Pentecost – Spirit and Grace

I have a friend who is a freelance pastoral musician.  She provides her services for various funerals and vigils in the local area.  It’s always interesting to hear of her experiences dealing with various priest and liturgy directors.  At her latest funeral, she was asked before hand by the liturgy director if she would sing [...]

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Parable

My choir is taking a break in August which gives me an opportunity to visit other parishes in the Sacramento area.  I always enjoy visiting other Catholic church liturgies.  Sometimes I cringe at what I hear or see and sometimes I have “a-ha” moments that I bring back to my liturgy team. 
On Saturday I got [...]

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What’s important in life?

Isn’t it interesting—we get so caught up in the little things:  “that piece of music has a word or phrase that isn’t based on main-line Catholic theology“ or “he shouldn’t be playing that dulcimer in a Catholic church because (fill in the blank)”.  I’m not saying that anything goes—far from it!  But I’m just thinking there [...]

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Looking for love in all the wrong places

The web is a wonderful thing. People can come together in communities, forums, etc. to share their thoughts and ideas about their particular area of interest. Occasionally I do a search for “liturgical musician”, “pastoral musician”, “liturgical music”, etc. looking for ideas, inspiration and support. To my amazement, much of what I [...]

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