And speaking of songs...

A couple of days ago, Amalia picked up Melanie's choir music, a baroque mass setting, and sang it. Well, not really. She was improvising, the lyrics as well as the melody. For the most part it was a hilarious melange of lines from various hymns that we sing, and then it got to the end (think of this as being sung in an adorable five year old voice doing her best to improvise in a "churchy" style):

"Uh-oh! This is all wrong!
Quit pestering Jesus!"

I immediately could hear this last line in a Polish accent.

We have a great priest, from Poland, who is probably the best model of how a priest should care for his parish that I have ever encountered. He is holy, orthodox (and as a bi-ritual priest, he can sometimes be quite Orthodox as well), astoundingly devoted to the well-being of his parish (which includes a big, scary county hospital with a trauma unit, something that most priests would shudder at having to take care of, but not Fr. Z. His dedication to ministering to the sick is incredible, and he will sometimes be called to the hospital several times in a night, which he dutifully does) and completely unafraid to tell us when we are out of line. Imagine if Don Camillo were Don Camilsky and you get the picture.

So, when I heard that line "quit pestering Jesus" I could just imagine it coming at the end of one of Father's legendary scolds.