The Musical Priest

I've been sparse in posting this week. I played at Siobhan Moore's Feis today -- totallY awesome. Best feis of the season, truth be told. Done by 4:00 (4:00 for the whole feis; I was done by 3:00). Tomorrow I'm playing in Hartford for John O'Keefe. With any luck, I'll have things to post tomorrow night/Monday. Cheers!

The Spring 2007 edition of Fordham Magazine is carrying an interview I gave several months ago. You can download it here: Fordham Magazine Just scroll down to the bottom of the page and you can download the .pdf file. My only quibble: I do know that the quote "it is not I who lives, but Christ lives in me" is not a Gospel quote. It is Galatians 2:20, but in the condensing of the article I suspect that they were put together. Lord knows, I'd not be able to claim lineage of Bob "I'm a Missouri Synod Lutheran and we know the Bible" Duns if I didn't know a bit of scripture! I returned at 2:00 am from my trip to Denver. As usual, I had a great time with Anne Hall and her mother Maureen. A special shot out to Sheila and Rosemary, who I'm sure will be reading today. I have another post in the works, but I need to get through a TON of work before I finish it up.

From the March 16th Issue: Entering Second Decade, Irish Institute Aims Higher By Brian Kluepfel To Eoin O’Connell, a visiting Ph.D. candidate in philosophy from Dublin, and administrative director of Fordham’s Institute of Irish Studies, meeting Irish in the American diaspora has been “an eye-opening experience.” “Students have this inchoate sense that they’re Irish,” said Eoin O’Connell, at left, administrative director of the Institute of Irish Studies. Photo by Ken Levinson “Their appropriation of what Irish is, is hugely different,” he said. Fordham College’s Irish Studies minor allows students to examine those Celtic roots. “Students have this inchoate sense that they’re Irish,” said O’Connell. “But they’re not sure what that means, and they want to explore it further.” His course in Fall 2007, Questioning Irish, will ask the question: “What does the ‘Irish’ before the hyphen mean?” O’Connell and his teaching colleagues continue to probe what exactly Irish Studies is. “We know wh...

If I didn't suspect that other people were grieving right now, I probably would remain silent on the topic. But I do believe that I join millions around the nation and around the globe as we mourn the tragedy that has taken place at Virginia Tech. I know, I know. I can already hear the rejoinders saying "More people die each day in Iraq!" "More babies are aborted each hour!" I know this, and I grieve this as well. But today strikes me in a different way, I guess, because these students could have been my students. As someone who loves college-age students and hopes to dedicate his life to teaching them, I am distraught over what has happened. Students who woke up, rolled out of bed, and stumbled to class are now dead. Unrealized dreams, unsaid "I love yous", unknown possibilities snuffed out in what might be described ironically as a methodical rampage. My heart breaks for the students at Virginia Tech. It breaks for the parents and family members of ...

It's been a relatively busy week. I'm preparing for a 4-day trip to Denver next weekend, so I am continuing to work ahead in order to clear up ample space to play a two-day feis and to spend time with my dear friend, Anne Hall. So please forgive the paucity of posts! 1. Thanks to Karen Hall for the lovely Rosary she left for me. Green beads impressed with the image of a shamrock and a glass-encased clover adorn this beautiful prayer instrument. Thank you Karen - I'll do a prayerful "shot out" for you tonight!! 2. The second Rosary shot will be going out to Joe's son Davy . Joe has begun a 54-day Rosary Novena as a means of prayerfully supporting Davy as he enters into a new form of treatment for autism. Confident in the abilities of those who read my blog - without regard to creed - I entrust Davy to all of your prayers. I haven't much else to blog about. I'm sure there's something amusing that I could share, but I can't seem to think of it. S...

So on Saturday I attended the vigil Mass at St. Ignatius Parish on Park Avenue. I cannot begin to extol the glory of this liturgy: the music was sublime, the homily was gorgeous, and the congregation really seemed to invest themselves in the three-hour service. Making it all the more beautiful was reception of 23 women and men into the Roman Catholic Church with my good friend, Jane Dryden, numbered amongst them. Beneath the pomp and majesty celebrating the Risen Lord, below the fanfare and joyful singing that reached skyward, under it all there was one thing amiss, one radical deficiency that kept me from having a transcendental experience of prayer. Violated rubrics? No. Twelve gorillas carrying up the gifts? Nope. Liberace singing the Exultet? Not even close. So what was it? Well, at the beginning of the vigil the church's lights are shut off and we stand in the dark. Engulfed by still blackness, the clutch of darkness is to be shattered by the lighting of the fire. Hands claspe...

Last year on Holy Saturday, I was privileged to be present to a large group of teenagers who had gathered at the hospital in the wake a a terrible car accident. It occurred to me then, and it has stayed with me, that the fear and anxiety they felt marked something of what the apostles felt in the wake of Good Friday. Dreams and hopes dashed, the taken-for-granted past now a painful memory nearly erased by the trauma of a violent death. They're lives seem shattered, their faith seems for naught, their hopes wither and die. I can't help but to think about how many of us live lives of perpetual Holy Saturdays. How many struggle just to hold on after the sudden death of a loved one, fumbling in the depths of grief for something to hold on to. The young mother awaiting a cancer diagnosis. The parents whose child is gravely ill. The father rousted from deep sleep with the news that his son has been in a terrible car accident. The fearful waiting, the seemingly feeble and empty prayer...

I'll confess that I cringe when I hear things like, "Geez, I can't wait until Lent is over! I want things to get back to normal." The reason I cringe is simple: if your life goes back to normal after Lent, if after weeks of prayer and liturgical movement toward the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ you have not been in the slightest way affected, then you've missed the whole point of Lent. If you have seen Lent as a period of 40-some odd days when you "Don't do this" or "Do this every day" as though it's some Iron Man competition for the soul, then you've failed to be grasped by its importance. Lent is not a time for doing. Surely, there are elements of that present. It is a time of being: being present with Christ as he ministers and as he faces opposition, present as he is betrayed, present as he is abandoned, present as he breaks into our lives on Easter Sunday. Lent is a time for falling more deeply in love, a time for...