March 2006 Archives
The verses "Pray without ceasing" and "Do not test the Lord your God" come to mind.
And another line from a hymn: "Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer."
This line from the article is especially interesting: "The study also found that more patients in the uninformed prayer group — 18 percent — suffered major complications, like heart attack or stroke, compared with 13 percent in the group that did not receive prayers. In their report, the researchers suggested that this finding might also be a result of chance."
Who are we praying to, folks? An impersonal object at the mercy of scientific study? Or the sovereign God of the universe?
I'm not saying such a study is wrong. At the least it's an intriguing observation on the relationship between science and religion. I'm just thankful that God's power can't be limited or manipulated by our feeble human attempts, and that if we pray to him in spirit and in truth, he'll answer right on time.
"You can't hurry my God, no, no, no, you just have to wait.
You gotta trust him no matter how long it takes.
I don't know how soon God's comin', but don't let him catch you with your work undone.
He said he may not come when you want him but he's right on time!"
-spiritual (props to Casey Reinkoester and Joan Nabors for soloing that one so well and implanting it in indelibly my memory)
Imagine devoting your life to one instrument. It's your baby. Even after thirty years you feel the same passion and excitement engaging the strings as you did on first pluck. It's an extension of yourself, and every human movement flows naturally into the physical and emotional expression released from the musical vehicle. All is one. You've achieved integration of subject and object. You present this achievement to the watching world.
I don't know that I've ever seen one perform this integration as well as Yo-Yo Ma did last night. He played Schumann's Cello Concerto in A Minor with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and performed it as a master. While he played, his body would move with the phrase, his arm would feel the fury of the more intense passages and attack the cello with the bow, his posture would relax and open up during the pensive movements, his head would turn and encourage the other cellists as they joined in heavenly harmony, and his face, though far from mine, was perceptibly lost in the music. During his breaks, he would bend over and wave his hand to the beat, and his body would move as if it was being carried away by the others until it was asked to participate and would naturally continue where the others left off.
During the third ovation, Yo-Yo Ma skipped out on the stage with the director. What a nice man, Keri and I decided. She already knew this. She saw him on Mr. Roger's Neighborhood long, long ago, and he's apparently very good to children. He hugged the first violinist and shook the others' hands vigorously.
On a side note: piano, cello, and clarinet are my top three favorite instruments. But I don't think any of them compare to the human voice, even though they're all wonderful. There's something about the human voice that is the most satisfying and beautiful when it integrates self and piece. It's more challenging than the others because it requires full participation of the body, both inside and out, for physical and emotional expression. It all has to come from inside of you, all of it, and you essentially have to lose yourself within yourself. There ain't nothin between you and that expression (although one could argue - the vocal cords - but there is soooooooo much more to it than the vocal cords). Taking care of your voice demands different measures than taking care of an instrument because it demands that you take care of your body. It is humanity's most natural musical offering. Before instruments, IT WAS. I'm not saying that singing and playing an instrument are completely separate techniques, because they do overlap. What I am saying is that God's imagery is experienced best when we sing. We are in his image, we sing (those of us who are able) because God sings, we sing because it's inside us, whether we can carry a tune or not. Never ever ever ever ever ever stop singing. That's my point.
