A very kind, very satisfying message

The father of several school-age boys whispered to me in church recently that he thought I might like to know what one of his sons had said.
The conversation was about how school at St X's was going. Good. And sports? good. Band? good. Choir?
Oh, okay I guess.
Hmm?
Well, all we do is sing songs. I miss choir with Mrs. Scelata. We really learn stuff with her, we learned about the music we sang and how it fits in with Church and Religion and stuff, learned about God....
Yes, he is one of the group that sang Puer Nobis so gloriously a few years ago, really nailed the mode, the slight percussive repeated notes, the MEANING of the text... he was in fourth grade as I recall.
If I had any doubts about doing Schola this year, this would have erased it.
I'm glad i had already decided to ask him to do a solo (probably on that Italian carol I hear at midnight Mass from the Vatican last year,) so I won't suspect myself of playing favorites for unworthy reasons.
So choir and schola really can have an effect.
I might add that from my vantage point in the loft, watching the goings on in the sanctuary during the canon, being acutely aware of the server ringing the sanctus bells for my "cue" etc., far more closely and more often than anyone else could, I am utterly assured that it is children I have worked with who are the best servers, by far. They know and make the responses, they bow when appropriate (which hardly another soul in the church does, aside from the cantors -- also at my request,,) they know how to conduct themselves in the Presence of the Lord.... the head server, on the other hand, often sits through the consecration, the more easily to reach the bells without much effort.

I think putting the servers, the cantor and the deacon on their knees would go quite a long way toward reinforcing an atmosphere of reverence in our liturgies.

Bowing, and other liturgical postures is an interesting case to me... I am not positive until I made an issue of it with my cantors when I came on board that all of the ordained remembered the prescription during the Incarnatus est, (I asked, the first Christmas we were back using the full church, fully re-kneelered. if a prie-dieu could not be provided for the cantors who were not as spry as I, since thy would be kneeling rather than "merely bowing" during the Credo. I suppose that is a manipulative way to have gone about it, of reminding TPTB that, oh yeah, the REST of the year we're all supposed to be bowing... but I was surprised at the resistance to the idea of the prie-dieu. Well, I don't know....I offered to drag it out of the storage room myself. Well, they're in kind of ratty shape.... I'll make sure I get one that is not torn or damaged on the side that will face the congregation. Well, they'll be dirty.... I'll dust it myself.

There's an afternoon of continuing education for those in (lay) liturgical ministry by the diocese and the flyer promises that they will answer questions like, why don't the deacons in our diocese kneel for the consecration?
I'm sure they have a reason and am curious to know what it is, but not curious enough to sit through an afternoon of the kind of thing our OofW specializes in (thought some, particularly those Br T has had a hand in have been very good... others, not so much.)

But I am hopeful.
Baby steps, baby stops, baby steps....