Getting cross.....

[oopsorganist]

I feel cross. Rather, I feel upset.
So I will share this with you.
I struggle every week to plan (mainly hymns, we are a bit stuck with a four hymn sandwich mentality in our parish) music which fits with the reading and themes and or with events and or with things that might need to be introduced or consolidated. Lots of battles fought and won along the way, although such goings on are never a good thing for a christian community. But the music seems to be the place where least is known and most bitterness is engendered. At the moment I have a young and rather good guitarist/sax player who is very calm and organised but, big but, someone has messed with the sound set up and reduced the amplification to problematic and blown the power on the keyboard I was using. Annoying and eventually I will sort it out.
I asked to plan midweek and to let the secretary know so she can put the hymn numbers in the newsletter. I do this with much chewing of pencils because it is hard. I try not to fall back into Amazing Grace/ I the Lord of Sea and Sky/ All that I am mode and instead I try to balance out the old hymns and the boring hymns and the ones they think they like and sing lustily. I have struggled to get the Acclamations sung and we manage the Holy Holy and Lamb and Kyrie and the Alleluia. This has taken ten years to do. Oh my Lord.
Two weeks ago I emailed the school to ask if they wanted to join in a Fair Trade event. I didn't get a reply.

So, today, bad snow on the ground, I set off to walk to church - 25 minutes and got there just with 5 minutes. I asked if the hymn numbers were up and someone replied that it was a Children's Mass and so x had put up numbers.

So why do I bother?

In fact they replaced O worship the King, Come Lord Jesus Come (towards First Holy Communion preparation) Lay your hands/ This is my body and Awesome Wonder ( favourite of recently deceased parishioner) with
Colours of Day/ Be Thou My Vision/ O the Love of my Lord is the Essence/ and I the Lord of Sea and Sky. And sang no Acclamations. Sure enough, the Head Teacher of the school was there, the kinder got up and struggled with the readings and were generally mentioned a lot during the service. There were a lot of people there too as happens when the school trot down.

So what?

[NorthernTenor]

With justification.

[Nick Baty]

Understand your frustration.
A couple of queries:
1) Why do you plan so late? If you planned several weeks, even months, in advance you could send a copy to the school.
2) Doesn't the PP give you notice about school Masses? If not, why not?
3) Why do you stay there? I've read much of your trials and, to be honest, I'd have left several years ago. It's not always easy to find another post but there are parishes out there who are desperate for musicians.

[keitha]

Nick, I don't think it would matter how far in advance the planning is done (in this case Oops's emails are ignored anyway). In my experience school staff rarely take any notice of parish musicians and have no consideration for them at all. Most of the time it is not deliberate, and often there is an assumption that 'Father' will keep the parish musicians advised, and he often forgets. The only way forward is to get the School's Mass programme from the head and make it clear that direct advance notice of changes is expected (and not through 'Father'). If the problem occurs again after that, you make an appointment with the head and have it out in an assertive but civilised manner. If that doesn't work, then I would quit and find somewhere where my skills and commitment would be put to better use.

Opps, my sympathies are with you!

[Nick Baty]

Yes, Keitha, I agree with you on all counts. But I am surprised that any school musicians (not just in this case, I've seen it before) think they can just fly in occasionally and jettison the parish repertoire. I wouldn't stand for it. And I amazed that Oops has not walked.

[oopsorganist]

1) I plan so late because I change my mind a lot. And I am slack. I have a kind of vague overview and sometimes ambitions for hymns to learn, and I often just bottle out at the last minute. Also, I only have a teenager to help out and I feel I must treasure him and so bend things to accomodate him and his skill levels. Also, I don't know a lot really. Lack of confidence. Lack of help. I am still wondering how I will get our new Gloria across and mulling this over will take me months. Then one day, I will feel confident enough to begin it.

