Imagination

Those of you that know me well know that exploring the intersection of music and faith is my passion. That pursuit has led me to the more general recognition that we human beings need help with re-integrating our faith into the various compartments into which we've separated our lives. The end result is hopefully a more joyful, peaceful, and connected existence.

To put this in another way, I find myself working for a fuller expression of God's image in us. To me, that means that we exist as a cooperative and loving community of creators, which is what I think the Trinity is.

I remember writing in cover letters for job applications seven or eight years ago that I was interested in teaching imagination. At that time, that mostly meant getting my students to think and feel more personally about the music they perform. I'm now realizing that those words about teaching imagination were prophetic. It recently dawned on me that, as I help students recognize God's image expressed through creativity, I am teaching imagination. The word "image" is right there in the word "imagination" but I've been missing the deep connection to God's image in us.

I don't think this realization will necessarily radically change the way I teach, but it does allow me to see how my various musical and pedagogical activities serve a single spiritual goal. When I help my students organize their thinking about music, when I show them how to develop proficiency at the keyboard, when we experiment with ways to communicate in performance, I am nurturing their creativity, their God-image-ness. When I am patient with them, when I challenge them to live in community, when I'm honest about myself, I model wholesome productivity in my relationships with them.

I am grateful for the distinct opportunity of working in an environment in which I can realize these truths about my calling. The culture of faith integration at Southeastern was a providential surprise for me, and it affirms my faith that the Holy Spirit coordinates our lives in very specific ways.

Years ago, I introduced myself to new acquaintances as a classical pianist. Frequently, that led to the response "But what do you do for a living?" or something to that effect. Once I had a full-time college job, I started introducing myself with "I teach in the music department at such-and-such university." That sounded more conventional and sometimes led to more substantive conversations about music.

Now, I think I'm going to start telling people that I teach imagination. That will be unusual, but I think it will lead to the most meaningful conversations and connections yet - a type of witnessing that is rooted in what I do everyday and that focuses on what I believe to be the beauty of God's will as expressed from the very first chapter of the Bible.

Theory Thoughts

As I gear up for teaching music theory in my new job at Southeastern, I'm thinking about what a lot of music theory consists of, especially in the early stages of learning - recognizing and labeling musical materials. When I was a student, I thought those activities were pretty mundane and not very theoretical.

While I have come to accept that mastering some basic concepts is a normal and necessary way of entering into a discipline, I also believe there might be more profound and exciting implications to the seemingly simple act of naming things.

As described in Genesis, one of the first things Adam had the opportunity to do was to name the animals. There are many things I really like about that passage:

One is that it sounds like God made all those creatures because God was concerned about what things were good for us and what things were not good for us. It wasn't good for us to be alone. My dog and cat really are helpers and partners of sorts to me at times, mostly by accepting me and by being small, cute, energetic, and random creatures around the house.

I also like the freedom that is part of this Genesis scene. It doesn't seem like God commanded Adam to name the animals, nor does it seem that God caused him to call the animals anything in particular. Instead, I think God and Adam shared a wonderfully relaxed and uncomplicated communion. I imagine them sitting down over coffee and looking at God's portfolio of work. In this pre-fall picture, Adam's behavior is presented as really healthy and whole. He naturally sees, processes, and acts in a good way. It reminds me of the really bright children I worked with at Collegiate School in Richmond who were endlessly curious and had lots of innate learning skills. What's more, they applied those skills with joy as it was naturally fun for them to do so! Maybe those are more layers of what "coming as a child" means.

I'm also really struck by God the creator's desire to see what each aspect of the creation meant to Adam. That's exactly how we human artists are about our creations. We want to know the significance of the things we create in the experience of our fellow human beings. It is through their feedback that we know that we are, indeed, serving. Because of this, it seems to me that creativity is linked to relationship.

Now, back to naming.

I would think that naming took analysis and reflection for Adam, and developing words to represent creatures must have involved some creative fun. Organizing is an important aspect of the creative process as we know it. Sorting the animals by name was a way of bringing order to the human understanding of the world God had created. In this way, Adam was getting to partner with God in creating.

I'm intrigued by the fact that it seems like language already existed when Adam named the animals. I have usually assumed that we humans created language from its foundations. But in Genesis, God had already spoken some pretty involved sentences to Adam before Adam was given the opportunity to name the animals. Also, I had been thinking that language arose from a communication need between humans, but it sounds like Adam was the only one of us around when this naming happened. That seems significant to me because, while the language Adam was creating would be for the use of the race, at its inception, the language was just between him and God.

While naming, it seems that Adam realized his need for someone like himself, and when Eve was brought into being, Adam verbally expressed his need and prayed a prayer of thanks through the act of naming her.

