God, grant me patience..... RIGHT NOW

I've been meaning to write about our Holy Week, and the thoughts have been churning around, so belatedly, here they are -- it seems my main thoughts of the Triduum are about sin.
My sins and God's mercy.
(No this isn't some expression of dark, self-lacerating "Catholic guilt," I am probably one of the least scrupulous, most rationalizing people you could ever hope to meet.)
Like all men, I commit the same sins, over and over, and over, and over.
But as PapaRatz told those 1st communicants, IIRC, that only makes sense - you have to wash off pretty much the same kind of dirt every night in the bath tub.
An out of the ordinary day finds you dirty with some new kind of dirt, I suppose it's the same with sin, but since our near occasions tend to repeat themselves somewhat monotonously, why wouldn't the sins themselves?
I went to confession twice within the span of a few days -- I suppose the very sin that needed to be shriven (are sins themselves "shriven" or are people shriven of their sins?) also impelled me into the confessional.
I could not wait.
I cannot wait.
I want it done NOW.
I want people to pay attention NOW.
And then I find myself wanting to get away from them NOW when they just can't or won't or simply haven't done as I want.
Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord Supper was.... not my shining hour. Okay, it was my worst moment. I wanted a cattle prod to get the choir members of the various parishes to just pay attention.
I don't think I did anything, or said anything untoward, (one can only mouth words so loudly, after all, wild gesticulation and writing in all caps on a dry erase board not withstanding,) I merely harboured uncharitable thoughts. Harboured? I guess I offered them dry-dock facilities as well...
Almost the entire Triduum was like that, every moment of every liturgy seemed about reminding someone, or answering someone, or trying to quiet someone or waving programs in the air pointing forcefully to a direction for someone, or fetching something for someone or explaining something for the fifth time to someone...
(YES, you did that wrong, M'am but after that moment has past and while I am craning to hear a cue from a less than intelligible speaker so I can direct our response is NOT the time to justify it, or explain to me why the mistake was made.)
In the past I have thought it was a personality flaw of mine, or a lack of preparation on my part that led to the stress and emotion, but that's not it.
I was completely prepared.
My instructions that were ignored were in writing, the music that was clamored for was in their packets, there were no serious typos, the traffic pattern for the choir's communion was clearly mapped out and demonstrated, the music for Adoration had been handed off to the one who wanted it, TPTB had been consulted and obeyed.
So there it is.
I hereby declare it a situation, not a problem.
A problem has solutions, a situation is simply to be endured.
In my career as a church music director, (all of it, despite my advanced age and regardless of what others may think, post-lapsarian, it will always be like this.)
The choir will never read their programs. Some ordained person will always brush me off when I offer to go over his music earlier in the process and then need me to remind him "how this goes" five minutes before Mass. Tenors will always ask questions whose answers are already in their hands. Bassi will always hoard octavos yet claim not to have the psalm when they have 3 copies in their folders. The sopranos will always sit in the precise chairs where they have sat before regardless of changing membership, voice parts, divisi passages and abilities. The altos will always prefer performing a hoary old war-horse to a proper. Everyone will always complain about the choice of music. They will always ignore written and spoken commands to sing unison, but when we try an unaccompanied verse of a hymn suddenly all jump up to the melody.
And me?
I played like an orangutang in mittens.
(Oh, and in the interest of full disclosure, I just remembered, there WAS a major typo. I had not an entire computer crash, but a crisis in my music printing program, and had to reconstruct the psalm, (which I only had to do because our erstwhile "Catholic" hymnal has no respect for the integrity of the texts of the Mass, either ordinary or proper.) And what was in the cantor book was not identical in rhythm to what we had practiced earlier in the month.}
Mea maxima culpa....
But the two cantors compensated womanfully.
I felt that I had very little space for prayer. Yes, an organist or music director, like, say and MC, prays BY doing his job. But it is sometimes very difficult.
Perhaps my only un self conscious moment, (and therefore my only real prayer,) was the psalm on Good Friday.
I need to find more moments like that.... no, I need to help create more moments like that, both for me and for my people.
Not during the psalm, but afterwards, as I was reverencing the altar to return to my pew I had this moment of astounding clarity and light, it is as if the Holy Spirit personally whispered in my ear, "See?"
Because I had seen.
I didn't mention it, but Himself related an almost identical experience after the Exultet -- he said he suddenly declared in his head, for THIS I was made.
We've both had our share of performing "triumphs," and yes, they feel swell, and it's not unholy to happily affirm that one is doing what one was meant to do, and that doing such things is why we are given the gifts we are given.
But this is... so much more.