Category: Music

I can believe this…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

Listening to the radio makes you happier than watching TV or browsing the internet. Radio stimulates your imagination, instead of having images fed to you, you have to think and your brain enjoys this and music requires an engaged mind to truly appreciate its subtleties.

It has been…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

both a beautiful and intense weekend of music with performances on Friday night, Saturday afternoon, and a jam/audition on Saturday evening following Vespers. So much music. So many places to play. Sunday is a tired but happy afternoon.

I cannot remember a time in my life without music, listening to it, playing it, and occasionally performing it. I played for my classmates in grade school. I played for myself in high school. I played for the faithful in church from time to time and in my 40’s and now early 50’s the lid has popped off and every bit of music that didn’t get played in earlier days has started to overflow the jar.

It’s not about being a rock star or anything like that at all. It’s not even that I’m the most adept musician around. Music just flows. Music is interwoven with my life. Music just somehow finds a way in, through, and around me. In my life I’ve played violin, piano, mandolin, guitar, ukelele, and bass and I’m willing to try any instrument at least once. They’re all good and the experience of encountering them never ceases to amaze me.

And now, in my middle years, when the anxieties and self consciousness of childhood and adolescence are long gone there is no pressure to do anything but open my mouth and sing or stand and play. Perhaps others are terrified of that but all my soul says is “It’s about time, get up there and play.” I can and have for hours and I presume that I must exasperate the people I share the stage with when everything inside me says “We’ve got time, let’s do one more song.”

I guess I’m just a late bloomer with a compulsion to make up for lost time. Maybe its just about the idea that I can be me again, the little kid in front of his classmates on the piano, the teenager watching it all from afar, and now a grown man up on the stage having the time of my life.

Sing like you’re in the shower and dance like no one is watching.

For this Sunday…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart,
naught be all else to me, save that thou art;
Thou my best thought by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.

Be thou my wisdom, thou my true word,
I ever with thee and thou with me Lord;
Thou my great Father, I thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with thee one.

Be thou my battle shield, sword for the fight;
Be thou my dignity, thou my delight
Thou my soul’s shelter, thou my high tower:
Raise thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise:
Thou mine inheritance now and always;
Thou and thou only first in my heart;
High King of Heaven, my treasure thou art.

High King of heaven, my victory won,
May I reach heaven’s joys, O Bright Heaven’s sun!;
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my vision, O Ruler of all