Maybe God left the animals unnamed so that we could fully appropriate the created order to our experience through thought and language. Through the language aspect, we expressed the need for community with other people, and language went on to create a shared human culture once there were other humans with whom to share it. All of this seems to have grown out of relationship with God and the Creation.

So as we continue to see and name patterns and organizations in the both the created worlds of living things and physical phenomena such as sound, I think we are following through on God's invitation to name, organize, and create within our own consciousness. And through that exploration of what God has made, we can discover and develop community.

Worship, God's Image, Creativity

Daniel preached an excellent sermon this morning on worhsip. He drew our attention to the various words that relate to worship in the Bible. Of course, "worship" is an old English word meaning "to ascribe worth to." According to Daniel, the Hebrew scriptural word for worship actually means "to bow down" and the Greek New Testament word means "to serve." He pointed out that all of these concepts are verbs, not nouns - that worship is something we do, not so much an experience we receive (that would make worship into a noun).

Contemplating those three words, I note that the English word really means something different from the Biblical words. "To ascribe worth" suggests that we are somehow in a position to access the worth of our creator. That seems a little absurd to me. To bow down and to serve have none of that in them. Instead, they are acts of pure response to the Creator.

I've also been thinking once again about how we humans are created in God's image. Being in God's image, we, too, create. I think that means that on a fundamental, existential level, creativity has nothing to do with competition. At any rate, making music is a way of enacting being in God's image. The Psalmists repeatedly implore us to make music joyfully, and I think that flows naturally and logically from being made in God's image. What could be more basic and joyful than to recognize that we are creations and that we have a kinship with the Creator? There is nothing of the self to assert in this. Instead, we proclaim our gladness at being, at being creations, at being creations in relationship with the Creator, and at being something that the Creator has declared to be good!

Freshmen Devotionals

Today we compared two Genesis passages.

In the first, God created light.
In the second, humanity was told that survival would involve work.

The comparison reminds us that God is different from us in that God speaks and creation happens. There doesn't seem to be a planning or working stage involved. On the other hand, humanity has to work to get from an idea to a product.

As performing artists, we enjoy the moment before the public. But the life of a musician is really much more about daily work that is for our ears only. We should be grounded in that fact and seek to find some fulfillment in that daily toil.

Freshmen Devotionals

Today we read Gensis 1:1-5 - God bringing order to chaos.

The idea that the basis of creativity is the bringing of order goes against the commonly encountered stereotype of artists being disorderly, wild, irrational, etc.

Music students can also make creative works of their lives as they fashion well-ordered ways of working, resting, thinking, and so forth.

Freshmen Devotionals

On Mondays, I'm sharing a one-minute devotional thought with my first-year music theory class.

There are at least two themes to be developed in this context over the course of the semester:

creativity

music as a family

Our very first devotional referred to our being made in God's image. My friend Paul Scaringi pointed out to me that, at the point in Genesis at which we learn that we were made in God's image, one of the few things we know about God is that God creates. Perhaps being made in God's image means, in part, that we are creative beings, too.

Today's devotional dealt with one of the obvious things about music as a family. Families are groups of people with which we have meaningful relationships. Music provides us with similar groups of people.

It may be that music draws its practicioners closer together than some other disciplines do. Why might this be? In each piece of music we make together, we experience a life story in miniature: beginning, middle, end, with struggles and a climax, etc. Sharing these compressed and intense life experiences with other musicians can create strong emotional ties between us.

Being in music also gives us a group of people known as the audience. Even though we may not always feel like it, most audience members are on our side. They want to see us succeed and are proud when we do well. That's just the way our biological family members ought to root for us in life, even though not everybody's family always does so.

Rocks Crying Out

Yesterday I listened to my last day of music juries as a member of the University of Richmond faculty. One student who was in my theory class this semester played the first movement of Brahms E minor Cello Sonata. This student, Heather Stebbins, is very bright, and in addition to being a budding cellist, is also a gifted composer.

As I listened to her consistent tone, her variety of vibrato, her unfolding of the details of the score, and noted her grasp of the function of each line she played, I realized that her instrument was singing.

As I am quite accustomed to instrumental music, I often miss the miracle of a performer causing inanimate material stuff to sing. In this performance, wood and strings, metal and bow hair, lifted up their voices in a way that was mysterious, poignant, and longing. I thought of the strangeness of the musical saw - a pedestrian tool that emits an ethereal tone - and I realized that the same extraordinary dynamic exists whenever instruments sing.

Perhaps this is a good part of the creativity of the performer - breathing elegant speech into soul-less materials, much like God breathing life into soil and making humanity.

Maybe instrumental music is inherently worshipful as musicians and instrument makers ornament God's creative work through their endeavors. They cause wood and metal to cry out, just like the stones Jesus said would praise him if the people didn't sing.