Dwelling in the House of the Lord

After last night's concert, I was feeling a little depressed about my playing. Many factors contribute to that feeling:

My hands are forty years old and don't always feel quite like they are twenty. (I've finally given up on 17.)

I've been busy professoring for years which means I haven't been practicing so much.

My relationship with the instrument and my ability to control it seem to have eroded a bit as the collateral of increasingly distant years of somewhat consistent practice has worn down.

I did lots of different things on a single concert which is often a way to feel bad about something.

Also, there were flashes of what I imagine I would be like if I had consistently practiced for years and had truly set performing as my primary goal. There were moments when the memory and technique and musical impulse were so clear that I could play with abandon and start to discover the pianist that's deep down inside of me. I really like it when that guy appears, but then I'm sad since I'm not sure how to keep him around

etc.

But after sorting through all those things and recognizing that the performance was pretty good considering the big picture, there's still a little voice, an insinuating whisper, that suggests that my efforts are not good enough, that I'm an outsider, a fraud.

I just happen to know that I'm not an outsider or a fraud in this particular world of music. And my efforts usually seem to have been pretty good.

I don't know where that whisper  came from. I don't think my parents put it there. Maybe folks who did bad stuff to our family contributed. Ultimately, it doesn't matter how it came to me. I have a whisper and so do a lot of other folks.

Come to think of it, that whisper is so insidious, so undermining, so joy-robbing, that its source must be the Deceiver, even if it did make its way to me through human channels.

I spoke of these experiences with one of my classes today and we talked about what maybe ought to be as opposed to what often is.

As people and musicians, we're on a pilgrimage which means we left somewhere to start with. But we always carry some of home with is on our journey, as well.

So what exactly am I and where did I leave? I don't think I'm just this body, or just a concept of this physical brain of mine. No, I think I am somebody, an identity, a person, a being with a design, a soul, a spirit.

And what is my home? Who has extended hospitality so I'll have a place to be and needs met? I think God is that host. I dwell in a body God has provided, and it's furnished with some talents. Plus, I've been provided time and education for developing them. Really, I've already been blessed through these basic/extraodinary provisions of human existence. Living out this design with intentionality and awareness, I think I can be at home anywhere in this world.

This means, among other things, that my musical impulses are a good gift. The way my hands find to deal with the instrument is okay. I don't need do a dozen different things to be like someone else to not be a fraud. (It sounds stunningly obvious when I put it that way.) Being me is good. In fact, it's really the thing I should be doing. Only being  me will be good enough.

So when I go before an audience,  the fact is that I am extending and expanding the blessing that comes to me daily through God's hospitality. I bet it's the case that the more me I am, the more blessing is expanded.

Indeed, last night I was touched by sweet students who care about what I do; and by friends, church members, and in-laws who have hearts to show up and then appreciate piano-playing; and a lovely wife who tells me I am a good pianist. These things meant something to me because the musical experience had meant something to each of these people. That's the expansion of the blessing, the meaning of the offering, the reason we call talent a "gift."

So I think the starting point for being human and for being musicians ought to be that as we are made in God's image, we are good. We've been blessed with that image and with all the mysteries that bearing it entails.

And to bless our students with an accurate view of their specialness, we must begin with recognizing and celebrating the good that God has placed in this house for them.