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Views from the Choir Loft

What’s so good about growing up?

Veronica Brandt · August 3, 2013

HERE I WAS IN A CROWDED ROOM at our local Community Health Centre, hoping my boys were being suitably well-behaved, trying to think how to represent my volunteer mothers’ group with the local health professionals. I recognised a nurse I had sat next to a few years ago, with a crinkled face and purple hair, whose twinkling smile drew me in like a tractor beam. After the usual questions about the baby in my arms she said “I have the best job in the world.”

She is a Child and Family Community Health Nurse. Her job is to keep in touch with new mothers, checking up on the baby and generally supporting them. I can imagine that a job looking after babies is pretty sweet, but the “best job in the world”?

“I get to watch people grow.” Of course she got to measure babies growing, but this was only a small part. She described how she watched the parents get stronger. Faced with the demands of a new baby, they had to confront their own short-comings and grow. While helping new parents with all the obstacles that pop up along the way, she could see these people, already physical adults, mature into real grown-ups.

What is it that we mean by “growing up”? In a world where “youth” ranges in age from about 13 right up to 35, we seem to have forgotten about helping people grow. So much is dumbed down so as not to present any obstacles to youth. We bend over backwards to make things easy for young people — and not-so-young people.

Think about things that make you feel like saying “Oh, grow up!” Things like emotional outbursts, over-reactions, cowardice, smutty jokes and gossip. Generally they are cases when passions or emotions get the better of reason.

Michael Voris says Feelings are Meaningless, but that may be over-stating the case. Our feelings or emotions can help us do right when guided by reason. We can even do our work better when our heart is in it. Human passions and emotions are running riot in the world today, but they were made to serve the rational animals.

Where the world has confusion, the Church has clarity. The psychologist Dr. Conrad Baars uncovered a gold-mine of good thinking on the relation between emotions and reason in St. Thomas Aquinas. I quote him at length in Integrating emotion, reason and will. With time and patience and love, humans can learn to handle their emotions and this will help them live more authentically human lives.

Plant an act; reap a habit.
Plant a habit; reap a virtue.
Plant a virtue; reap a character.
Plant a character; reap a destiny.
(remember the roots of the word “Virtue” are in manliness and power)

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Filed Under: Articles Last Updated: January 1, 2020

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About Veronica Brandt

Veronica Brandt holds a Bachelor Degree in Electrical Engineering. She lives near Sydney, Australia, with her husband and six children.—(Read full biography).

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PDF Download • Trinity Sunday (22 pages)

Feel free to download this Organ Accompaniment Booklet for Trinity Sunday (Second Vespers). Notice how the modes progress by number. Psalm 1 is mode 1; Psalm 2 is mode 2; Psalm 3 is mode 3; Psalm 4 is mode 4; Psalm 5 is mode 5. I am told by an expert that other feasts (such as Corpus Christi) are likewise organized by mode, and it’s called a “numerical office.”

—Jeff Ostrowski
10 June 2022 • “Official” rhythm of plainsong

I continue to search for the most beautiful way to present the “pure” Editio Vaticana scores. (Technically, the “pure” rhythm of the official edition is what everyone is supposed to use.) You can download my latest attempt, which is the Introit for this coming Sunday: Feast of the Most Holy Trinity. Because this is not an ancient feast, the Introit had to be adapted (perhaps around 750AD). Prior Johner says the adaptation is “not an entirely happy one.”

—Jeff Ostrowski
7 June 2022 • FEEDBACK

From Chelan, Washington: “CCWatershed is a God-sent resource that I can’t function without! Such great work by the team to bring beauty back to our liturgy!” From Gainesville, Florida: “I am so appreciative of the work, of my brothers and sisters in music!” From Troutman, North Carolina: “Keep up the excellent work in service of the Liturgy!”

—Jeff Ostrowski

Random Quote

“The choir shall henceforth sing or say no anthems of our Lady or other Saints, but only of our Lord, and then not in Latin; but choosing out the best and most sounding to Christian religion they shall turn the same into English, setting thereunto a plain and distinct note for every syllable one: they shall sing them and none other.”

— 1548 Edict of King Edward VI (a heretic) for Lincoln Cathedral

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