Light On Dark Water

Ashes

I guess it is my fate every Ash Wednesday to hear that song I detest at Mass (I can't bring myself to call it a hymn). It seems to have become the standard for the occasion.

"The dreams not fully dreamt"? What does that even mean?!?

Attempting to be charitable, I'll say that I think I can see what the writer was trying to say, and there's a valid point in there, about offering our failures and faults to God along with everything else. And there's nothing at all wrong with the last verse. But really, some of the phrases in it have a physically unpleasant effect on me.

Perhaps appropriately, I just burned the piece of cheese toast that was my lunch. Maybe there's some kind lesson about ashes in that: if you didn't like those ashes, try these, Mr. Critic.

Maclin Horton

39 responses to “Ashes”

  1. Robert Gotcher

    This is a bit much: “to create ourselves anew.”
    I’m just about to go to Mass. Let’s see if they use it.
    If you put the oven on 350 and gently cook them, rather than broiling, or putting it at 450, you are less likely to burn them.

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  2. Mac

    Yes, that line is the one that’s really startlingly wrong. I think the ones that are just vague pretentiousness, like “dreams not fully dreamt” really get on my nerves more.

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  3. Mac

    This is the real problem: it’s now been about 10 hours since I heard it, and it’s STILL STUCK IN MY HEAD. Hearing it once would be annoying, but all day is too much. I’m giving up pop music for Lent, but I’m going to be driven to listening to the Beatles or something just to get rid of this.

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  4. Fr. Matt Venuti

    That song should be burned at the stake.

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  5. Robert Gotcher

    It was the entrance song or opening song or song of gathering or whatever they call it. Musically, it reminds me of an Up With People song. Or, a junior high chorale song, which is about the same, I guess. This song is what the phrase “trite melody” was made for.

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  6. Robert Gotcher

    “I’m going to be driven to listening to the Beatles or something just to get rid of this.” <gasp!> A fate worse than death!
    You could try playing Mozart’s Requiem. It has some nice, catchy tunes.

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  7. Mac

    Not that I object to listening to the Beatles–I just mean their catchiness should do the job.
    I may burn myself at the stake if I can’t get this out of my head.
    I fully get the Up With People comparison. It’s one a friend of mine made back in the ’70s when we were experiencing our first pseudo-folk Masses.

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  8. Robert Gotcher

    Burning yourself at the stake would be a mortal sin. Perhaps having it stuck in your head for 40 days could be your Lenten penance? Then you wouldn’t have to give up chocolate.

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  9. Mac

    We’re not supposed to take on penances that we can’t bear.

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  10. Mac

    This is helping:
    http://cburrell.wordpress.com/2014/03/05/ash-wednesday-2014/

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  11. godescalc

    If you are attempting to attain some good thing and being burnt at the stake is an undesirable (but sadly unavoidable) side-effect, perhaps burning yourself at the stake would be permissible under the principle of double effect.
    I am glad I’ve never been exposed to this particular horror; the songs I heard at church yesterday might theoretically have been even worse, but I didn’t understand much beyond the “remember you’re going to die” bit and the occasional “have mercy on us” (they don’t do english-language masses here except on sunday, which means whenever a holy day of obligation falls during the week I’m obliged to stand around for an hour understanding not very much – the things which get repeated every Mass I understand by now, the things specific to any particular holy day generally go right over my head).

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  12. Mac

    Now that’s some serious casuistry. I foresee greatly divided opinion on the question of whether getting “Ashes” out of one’s head is a serious enough matter to justify the action.
    I went to a little trouble to find a link to the lyrics rather than a video of a performance, because I didn’t want others to suffer as I did.
    That sounds a lot like my experience of the Mass in Latin.

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  13. Stu

    Our priest said before distributing the ashes, “Most of you will hear ‘Remember that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return’, but for some I will say ‘Turn away from sin and follow the gospels’. You might say, ‘Father, why did you pick me?’ I don’t know, I am guided by the Spirit.” Sadly, I was not told the second. And yes, Mac, they played the song! 🙂

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  14. Mac

    You should be glad–apparently you are without sin.:-) Odd thing for a priest to do. I can imagine someone taking offense.
    They didn’t sing it at the cathedral, so I’ll try to arrange to be there next AW.

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  15. Stu

    I don’t think he said option 2 at all; he is quite funny and from Ireland. This is Fr. John Lynes at Little Flower CC in Midtown.

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  16. Stu

    The music director at the Cathedral is unaware of any music written in the last 200 years!!

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  17. godescalc

    I’ve attended latin mass once or twice, they were generally considerate enough to give the sermon in the vernacular. The sermon’s the hardest thing to get in another language anyway – most of the liturgy can be guessed from context and being familiar with it in another language, and the music is often contained in a book and pointed out by number (understanding from reading is often easier than from hearing), but if the sermon’s beyond your difficulty level there’s nothing for it but to wait it out and hope it stops soon. (Or maybe do a crossword, or something.)

