Taste The Air (in Prague?)

I'm leaving tomorrow with my school choir on a tour of Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic. It's an eleven-day thing, which will be the longest I've ever been away from Rebecca since we were married April 17, 2004, almost four years. I also will need to spend any down time on the trip doing homework. How can I say that I'm dreading this wonderful experience of some of the most significant places in the history of classical music? I guess I can say I'm both thrilled and scared. Though I did have an enlightening and relieving epiphany-type moment after my voice lesson yesterday about the fact that I can trust God to guide me through the tears of life, I'm feeling an enormous amount of pressure in these afternoon hours prior to the day of departure.

I don't know why, but I was reminded of the lyrics to a song I wrote a couple years ago. Most of the songs I've written are worship songs for use in church settings, but this one isn't. I'm honestly not fully aware of what connection it may have to what I'm going through right now, something to do with moving on and looking forward to future things perhaps, but here it is anyway:

Taste The Air

Verse 1:
Sometimes it’s unclear which way to turn
But will you search the unknown road?
And if you’re unsure of where you’re headed anyway
Remember it’s ahead and not behind that you’ll find home

So used to making a new plan
So tired of suddenly realizing the simple truth
If only all you had to do was truly mean it
But a new routine will never fix the last one or the next one, will it?

Chorus:
Let the things of yesterday stay there
You won’t need them where you’re going, they’ll just get in the way
And let the wings you thought were broken taste the air
You were told they’d never open, but now you’re on your way

Verse 2:
Look around are you caught in your box again?
Who put you there and when will you leave it behind?
You can think about your life but isn’t it time
That you got out and felt the sunshine, it’s a great day to fly

Bridge:
There’s a place where every face you see is smiling
Where you can leave your burdens far behind in the grass
One day, you'll never see it coming
You’ll find a river in the sun
And you'll cross over the to golden streets of ever after

Teaching by Being

I started taking composition lessons with Prof. Wills a couple weeks ago. Something I've noticed that's been kind of cool is that the lesson materials he has spent time preparing remind me a lot of the lesson materials I developed for guitar lessons that I taught a few years ago. They're very clean and neat, and yet very thorough, offering students not just a basic idea of something but a definitive understanding. It's clearly important to him that his lessons be solidly grasped in a way that leads students to a greater musical fluency rather than a mere passing grade. I've come to appreciate this kind of teacher more and more as I've returned to school for the back end of my 20's.

The different approaches to teaching music (or anything else) that different teachers take is worth considering. I admit that it's been difficult for me not to applaud the teachers I like and, at times, resent the others. My issue really isn't the 'others', whose teaching I've had trouble connecting with, but simply that their style has not agreed with my expectation, which has been mostly based on my own style of teaching from years ago.

It seems natural for anyone to prefer his own style of anything, and it's always easier to like people in whom we see something of ourselves. But I can't help but conclude that a teacher shouldn't have to use the influence of something other than the inherent value of his subject in order to teach it. Teachers shouldn't have to operate in the way of "get them to think I'm cool, then they'll listen when I tell them music (or whatever) is also cool." At least not at the college level, in my opinion. No, a teacher should influence his students by being the very thing he seeks to teach. Wasn't that the obvious distinction everyone noticed between Jesus' teaching style and that of the scribes and Pharisees?

"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Matthew 11:28-30 KJV

I'd like to embody the way of Jesus more in the way I live. After all, we're all teachers of something to someone.

God Relational?

'Why should I think that God is relational?'

A question similar to this was brought up on my school's bulletin-board forum tonight. Someone was wanting to know how to convince a deist that God is relational. The short answer I think I maybe should have offered is that a better approach might rather be to seek to show the person that God is relational by relating to him in the way God would.

The long answer I instead offered is (essentially) below.

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I recently talked with a close friend about this. His perspective was somewhat different but somewhat similar: 'Isn't it kind of arrogant to assume that God is like us in the way of being personal?'

In my opinion, the highest good of life is relationships. That is, the most significant thing about anyone is the personal connections he or she has with other people. Are they strong connections? Are they weak? Are they many, few, close, distant, healthy, unhealthy, etc.? That's why communities are so important and isolation-except-through-internet lifestyles are so dangerous (yet common). Along the same lines, a higher, more mature intellect should (but doesn't always) result in a greater ability to connect with people, however different they might be. Like how Paul said he wanted to become all things to all people, or in other words, he wanted to find a way to relate to anyone and everyone.

All that to say that I cannot imagine God to be impersonal or otherwise non-relational in any way that would not result in a reduction of the character I already believe Him to have. Certainly God's mind is higher than ours. Based on my personal experience of close intimacy with another human being as the highest, most meaningful good of life as a human being, I can only believe that God must be relational and that He wants to know me and everyone else more closely than we can imagine. And, if that's the case, it makes sense that He would become a person and look for us, etc. In my opinion, for God not to be relational would lessen His status as God.

Of course, I suppose that's not really a 'scientific' proof in the sense that the data used to reach that conclusion can't be measured in units, but I think it conforms to honest logic. It might be worth asking your deist friend why he has trouble relating to a personal, relational God. Perhaps he has experienced painful relationships that have caused him think it's better (safer?) not to connect with other people and that God must be the same way. Or maybe he's been hurt by 'cool' people who haven't wanted to relate to him because he's not cool enough, and he assumes that God follows that pattern too: cool repels uncool, high-status repels low-status. If you've read Searching For God Know What by Donald Miller, you can probably see where I've gotten a lot of these ideas. And, of course, pray for him, which I'm sure you're doing.

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I hope that helped.

Meter in Verse

I attended an excellent lecture two weeks ago entitled "Poetry: the Movement of Meaningful Sound through Time", in which Ms. Schubert discussed the rhythm of Milton and Spenser's verse. (Iambic pentameter, 'feet', 'stichic' vs. 'strophic', etc.) It opened with these lines by T.S. Eliot:

Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern
Can words or music reach the stillness...

I took particular inspiration from discussion of the importance of form to Spenser and Milton's work. 'Rules' are so amazingly critical in the crafting of the lines because they establish a defined space in order to reveal the beauty of tension within it. It was said that poetry without rules is like tennis without a net (or lines, I'd add), in that the artistic element of the work is found to be greater as a result of the boundaries. 'Rule breaking' then becomes an artistically meaningful divergence.

Anyway, I decided to try my hand at a few lines within a defined meter last night, which I haven't really done before. The tetrameter I used is more sing-songy and hurried than pentameter would be, but I'm a novice, after all. Here it is:

Not Quite the Good Samaritan

Oh, what a jumbled bag am I
Indeed, and what a growing list
Of contradictions. Yes, I lie
A free man having sorely missed
The purposed point of his free living.
(‘Tis truly not the game of fakes.)
For men find pardon in forgiving
A fool whose faint heart only takes.

The pitied plight of this mistaken
Man yet yields his Truth unshaken:
Though jumbled in a bag, at rest;
Though listed and unchosen, best.

Nothing like I've done before. Hopefully there is more and better to come.