HIATUS INTERRUPTUS

I haven't posted in more than a week, an unusually long absence. I thought I'd catch up.

STATE TESTING:

The 21st, the last day I posted, was also the first day I was involved with the CST's (California state tests). It's difficult. Not only do we lose instructional time for four days spread out over nine days of instruction,but we have many students absent from our classes. Between truncated periods (which tempt students to cut) and official make-ups and sophomore-only tests (the 10th graders have an additional fifth day of instruction), teachers like me are almost forced to adjust every aspect of instruction during this time.

It's not to say that I don't get some things accomplished besides administering tests. I catch up on grading, I plan the rest of the year's curriculum and I do in fact teach....somewhat. But 'teaching', in this case, consists of presentation without consequences. I don't want to give a bunch of assessments when anywhere from 10 to 50 percent of my students are missing from period to period. So I cover new material to some degree, but I have to build in time for absent students to play 'catch-up'.

THE BALLPLAYER:

And, to top it all off, my wife's family is in turmoil. My wife's nephew, whom I've posted about before, is reaching a critical point in his amateur career as a baseball player and much of our family life has revolved around it, to the point that it seemed prudent to me to go away for the previous weekend. Trying to stay married, and all that.

It's tough, because the kid (who at one point was leading the Big West in hitting) had a major setback. He picked up a particularly nasty flu, and as a precaution he was given a spinal tap to rule out meningitis. Only, they botched the tap, failing to seal it properly. This led to excruciating headaches, which combined with weight loss and lack of playing time, has pretty much left the kid a shell of his former self. He's still hitting around .350, not too shabby, but in college baseball that just puts him in the top 350, not the top 10. He's not been producing runs the way he was expected to do at this point, and has even been benched a game or two by his coach. All of this as a junior, with the major-league draft beckoning. His timing couldn't have been worse, and the kvetching and excuse-making and soul-searching on this end has gone on past any point where it could be helpful.

THE NUPTIALS:

Yesterday, one of my wife's best friends had a rehearsal dinner for her son's wedding. My wife's #2 son is the groom's best man. Today, we have a wedding. An outdoor wedding. And it's been raining in our neck of the woods. Oh, well. At least I don't have to park any cars, as the #3 son has been deputized to do. My job consists of dressing well and not bumping into the scenery, then leaving early for band rehearsal.

THIS JUST IN: NOTE THE BYLINE

Scientists have discovered evidence of a world less than twice Earth's size in a star system within the constellation Libra, 'just' 20 light-years away, and it appears to have a companion planet within the same system that, while larger, is a serious candidate for liquid water. Oceans of the stuff, in fact.

This could be the first rumblings of an epochal event. And, again, when you read the article, note the byline....:)

********UPDATE********

The paper of the actual finding and how it was made is available pre-print in a PDF file, here.

TO A MORE ROUTINE MODE OF WORSHIP?

Our church took the above picture a few Sundays back for the church's web site. You can spot me, standing a little higher than most, behind the sign. Some of our pastors are kneeling on the grass in the foreground. Not very slick, and it's just as well. We're many things at Memorial, but slick is not one of them. If we ever decide to go the grinding self-promotion route, we're going to have to farm that out to a professional, because it's just not our way.

That's not to say, though, that we don't try to promote ourselves. We do, especially around high holy days, as most churches do...which brings me, on a Sunday morning, to the point of this post: the high holy day of Easter has now come and gone, and I'm glad, and for two reasons.

First is that, as a church musician, there's a lot of extra work leading up to high holy days. It's expected that there will be a bigger production because of the day's importance in the liturgical calendar, and we are often reminded that these are opportunities to put the church's 'best foot forward' in terms of wooing potential new congregants, who are more likely to go to church on such days. In other words, Hatfield, make sure the music's good, we want to hook them if we can!

I don't worry my head too much about the last bit. It's manifestly a case of a human institution thinking in a self-serving way about how to not only perpetuate itself, but how to increase its' market share. I would love for my church to experience growth and be more effective at ministering to a greater number of people, and I hope that this will happen. But my primary interest in going to church is not to count the great cloud of witnesses, but to experience grace. Which, frankly, this sinner needs.

Which brings me to my second reason for being glad that Holy Week has run its' course. Over the last two Sundays (Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday) we've combined our two services into one, partly for logistical reasons, and partly to make sure that visitors to our church got to see every 'toe' of our 'best foot forward.' So it was on Easter that our opening processional was a kind of 'mashup' of a sequence intoned a capella, a choral introit, a processional hymn and a few minutes of progressive rock. I was proud of what we did, from the gentrifying traditional choir to the amateur musicians that I patiently rehearsed playing a groove in 5/4 to accompany 'Christ the Lord is Risen Today.' It was big, it was dramatic, it was different.

But it also departed from the experience that's been nurturing me: the 'contemporary worship service' at 9:30 that is my main charge is louder at times, yes, but it is by design more deliberately contemplative. In particular, the middle portion of the service really focuses more heavily on prayer and meditation and departs rather significantly from the 'happy-clappy' triumphalism of the megachurches I've experienced. I've been shocked to realize just how much this flavor of worship ministers to me personally, and this is precisely the thing that was lost when we had joint services. The nod to different styles of music, different approaches to liturgy, these made the transition...but what really made the service distinctive did not. And, while it was just two weeks, I really missed it and I'm glad to be getting back to my regular worship diet. I wonder what that says about me?