And all the responsive-reading things and prayers and stuff.

I’m telling you about this because I went to Sparkly’s “baccalaureate” (a church service to go with graduation).  Because Sparkly’s college is Catholic, it was extremely long (I was there for 2 1/2 hours, because I came early in order to get a seat) and there was a lot of music and a lot of responses that the congregation was supposed to say.

And the people sititng near me totally slacked off on all of it.  The woman next to me gave me funny looks for actually singing when the leader person gestured to the audience.  And it seemed like the percentage of people in the whole room who bothered to sing or speak went down as the service went on.

There was supposed to be a part where all the friends and relatives were blessing the graduates– with someone at the front reading a bunch of blessings, and it said in the program that we were supposed to say “Amen” after each one.  But she didn’t even really give us time to say it, and nobody did.

 

I am not Catholic and I wasn’t raised Catholic so I don’t have any familiarity with any of it– I didn’t know any of the music, and most of the responsive things were different from anything I’ve done before.  But, two things:

— There are a lot of musicians in my family.  Ever since I could read, it was just assumed that I would sing in church.  I’ve never thought of not singing as an option.  Boundary Girl once said something about feeling self-conscious about singing in church that was just completely incomprehensible to me.  At my parents’ church everybody sings, including the ninety-year-old ladies who could be better described as croaking instead of singing.  It doesn’t matter whether you sound good.  That isn’t the point.  The point is the action of singing, of joining your voice with everyone else’s, of focusing all your attention on the words and the music, and doing it to praise God.

— You can’t not participate because you think it’s silly.  Everything becomes awkward and silly if people aren’t willing to put effort and sincerity into it.  And even really silly things can be important and meaningful if you put in the effort.  I also have strong opinions about what types of religious music I like (basically, all my favorite things were written before 1900) but I never refuse to sing anything.

My experiences with music are as close to believing in God as I get.  I’m incredibly frustrated and disappointed that so many people at the baccalaureate decided to have an awkward experience of mumbling and listening to the choir and taking pictures instead of an actual religious service.

I grew up among people who you truly cannot beat for actually saying Amen, out loud and all together and sounding like they mean it.  I wanted to give Sparkly a proper blessing and a proper prayer and, y’know, give some indication of “the community supports our graduates!” besides it being written in the program?  But no.  They made it a thing to sit through instead of a thing to participate in.  Apparently the people around where Sparkly was sitting actually sang, so that’s good at least.