The long flood of uncertainty known as 2020 has washed away many of our old sources of comfort, safety, sense of place, connection, influence, growth, order, and purpose.
Many speak of feeling unsafe, disconnected, and helpless. Others have been displaced physically, isolated relationally, or silenced personally. This chaotic season in history has the potential to interrupt personal growth, as well as our growth as a culture. These losses are not only closely related to basic human needs hard-wired into us for relationship, but also how we are made to fit with the world around us.
Human longings, thoughts, feelings, senses, and words — and the actions that result from them — originate from the unique shape and identity of human hearts. As we interact within our relationships and life circumstances, the instruments of our hearts create music by singing, bowing, beating, or blowing. These sounds are all meant to be heard. People are whole symphonies waiting to be played.
Too many of us hesitate in the wings, our melody delayed.
We wait our turn to play, hoping others will notice and leave space for our part as they enter the composition. Sometimes we wait because we question our music as worthy of being played. Do we dare go onstage, where others can hear? We place the responsibility for harmony – and the blame for discord – on ourselves.
Others of us force our voices to be heard, obliterating all other music by the violent volume of our sound. But will our hearts/instruments betray us — or express our full meaning? We place the responsibility for harmony — and the blame for discord – on other people. How impossible it seems, to find the courage and boldness to play the notes written for our own instruments AND anticipate with pleasure how the music others bring will interweave and syncopate with ours!
Today, will I pick up the bow to play the deep cello sounds my spirit hears in the wind, or align my fingers on the piano keys of my mind’s eye with the far horizon?
Will I celebrate the high and low beauty of a mountain’s melody by trumpeting a strong melody of truth, or broaden the swell of ocean sounds by French horn richness? Am I willing to echo the colors of the world all around me as I sing, or will I wrap words of meaning around its beauty? Do the rhythms of nature find their way into the beat resonating through my body’s play with gravity as I dance, or will I allow my hands to reflect the patterns and texture of what is worth celebrating by what I make? Can I risk seeking out what others have offered before me as encouragement or a place to start?
Like the last quivering notes of a song, joys and sorrows hang in the air every moment, waiting to be expressed and perceived.
Will you take the chair reserved for you in the orchestra of life?