2) The parish has a huge communication problem. But, someone somewhere should have had at least some good manners to let me know what was happening. That they did not indicates to me that most people have little idea of how much effort I make to keep things going musically. On the other hand within reason, I can theoretically do whatever I like, however I like, and this will be tolerated. People do appreciate what I do but I don't think they realise how much effort it takes me to get up there on a Sunday ready to accompany, lead, and sometimes do things that require nerve, eg teach a new Acclamation or Gloria. The fact that I arrive in church with advanced stage fright every Sunday has not been noted by anyone. So I should be grateful that someone has taken the load off my shoulders and is going to do something else without my help. Or something. It feels like "You're not needed here this morning" and this should not be how it feels. But that is how it feels. Just giving me forewarning of that would enable me to arrive with realistic expectations. They don't realise they put crap in place of my carefully and thoughtfully planned crap. The word deleted begins with C. They think I choose my favourite hymns every week and so do this themselves when I am not musically in charge. Doh doh doh doh doh. Wouldn't it have been nice if the healing aspect of the readings have been planned for and reference made to this with the children and the congregation. PP could have explained the Gospel and laid his hands on the children's shoulders and talked about healing.
And what pray tell me, exactly, is a "Children's Mass"?
What if I decided that the Midnight Mass was a "Children's Mass" and waited for the "school" to turn up? What happens to the "school" for every other Mass of the year. Should they not be part of the parish Sunday Mass every Sunday? Why was this Sunday when the church was suddenly very full remarkable by the lack of sung Acclamations and a general down grading of the Liturgy? Our school is part of the Diocesan programme. What happened there then? How did we go down a Colours of the Day toilet so suddenly?
It is my fault for putting it in at the end of Mass last week. Exit hymns are part of the Mass and we were having a bake sale so I though Light up the fires and let the flame burn was quite appropriate in a mad way. Now they have all remembered how much they love that hymn.
But maybe I should just let them get on with it. Because if that is where they are at, then that is where they are at. The feeling of intense rejection is because they accidentally make me redundant one week but will expect me to be there to sort everything out the rest of the time. It's like being invisible.
It is a silly place and I should not be surprised or hurt that silly things happen. This is what it is like at St Silly's in the Mire.
And really, I could have had a lie in. It was the nearly an hour's walk there and back that crowned it all!

[nazard]

If you turned up with the message of eternal life, forgave everyone their sins and healed a few sick, they would nail you up on a cross for it. That's the way things are.

Thank you for your posts: they make me realise that bad though things are here, I am far from unique. Yes, parishioners believe that my sole criterion of choice is my appalling bad taste. I get stage fright to the extent of hardly being able to play at times. As for an inconsiderate pp...

St Hernia's in the Styx, St Silly's in the Mire - any more good parish names out there?

[quaeritor]

Oh how this has cheered me up!

I turned up one Sunday morning and needing to check some small detail in the lectionary (discrepancy between my oldish missal and what was printed in the weekly bulletin) I went to the lectern and stumbled over a simple kitchen step stool strategically placed there. Putting two and two together I guessed that readers of diminutive stature were expected. A quick word with the man who fixes the readers for that Mass each week confirmed that he knew nothing of this but sure enough the school (primary) had hijacked the Mass (no mention in previous weeks' notices). He had to stand down his readers, I had to negotiate about the psalm and Gospel Acclamation - sacrificed the psalm to avoid unnecessary distress to the small readers and their supporting families, but insisted on the acclamation. Head teacher had the grace to apologise later (when I was helping out with something else at the school) "But I didn't know you actually sang the psalm and acclamation - I never go to your church, so how could I?" - I've only been doing it since 1983, so word has obviously not yet spread!

Good to see I'm not alone!

Q

[Nick Baty]

Head teacher had the grace to apologise later... "But I didn't know you actually sang the psalm and acclamation - I never go to your church, so how could I?"

Tch! Tch! Obviously your fault for doing things different to every other church!

[VML]

Oops, I know just how you feel. I have had a year or so of a stressful change in the pattern of music leading in our parish. Having led most of it for over twenty years, with the exception of two extended breaks years ago, I had acrimonious meetings here last year and I was told it was not about me. I now actually get on well and work with the newest leader even if I do not particularly like all that happens. Two of them lead a Sunday a month, and I plan and lead the other two. The second leader communicates very littIe. I have learned to appreciate two Sundays off each month, even though this morning I was festering while they sang a double refrain to a Gloria, beginning, end and between, but spoke the rest as they have not had time to learn to sing it. This has happened four times so far.
The psalm response was song from beside the lectern by the leader with ten string strum; he had brought three children from the new school choir to the altar with him, so we were quite encouraged. Then they spoke the verses....Likewise, strummed Celtic Alleluia sung from lectern, spoken verse in between..
I spent the homily wondering if speaking is the new singing.
However.....I met him in the coffeee room after and found myself explaining a way to get their heads around the verse tune of that particular Gloria. No acrimony or unpleasantness. It was a small answer to prayer, though rather unexpected.
There are plenty of us whose planning is as seemingly chaotic as yours. Good manners help, and it can be extremely hard to be assertive with non-co-operative school staff. I feel, as imagine you do, that I need a kind of permission or authority to criticise their behaviour and liturgy notions.
Keep going.

[Peter Jones]

Ooops

The dates, times, venue (school or church) and the nature of the Masses/other celebrations involving my parish school in music-making are planned in July for the whole of the following school year - September to the next July. The school never, never, ever hi-jacks the music-making in church (unless it's something such as the school Advent/Christmas carol service). I insist on a collaborative parish/school approach and it works. Try sitting down with your p.p. and school RE coordinator .... and all take diaries (and even Liturgy Planners, if such things help).

[gwyn]

Tch! Tch! Obviously your fault for doing things different to every other church!

Sheer poetry Nick.

[Nick Baty]

Oops – differently!