Gifts: words plus music

Can it really be three weeks since I last wrote something here?  Appointments, volunteering at school, trips to Winnipeg and Portage and Morden and Carman, chauffeuring my kids to events, and a week away with some family have filled up the days.  Now back at home, it feels a bit weird to have some undesignated time.  I feel a bit in-between, not yet ready for full-time work, but no longer completely occupied by my own mental activity.  Wanting to be with people, but sometimes impatient with conversation and eager to get home when I am out. An odd space. But really, there's not much about this stage of life that is not odd, so I'm not sure why I'm surprised.

A few posts ago I began talking about things that are helping me along this crazy road. I'd like to add music to the list.  As I have mentioned in other posts, music is enormously important to me.  It draws feelings out from under the surface, or focuses my thoughts, or expresses my emotions in a way that words alone cannot.  And the combination of words and music is unbelievably powerful for me.

In particular, I have been listening to a couple of CDs over and over during the last three months.  One is The Story, a collection of songs written by Bernie Herms (music) and Nichole Nordeman (words). Each song is a person from the Bible telling part of their own story, often from a slant that I had not considered before.  And every single song on this album contains at least a line, if not a whole verse or more, that resonates with me where I am at this place in time: Abraham wondering how his dreams can be fulfilled in the face of seemingly impossible facts, but knowing that he only sees a piece of the story; Ruth and Naomi speaking about beauty being rebuilt in their lives in a way they didn't expect; Paul feeling fired up about what he has to share but determining to wait for God's direction; Job's agonized, sacrificial hallelujah; and throughout the album, the assertion that Love wins in the end, that it is winning right now, that death and evil and pain will have to lie down and be quiet in the end.  I know that in a year, other parts of the songs will be important to me, because one of the things I love about the Bible- and about art- is that the exact same element will hold new significance at different times depending on what the reader/viewer brings to it from their own experience.

The other CD which has been on repeat in the last weeks is Fernando Ortega's latest album, Come Down O Love Divine.  It is beautiful and pensive.  I wept when I heard the first song, which consists of a set of words that has been a gift to me in these last months, my favourite prayer when my thoughts are so confused I can't verbalize on my own: Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison (Lord, have mercy, Christ, have mercy, Lord, have mercy).  This ancient prayer, which was not part of my faith vocabulary growing up, has come to me in a video of Ramsy rehearsing with one of his grad recital choirs, in a favourite Christmas CD, and in this new CD.  It feels like God gifted me the words I needed to express myself to him.  Sometimes it means This is too hard, don't make me do it anymore.  Sometimes it is Please help me, and other days it is a prayer for comfort for other people I know who are suffering.  Another thing I love on this album is the addition of a gorgeous choir, soaring and plaintive.  And he does a beautiful, vibrant piano arrangement of "Of the Father's Love Begotten", which became the song I chose to play for offertory in church in January- the first time I had played there since Ramsy's diagnosis.  I had missed being able to express myself through music, but had not been ready. Singing is still sometimes- well, I won't say difficult exactly.  What I often find during our corporate singing at church is that when the words express so exactly what my heart is saying, my voice doesn't always work.  I'm afraid I'm not one of those people who can bawl and sing at the same time.  But my heart speaks through the music anyway, even if my voice is silent right then.  Another reason why it's so good to have the music in addition to the words.

I am looking forward to a concert I'll attend in a few weeks.  As you may know, Ramsy had a significant connection with choral music.  When he was in college in Winnipeg in the early 80s, he sang in a production of Brahms' Deutsches Requiem under Bill Baerg.  I have never heard this piece of music, but in sorting through some boxes last fall, I found Ramsy's copy of the score, full of his markings and notes and reminders from that performance.  I was very excited when I stumbled across a notice of the WSO doing a performance of this piece in April, with Bill Baerg as guest choral conductor.  It feels like another gift arranged just for me.  (But everyone else is welcome to attend as well.)  :)

I'll close with words from another song I found recently that says just what I feel: "Beautiful Things" by Gungor. All this pain- I wonder if I'll ever find my way, I wonder if my life could ever change at all.  All this earth- could all that is lost ever be found? Could a garden come up from this ground at all?  You make beautiful things, you make beautiful things out of the dust.  You make beautiful things, you make beautiful things out of us.