Babies, you've got to be kind

Or: on the need for humble love in discourse.

I have, of course, been guilty of this as well. I have noticed lately a certain rigidity in online discourse that is most troubling. Most recently, Frederica Mathewes-Green, who isn't really one of my favorites, mentioned that she did not think legalizing gay marriage was a big deal (“I was asked why I don’t oppose gay marriage, and I’ll try to make this brief. It’s because I don’t agree that gay marriage harms society, or harms marriage."). She got completely raked over the coals for it until she wrote a longer article explaining her position. I imagine some people are still raking her over the coals, but some people realized, oh, wait, there is some nuance here and a charitable way her position could be conceived as something other than abandonment of the Church's teaching. But, wait: shouldn't we be starting from that place of charity? Especially with a well-known somebody who is probably, like, not a panheretical liberalist ecumenist bent on redefining the entirety of church teaching?

I also have been in a number of conversations about things that completely turn people off when they visit parishes (esp Orthodox, since that's the circle I run in). One of the big ones is the polemic urge. eg badmouthing Protestantism, the West, the liberals, the gays, the Obama, the Catholics, the Ukraine (using the article because they believe it's just one of their regions), etc. Apart from the immediate effect of perhaps alienating the visitor who is coming in that is perhaps the very thing you are vilifying, I think this style displays a definite lack of necessary charity in discourse: they are not hearing the people they are excoriating.

Now, I admit, there are at times people attracted by polemics, sarcasm, joking, etc, but it's a very dangerous thing to pull out for the general public and must be used very carefully: you have to show that you're listening to the people you are talking to and have some basic respect for them. And it should be very different from, "I heard you say this, you have departed from the teaching of the Church, repent and sin no more." It also has to be done in a way that you're not plowing over the weak, vulnerable, downtrodden, etc - such as any of the usual "whipping boys" for the possessors of white male privilege.

People who are committed to a place already can be willing to endure it to make it better, because if all the good people flee, you're leaving behind a hellhole. But if there are people that aren't committed, it's a lot to ask of them to tell them they should join and fight against the flow to make this corner of the Church a better place. America is a big place - lots of wide open space - and we're used to self-segregating with the like-minded rather than confronting this kind of impolite and uncharitable behavior. So if pretty much everybody around you will nod in agreement that, sure, environmentalism is an anti-Christian religion, then you might say it as part of your performative Orthodox conservative shtick. You will get some brownie points and nobody will contradict you because it's not done. The people who would rightly call you out on that nonsense have little to gain by doing so because you wouldn't say it if you weren't supported. So, then what?

More music I will never use: a Georgian Polyeleos put into English

I found a nice Georgian Polyeleos and thought to myself, you know, this could be in English. So I did it. Some phrasing still needs work - particularly the last bit - and I haven't taken the time to pretty up the score itself yet (I'm sure there's a better way to mark refrains in Lilypond), but the notes should be accurate. The dissonances are supposed to be there, I swear. Please let me know if you have suggestions - note in the original there were a couple different variations of the melody and a couple different ways of dividing up the notes, so other solutions are possible without having to come up with "new" music (also, other translations, other word orders, etc can solve problems). I have picked the verses that match the original text, but, really, you can take whatever ones you want. In the original, it seemed that they did the rising "b c d" beginning for verses that were the beginnings of sentences and "d d d" for continuations of a sentence, so you may want to continue that if you change the text.

Here is the original video:



EDIT: if interested, I have transposed for SSA, SAT, and SA-Baritone arrangements. They are up an octave (could go higher - the alto is low), up an octave, and up a 7th. Note that the bottom staff intentionally has one of the accidentals flatted out, it's a feature of Georgian music. The problem with mixed arrangements is that the tessitura is all wrong.

What is the worst of all possible Orthodox music?

Mind you, I mean actually Orthodox music, so none of the old Evangelical Orthodox stuff slipping under the radar. To me, it is a tight competition between aspects of the Lvov-Bakhmetev project and the Karam project. The stichera in the latter, however, can possibly be defended as being really more a type of recitative for the propers than "real" music. I think that is wrong, but it is some kind of defense. Karam's 4-part harmonizations of Byzantine chant, though, are really almost indefensible, and as done in America with the most horribly stilted translations ever conceived, are truly horrid.

