Muselet

Today I am overwhelmed with a feeling and sense of melancholy, even though a very conscious part of me is easily happy.  Some inner thread feels wearily weighed down (but refusing to break) with the weight of a grieving world.  I so often think of the pre-born babies who have been martyred for existing.  When they are annihilated in their mommy's wombs, someone is trying to say "thou shalt not be," or "the world is better if you don't exist."  Could there be anything more untrue?  Existence is Good.  To Be is the first hallmark of God.  We are most Godly when we are most purely and trustingly Being.  I grieve for these sweet little ones who God loved into existence, even if no-one else would love them.  But I rejoice that they are in Heaven w/ the Lord.  They do exist.  That they do not exist just because they have been martyred is the biggest lie.  It is the supreme arrogance to say what or who is not.  God says "let the...

Do a Google search of "muselet" and you'll find many articles and images dedicated to an amazingly elegantly-designed, yet practical devise that has become a collectible art-form.  The muselet is that ingenious little cage that holds in place a champagne cork.  This "cage" actually has two parts: the metal wire knotted in a particular way designed to aid in easy removal, and the little "boule" which bears the makers mark. When I named this blog "Muselet" I thought I had coined a new word.  As a noun: letter from the Muse, and as a verb: let the Muse speak!  However, it turns out it is a french word for "muzzle"!  This may seem an unfortunately opposite concept.  However, maybe it is not a contradiction, but rather, a sweet little paradox. When something is muzzled, it is restrained.  It need not be entirely silent.  As the muselet keeps the cork in the bottle helping the bottle keep in the champagne until ready for celebratory ...

I love playing for Mass because I love offering myself to the Lord through music (which is an avenue of great, deep, and beautiful intimacy), AND because I love to, at least in some small way, aid others in their worship, in their hearts and minds, and all of us together as Christ's Body, Christ's Bride. One of my favorite experiences in accompanying the Cantor when singing the Psalms is when I hear the congregation respond w/ one voice, one healthy and whole voice.  By "healthy and whole" I don't mean that we don't have our troubles, but that I can hear in the people's voice together an authentic giving of the Self to the Lord.  I can hear individual voices and I can hear the blending of the voices.  I can hear each singer choosing to lift their voice to the Lord.  And when we're at our best, it seems to me to also convey our willingness to do this meeting-the-Lord WITH each other.  Too often I hear critics of Catholic liturgy bemoaning the fact th...

At the Saturday night Mass, while playing for the offertory, I saw a young family taking up the gifts.  I hadn't seen this particular family before.  They were a large family and it took a while for them all to process down the aisle.  However, what first caught my heightened attention was that the father was returning much slower than the rest and seemed to be lagging behind.  Then I noticed a sound that seemed to be proceeding him.  There was a rhythm to it that reminded me of when my elderly mother recently started using a walker.  Every now and then the father bent over.  As he turned the corner from the central aisle to the aisle in front of the piano, I saw that it was his youngest child, wearing leg braces, and walking with the tiniest walker I had ever seen that was slowly preceding him.  Then he bent over again, and this time I saw why.  When his daughter lifted and placed her walker, it sometimes shifted her a bit off course. ...