“When people approach the Church, we must offer them beauty"

Let the Church say "Amen!"
Good article in the National Catholic Register about the foundation of Silverstream Priory in Co. Meath, Ireland.
Dom Mark Kirby is one of the most inspiring people I've ever met at a CMAA Colloquium, which is saying a lot because yearly the gathering takes on the aura of a retreat, and if it's possible for an event to be a "spiritual director," it is surely one.

“Dom Benedict [the other monk with whom Dom Mark founded the community at Silverstream] and I were conscious that, in God’s providence, we were called to rekindle the torch that blazed from the Benedictine abbey of Fore in County Westmeath until its suppression under Henry VIII in 1536.”

Oh, and all this makes it seem like the right time to remind my 3.2 regular readers to vote in Church March Madness.
Though I guess that ought, with a nod to liturgical use, to be "Procession Madness."

"King of the Friday"

Our pastor, who is, as they say, FBI, is wont to recite a poem or two he learned as a child at close of Mass or during the homily.
Often he will proclaim it in Irish as well and English.
I look forward to hearing this at least once every Lent

King of the Friday

O King of the Friday
Whose limbs were stretched on the Cross,
O Lord, who did suffer
The bruises, the wounds, the loss,

     We stretch ourselves
     Beneath the shield of thy might,
     Some fruit from the tree of thy pass
     Fall on us this night...

Beautiful, hopeful thought, is it not? that some Fruit from that tree might fall upon us?

Sean-nós Studies?

Had a fiddler visiting, (most assuredly a fiddler, not a violinist,)  delightful days, and now, after a number of years of appalling vocal laziness, (and I've chided Himself!) I want to study. I want to learn. I want to expand.

I want to know how to sing Sean-nós songs.

I never had enormous flexibility, despite the best intentions of several superb teachers to fashion me into a coloratura, (is there anything more useless than a soprano with a high E and no flexibility?)

So deliberate pursuit of the skill, (rather than yodelling along with other people in the shame-free environs of my den,)  is not going to come easily, even if I do ferret out a way to learn the old style.
I've sung my share of Irish-ish songs, but they were of the Herbert Hughes "art song" variety and my technique, or at least my intention, was pointedly not folk.
In retrospect, I wonder? did we, (everyone at conservatory, prosperous non-American blacks singing spirituals, preppies getting in touch with their Irish roots, giant Slavic voices having a go at Russian folk tunes, etc.) sound as silly singing the art music versions of the Songs of Our People as when we helped out a friend by providing back-up vocals rehearsal tapes for a "rock musical"?
Beside the inauthenticity, you have to deal with the Using a Howitzer to Kill A Mosquito syndrome that opera singers often evince when they slum...
Well, age and inertia's effect on my chops should save me from that! Ha!

And who knew, Irish trad musicians have the same mindset as Bach!

"DO MHÉADÚ GLÓIRE DÉ AGUS ONÓRA NA HÉIREANN"

I think, can't be sure, (darn Those Interwebs,) it means,

 "FOR THE GREATER GLORY OF GOD AND THE HONOR OF IRELAND."