We began our Sunday rehearsal as usual this morning, which meant I had a few minutes to run through my prelude and postlude on the organ before we began rehearsing our small adult choir.\u00a0 I flipped on the organ (yes, it\u2019s electronic\u2014no judgement!), and went through my pieces\u2026everything was fine.\u00a0 When everyone was ready, I stepped over to the piano and we started running through Psalm 63.\u00a0 Business as usual, but not for long.\u00a0 Moments later, we hear an overwhelming \u201cBOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM\u201d ransacking the sound system.<\/p>\n
Usually such things don\u2019t perturb our rehearsal, but we stopped for this one.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re having problems with the sound system again\u2026it\u2019s probably Father\u2019s mic,\u201d our director explained as he went to turn the sound system off.\u00a0 We all shook our heads, and were about to pick up with verse three, when I\u2014who was sitting closest to the organ\u2014began to smell wafts of acrid burning plastic.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s something burning!\u201d I burst out.\u00a0 And, if your next question is, \u201cDid your organ catch on fire?\u201d\u00a0 the answer would be \u201cYes, yes it did.\u201d<\/p>\n
We sprang into action, turned off the organ and pulled the plug.\u00a0 There was some warmth, but (thankfully), no tongues of fire.\u00a0 There may have been smoldering, but no smoke.\u00a0 What did we do next?\u00a0 We took a deep breath and we picked up with verse three.<\/p>\n
What do you do when ritual is interrupted?\u00a0 Certainly, things happen all the time during the liturgy which, normally, we would not wish to happen: there\u2019s a medical emergency, an acolyte falls over (locked knees), Mrs. So-and-So forgot to turn her cell phone off AGAIN.\u00a0 Or, in our case, an instrument bites the dust in no small way.<\/p>\n
When ritual is interrupted\u2014our first instinct might be to stop and stare, to glare, or perhaps to help (sometimes unhelpfully) to resolve the situation.\u00a0 In any circumstance where the unexpected happens, safety first.\u00a0 For us, we turned the organ off and unplugged it\u2014we checked for smoke and, seeing none, moved on to prepare the music for Mass.\u00a0 Other situations might call for an announcement for assistance, or a congregation member taking charge of that dizzy acolyte and helping him to the sacristy, or helping our friend turn off her cell phone once and for all.\u00a0 With safety concerns addressed, and persons (or objects) cared for and attended to, the ritual can and, I might say, should continue. \u00a0Clearly, a certain amount of flexibility and agility are needed, but an interrupted ritual will still move on precisely because it is a ritual, not a computer program where one glitch will send the whole thing south.\u00a0 Human participation and creativity keep our liturgies alive, even when our organs are dead.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, I\u2019ll look forward to a repair person arriving to care for our instrument\u2026and I\u2019ll be saying a lot of prayers of intercession to St. Cecilia!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What do you do when ritual is interrupted? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[20,2864],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-general","category-ritual_studies"],"yoast_head":"\n