sitting in a hard metal folding chair in the parish hall. I didn’t feel good. Christian didn’t feel good. Nicholas didn’t feel good, and was past his bedtime. He was wiggling on my lap, desperate to nurse and go to sleep. The choir members were flipping through their hymnals. And Christian, as Christian does when he’s not focused, was noodling on the piano. Playing “One Bread, One Body” in ¾ time. “Okay, folks,” he said, “let’s do this.”

“Hon,” I said, “you’re playing it in three.”

“Oh.” He switched styles.

“You’re still playing in three,” I said…and then, I heard it. Not in three, but in compound meter; he had switched the underlying beat to triplets. “One Bread, One Body” in 6/8? I traded glances with one of our altos, a music teacher, and knew she had heard it too. Christian was onto something. What he was doing worked.

It’s amazing how the slightest change in something well-worn and familiar makes it seem like it’s still wet on the page. Ten voices raised to God…two percussive instruments providing form and shape to sung prayer…

I raised my sleepy baby up over my head and looked up at him, singing. He rewarded me with a big, adorable grin. And in that moment, I felt God within me, beside me…all around me.

And we, though many throughout the earth,
We are one body in this one Lord.