Saturday, May 19, 2007

ramblings

funeral this morning, wedding in an hour, Mass at 4:30 like normal. what a day.
I'm overwhelmed (just mentally-I haven't actually started doing anything!) with the amount of stuff that I have to do. As in, stuff that I've been putting off for, "when the church will pay me to do it." (like starting Wednesday, I have 20 hours a week of "music," and that is when I will start to do all this stuff I've been intending to do for so long...sort through the music "library" and get rid of the heretical stuff (that would basically be most of the things published in my lifetime-ironic, eh?) figure out when exactly during funerals "In Paradisum" is supposed to be sung, and all the other confusing things about the end of funerals and how the "Order of Christian Funerals" is not very clear at all...
other stuff too. It'd be really good to make a format for a worship aid in which just a few things can be changed for different funerals, and then the people who never actually go to church can somewhat follow along.
and now my boss has assigned me the job of making a laminated sheet that has the Mass parts in Latin chant notation with the translation. (seriously. I don't know how I'm going to do this. The Gloria, Credo, and Our Father are NOT going to all fit on one sheet of paper, much less all of the other smaller parts...)

but going back to funerals,
I just read a good quote. "Give me flowers while I'm still alive."
I know, I know...I think about this a lot. but seriously. I always wonder if the wonderful things people say at funerals were ever said to them during their lives. If they were actually appreciated as much as people say they were.
and the flowers?
Don't waste them at my funeral when I can't enjoy them! Give them to me now!

1 comment:

Puff the Magic Dragon said...

FYI

In Paradisium is supposed to be sung at the end of the Funeral Mass, as the casket makes it way back up the aisle out of the church. At least that is where it is in the Graduale Romanum,
After the final commendation and farewell and
"Dum corpus effertur ex ecclesia, cani possunt"
"when the body is taken up out of the church, it may be sung"

Basically, that sounds like it should be sung as the deceased's body is carried up and out of the church.