"singing at mass is NOT an option... it is an integral part of the prayer of the whole community..." he reads... solemnly... and we listen in silence...

this is the sunday for telling the congregation how to do it... a running commentary throughout the mass... what we do or should do... from now on... and why we do or should do... it...

some must be thinking "good... yes... that is absolutely true... it's about time someone finally said it and meant it... everybody sings from now on."

others... or at least one other... are certainly thinking "not an OPTION? of course it is... how could it be anything other than an option? who's going to make me sing? i'd like to see them try." (once upon a time... they'd call it an "obligation"... and charge a venial sin for the failure to warble on cue... have no doubt, some long for those days)

many of today's directions promote silence... add silent spaces to the ritual... and i'm a big fan of silence... let us have fewer words... much less noise... quaker worship is good worship... and yet... i like a good song in church, too... i just don't want to sing it...

and why is that? is my voice truly terrible? no, it is not. am i too self-conscious, shy, or plain old lazy? could be... but... there's something else... i've just never liked the sing-along church... i have some very faded memories of early post-vatican two days when we were being nudged out of our old fear-, guilt-, and latin-induced comas. we had to be taught to imagine ourselves differently as worshippers in order to participate differently... and the teaching goes on... and not so well, i think.

face it... some of the songs have been very very lame... sappy sweet lousy lyrics... hyperpious language and treacly tunes... sometimes they've simply had too many words... weary under such a heavy theological load...

i usually try to sing a bit in our all-school masses (in the massive, sound sucking salvi arena) because i want to set a good example... and some day i'd like to be knocked out by 1400 voices rocking the rafters with "hoe-lee gah-ahd we pray-ayze thy nayme" (or something a little more subtle)... but it ain't likely in this lifetime.

not long ago i was listening to glenn gould's ever-fresh (to me) take on bach's goldberg variations... i was reading student papers and singing with my lips... i mean i was whistling... i love whistling... even knowing that i'm missing five or ten notes for every one i hit... i've got the song in my head and my heart... what hits the ears is coincidental (and painful for the accidental listener) but it's the doing it... the running alongside... inside... that matters... then cecilia bartoli is tearing through some lovely gluck aria... and i'm with her... all those gallops and trills... sudden reversals and leaps... she, of course, always lands on her feet while i'm over here stumbling in a rush to catch up... and catch breath (a really fine whistle seems to need more breath than i can summon)... my whistle is a wish... a hope... a fancied collaboration

well... we've all got our private, solitary sing things... as for group sings, the best was as a kid... back in the day we used to sing in the car... on long (30-60 minute) trips to and from chicago or the beach in braidwood... we'd sing old songs... they had to be old if mom and dad knew them... and they were corny as hell... only later did i discover how corny... and how old... these were the songs of their own youth... the songs of THEIR parents... tinpan alley standards from before and just after The Great War... "a bicycle built for two," "east side, west side," "and the band played on"... dad was particularly fond of the somewhat more recent "mairzy doats"... and the best bedtime song ever: "ragtime cowboy joe"... i added "syncopated" to my vocab from that one.

now tony bennett's clapping and wailing "all of me" (why not take all of me... can't you see i'm no good without you... take my lips... i want to lose them... take my arms... i'll never use them...) this is singing... and i'm up in the cat's face.. who wants none of it... or me... now i'm dancing around to ralph sharon's stylish old man piano... this is music... or just a little while ago coming back from dinner some old replacements tune pops up on xrt... and i'm there... right there...

ordinary organized church music can never be this kind of... transport... from time to time it can be nice... but its didactic drone usually feels like a profound imposition on the joyful noise real music makes... a disconnection... organized feeling is none at all. heart's overflow... alone or with others... when it comes... will never be so punctual, sober or edifying.

We enter church, and we have to say, "We have erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep," when what we want to say is, "Why are we made to err and stray like lost sheep?" Then we have to sing, "My soul doth magnify the Lord," when what we want to sing is "O that my soul could find some Lord that it could magnify!"

Thomas Hardy

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