Songs, Invitations, and Miracles
I am in a music group. Sometimes there are thirteen of us. Sometimes there are four. Backgrounds are varied. Retired business manager, school teacher, computer tech, farmer, accountant, and so forth. Musical backgrounds are equally varied. Jazz, folk, musicals, guitar, classical training. One woman sang country western in bars every Thursday – Saturday for years. She had a chance to make it big, go to Nashville, but her husband said, no, that straw would break the camel’s back. So she stayed and sang her heart out here.
Without discussing temperaments, it’s safe to say not everybody gets along 100% of the time. At the worst times, people avoid each other. At the best, we don’t agree on how many measures to bridge between verses, or how long to make the introduction. We certainly don’t agree on which pieces should be sung when, and especially whether it is a glory or a torture to do the occasional piece in Latin.
We are very nearly like a family. A little microcosm of personalities who love to sing, and irritations notwithstanding, we really love each other. Most people in the group live within five minutes of the church where we sing. I live almost half an hour away. A year and a half ago when I was sick, seven different meals were delivered to the house for our family.
We are musicians and little things bother us. Musicians, I observe, live closer to the edge than some. It makes us touchy. It might also help us step outside ourselves into the music. Outside the music, our footing may at times lack the steadiness of others. Inside of the music, we are loosed from ourselves. Ready for a mini-Pentecost, we are free to let the music speak for us and through us.
Sometimes the music our group makes is good. Other times we muddle through without the spark of something bigger. We don’t decide which day is which. We sing to offer up the grand invitation, hoping for the mighty wind to move among us. Every once in a while we feel the tongues of fire from our heads, through the depths of joy and sorrow, to our toes. We become the sum which is greater than our parts. In the cry of our own hearts we raise the longing of the hearts beside us. Our own voices lost, we are found in a single voice, together.
It doesn’t last forever. For all the wishing in the world, there’s no hanging on, only the chance to ask again and wait and hope. Say thank you and be changed. It’s not imagining. Sometimes for a second, a few minutes maybe, heaven opens up a window. In glimpsing what we will be, it changes who we are. Not just for a minute, but forever.
Copyright 2014, Michelle Dawn Jones
*This piece was originally published at Countyroad21.