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  18. Mac

    You must not go to the cathedral often enough, Stu. I have heard more Glory ‘n’ Praise there than I care to, although overall it’s way better than yer avg parish.
    Once or twice is about all the Latin Mass experience I have. I’m sure it would get easier, but I had difficulty even following the liturgical sequence, even though I’m not totally unacquainted with Latin and had a book to follow. A lot of things seemed to be out of sequence relative to the book, maybe calendar-dependent stuff. I’m sure I would adjust in time and probably learn to like it, but as it is I’m glad we have a vernacular liturgy, especially now that I have access to one in English.

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  19. Louise

    Don’t burn yourself at the stake, Maclin. What would happen to the blog? Think of others!

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  20. Mac

    Ok, you talked me out of it. I wasn’t very enthused about the idea.

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  21. Craig

    I have only heard “Ashes” once, some years ago. I gather from what people are reporting here that I’ve been fortunate — or blessed.
    This year I went to a parish near work for their lunch-hour Mass, and it was surprisingly good: there were no musicians or choir, so we simply sang the Ordinary, and in Latin! True, it was sung at a sluggish pace such that I thought parishioners with poor breath control might start falling over, but even so I was grateful.
    I had hoped to hear “Remember that thou art dust…”, but the priest was instead liberally dispersing the more upbeat “Repent, and believe in the Gospel”. Maybe next year.

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  22. Mac

    I’m a curmudgeon. I would have been grumbling “I already believe–why do you think I’m here?” And I sure didn’t go to Ash Wednesday Mass to hear something upbeat.

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  23. Robert Gotcher

    Remember, Maclin, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.
    Just sayin’.

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  24. Mac

    Yep, that’s what the guy said yesterday, like he was supposed to.

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  25. godescalc

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFx9LIkb3qg (or the first half thereof, anyway).

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  26. Mac

    Well, that looks interesting. Have to get off to work now and will watch it later.

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  27. Louise

    Ok, you talked me out of it. I wasn’t very enthused about the idea.
    Understandable. It would have been very uncomfortable for you.

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  28. Louise

    I would have been grumbling “I already believe–why do you think I’m here?”
    That’s very funny. 🙂

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  29. Mac

    Yes, it would have been uncomfortable, and I am very much concerned with my comfort.
    That Richard Thompson video is great, godescalc. I had a little trouble understanding the words at first. If anybody else does, they can be found here.

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  30. Daniel Nichols

    RIchard Thompson is great, especially when he does traditional music.
    What is this “Ashes” song to which you refer?

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  31. Robert Gotcher

    Daniel, do yourself a favor and don’t find out.

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  32. Mac

    That would be my advice as well. But if you really want to experience it, I think it will turn up if you Google “ashes hymn” or search for that on YouTube. It was written by someone named Conry so you could add that to the search to pin it down. I’m not going to try to provide a link because in order to be sure I’d found the right one I’d have to hear a bit of it. And I really dislike it that much. I’ll probably find out someday that the writer is a saint and have to apologize for this.
    Ha. If you start typing “ashes hymn” in Google one of the suggested completions is “heretical.”

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  33. Daniel Nichols

    From what you are saying the writer is almost certainly not a saint. Not that saints can’t have really bad taste..

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  34. Mac

    Yeah, I doubt if heretics can be saints, at least canonically speaking.

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  35. godescalc

    “Heresy” can mean “getting things wrong”, which is morally neutral (sort of; there’s a moral obligation to try to get things right), and is compatible with sainthood; the sin of heresy, however, involves refusing correction (I think this was Aquinas’ definition), which would make it a subspecies of pride, and would be something of an obstacle to canonisation.
    A quick look at the lyrics puts my teeth on edge but I think “it can be admitted that they have a Catholic meaning, given many explanations and amendments”, to quote from Pope John XXII’s condemnation of Meister Eckhardt.

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  36. Mac

    That’s the material vs. formal distinction, I think. I have no doubt at all that there are material heretics (as well as schismatics) who were saints in God’s eyes, though I don’t think the Church has canonized any, and even perhaps formal heretics at some remove from the original prideful refusal. Or does that make them only material? I mean, a Protestant who comes from generations of Protestants, looks at the Church, and remains Protestant, is making an objective refusal, but is not in the same moral position as, say, Calvin himself.
    It really isn’t so much the apparent heresy of “create ourselves anew,” annoying as it is, as the general oozy pretentiousness of the lyrics that affects me like fingernails on a blackboard. (Do people under 50 or so still understand that image?) “Then must our lives be true” [shudder]

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  37. Louise

    Do people under 50 or so still understand that image
    Yes. But people under 30 might not. What a thought!

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  38. Paul

    I’ve never tried the effect of fingernails on a whiteboard. Or smartboard.

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  39. Mac

    I don’t think I’ve ever met with a smartboard, but my fingernails are perfectly happy with a whiteboard. Are you saying you have no experience of the blackboard? or rather chalkboard, since many of them are green.

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