As I've said before, I envy you - to be falling in love with the church, and doing it somewhere that tradition is embraced...especially because the tradition, which I would adore had I been there, has such a deeper resonance for someone whose heart is moved not only by the beauty, but by the sacrament that beauty surrounds...I can experience the beauty - you're receiving the grace as well. You're a very lucky man...

I don't mention this stuff much here because A: I don't want to change the nature of the blog, and B: It would be presumptuous in a newcomer--I've been thinking about the political and social stuff since the 1970's, and the Church since about January.

But it's like coming out of a dentist's waiting room into a hall so vast that you can't see the far walls, and so lofty it has it's own clouds and hurricanes...And best of all, for me, it's not binary. I grew up in an evangelical tradition where you flipped like a light switch from "un-saved" to "saved." If you didn't manage that, you were like, stuck. Stuck in the mud permanently. (Yes, I probably misunderstood things.)

They should be required to install this for night riding.

*Le sigh*

I've not had the advantage of local good choral music, at least not since college. It's mostly up in Sacramento, a twenty-mile drive which is too much to face at the end of a workday.

One of my favorite CDs ever is the Gonzaga University Choir's Encore! CD. I went into the Christmas Candlelight Concert, came out and made a beeline for the table selling it— they were out, but I was on the list and got mine the day I went home for break. Personet Hodie with full choir and orchestra and organ is a fair cry from the more common women's voices version, and Daemon Inrepit Callidus is so amazing that you don't realize it's entirely a cappella.

Here's the broken page to order stuff from. Horrible, horrible implementation. Sadly, it doesn't look like they've put a CD out in the last six years— and why on earth they only have a VHS of the Candlelight Concert, I don't know.

(I think I *do* know why there's no new product. The Broadcast Studies department consisted of a whole two professors with one adjunct, and the professor who was good at getting stuff done moved to Denver, where I randomly met him at an Easter Vigil mass.)

Gotta love these tangents, don't you? :)