Bureaucracies are human beings. People tend to forget that.

They are people operating under the constraints of procedures and policies they often don't make. Keeping their paychecks requires following them.

A second thought. Sounds a bit like a Catholic musician's job, doesn't it?

I knew personally of a priest with a huge ego and his ongoing battle over an arrangement of the "Our Father" by the progressive (she thought) music director. As best I could tell, she had begun the thing in a way he didn't consider acceptable. Two huge egos with obnoxious and overbearing personalities.

She didn't intone it, but wrote it in Finale in a way he found offensive. She refused to rewrite it. The impasse reached the point he refused to sing it so we had spoken "Our Father's" for several years after. He considered it incorrectly notated and she didn't. Neither would budge.

.

The interesting thing is they had known each other for many years and I think some of their disputes went back years before I arrived on the scene. They were sometimes funny, often maddening to deal with. He's dead and she is retired - blessed be the name of the Lord.

Speaking of new normal, I must say I've gotten quite adapted to my "mostly at home" life, and miss only a few things, and don't miss at all the enormous amount of time spent going hither and yon, especially when combined with waiting for this or that. I am going to try to eliminate as many hithers and yons as possible to maximize quiet time in my studio. It's been a real treasure to have the extra time for prayer, music, art, and even just having more conversations with my mother and husband. There are times when I have needed and will need to go across town, but I always ended up adding on to those: "Oh, while I'm out I'll just stop by the grocery/bank/park/bakery/campus"...and before you know it I've spent 3 more hours on top of the original 3 hour round trip outing, and now the day is basically far spent, and all I've got left is checking email, making dinner, and feeling frustrated that I didn't get more time in the home office, nor time to practice music today, or so on.

I will frankly say, too, with some chagrin, that I am both very much missing Church, but also very relieved not to have to deal with all the people, politics, noise, and enforced social time (I have occasionally thought of writing a book called "Catholicism for Introverts", since I have a few friends who suffer similarly).

And I think the quarantine has served to reveal some friendships I was not really conscious of, or didn't value enough. That's been very nice, actually, and good to know. I'll pay more attention to those friendships; I need that.

So would I!