EDIT: It has been brought to my attention there are a few pieces of Karam that do sound nice and aren't too heavy-handed, to be sure. What brought this up, however, is the "To thee, our champion leader," as arranged for the Antiochians. The project as a whole is problematic.

Modesty as politeness

I think one important matter about modesty that people do not bring up much is that a breach of modesty (if it does really occur, I have my doubts) is not immoral, it is a breach of etiquette. That is, in almost all cases, at worst, impolite. Unfortunately, and I say this as a big fan of Miss Manners and etiquette in general even if I may at times ignore it, the dictates of polite society weigh more heavily on women than on men.

The panheretic's guide to dealing with women

Somebody asked a modesty-related question on some web board and, though it turned out the guy was not Orthodox and possibly a troll, it did raise some questions about why some guys think it's their responsibility or at least prerogative in relationships to tell women how to dress. One of the reasons, of course, is patriarchy. However, not everybody who reads this web-log is as much of a misandrist as I am, so that may not go down well. Another reason, of course, is narcissism. Unfortunately, I don't really have the cure for the soul. However, another reason is that a lot of these guys are well-meaning, nice guys who just haven't had much experience dealing with women and realizing the sort of crap they have to deal with. Therefore, they think they're being helpful. With that in mind, I will offer you some helpful things I have learned (and I am very willing to add more things to this list - I'm just banging this out quickly) in the hopes that well-meaning young men don't do something utterly stupid and self-absorbed like try to control how their female friends dress and otherwise interact with women appropriately.

1. Women are people, too. The fundamental axiom here is that women are human beings. You do not know better than them simply by virtue of being male. Since they are human beings (just like you!), they have probably thought about things before, have their own unique perspective and opinions, and generally are in charge of their own lives.

2. I really don't have a #2.

Two worthwhile posts about the craft of Orthodox church music

I've had to, over the past 18 months, put in a fair bit of thought about doing Orthodox church music. The last 18 months has been having to deal in various ways with the musical situation at a new OCA mission, with the first 15 months of it having nobody nominally in charge and the last 3 or so months with me as the "choir director". Prior to this, I had spent the last 10 years in a couple missions which, while they may had had, at times, a difficult musical situation, they always had somebody else in charge and, I would like to think, some vision of musical excellence in mind that somebody else was thinking of. Generally, I flitted in and out of the choir as needed, generally being in the choir (or being the choir) for ferial services and not in it on Sundays. And then a year in a Greek church which had its own set of challenges, but I didn't think about them at all: it's Greek music, I have no idea what's going on, and there were a load of difficulties there that I didn't want to deal with at all. Namely, they were, as far as I can tell, trying to get the choir running and encourage more congregational participation. For my part, I sung in the choir.

Anyway, there are two articles, the first from Richard Barrett about how to improve as an Orthodox church musician. Perhaps the first and most important point is that Orthodox musicians need to exist, as music is an important and primary part of our worship rather than an afterthought. Further, they need to work on getting better. To do that, parishes need to invest in making it happen. There surely is a question about what and how much they need to invest, and there are plenty of other things they may be underinvesting in, but if they're making cuts, they need to be done consciously with a plan to rectify them.

Another along that theme, on the need to pay choir directors and church musicians in general from Benedict Sheehan. Now, mind you, I'm not agitating to be paid here, as I'm not a real musician, and I don't even really conduct - I suggest music that gets rejected by the priest and I suggest pitches that get rejected by the sopranos. We're a small mission and not really paying for anything right now. But it is something to be mindful of as things grow: investment in music is necessary, as necessary as investing in icons and in paying the priest.

A third article as a bonus, also from Barrett (can you guess one of the people I've been relying on to help guide my thought on church music? not exclusively, though, as I'm emphatically not a Byzantine chant guy): Psalterion as Pulpit.