The Musical Priest

One of the best parts – well, at least one of the important parts – of being a priest is being with families in times of crisis. Often enough, this means I attend a lot of wakes. Especially if I have to do the funeral the next day, the wake is a privileged opportunity to learn about the deceased and the family who mourns them. Seeing how others grieve gives you an appreciation for the deceased…and, as it turns out, it helps you to realize how your own family isn’t as crazy as you previously thought. Sometimes as I lead the family in the Rosary, or as I eavesdrop on the conversations, I hear the things people say: “Her make-up is awful.” “Oh my, she’d be appalled to meet Saint Peter wearing that dress.” “Ah, he looks better dead. It suits him.” But sometimes, when you’re at an especially tragic wake or funeral – a teenager’s suicide, an overdose, a young parent dying of cancer – you’ll hear people say, “There but for the grace of God, go I.” I get the meaning of the phrase: at hea...

At 3:34 this afternoon, I saved a completed draft of the fifth and final chapter of my dissertation. I semi-knew yesterday that I was nearing the end: the argument I was making just felt right and it all seemed to hang together. So, I woke up early this morning and edited pages 1-50 between 6:00 am and noon. I do this pretty regularly, usually after each section, so I can re-tool the beginning to reflect what I've done on the way. After six hours of work, I ate lunch and returned to my computer at 12:30. In a flurry of writing, I managed to tie up a number of loose ends and managed to knock out a pretty decent transition to the Conclusion (to be written in January). I moved to Cleveland on May 24th, began writing on July 15th, and today is December 12th. In less than seven months I produced around 325 pages to be read by my advisor and probably another 60 pages in the "deleted from chapter X" files. Not every day has been a triumph, but I have never gone to bed with a ...