Moving, Canon, Calling, Peace!?

Our piano was delivered this week - two average-sized guys, a fancy dolly, and a truck with a lift made it possible. I think the lift is really crucial for a smooth move. The piano was mostly in surprisingly good tune for an instrument that spent several weeks riding around who-knows-where on a truck and sitting on its side in warehouses. The company is Modern Piano Moving out of Missouri and their trucks make big loops around the eastern states picking up and delivering pianos several weeks later. Each team delivers from 7 to 10 instruments a day. They also a have a giant logo on the side of their truck that looks like a very long piano with wheels, sort of like a drag racer.

Now, back to our public radio station. I think that what I've been enjoying about it so much during this time of transition is the affirmation of the canon of music that I love and have devoted a lot of time to here in a new place for me. It provides some consistency and resonates with my childhood revelation that, to some extent, music is my family. The fact that this music has stood the test of time, a fact with which I am very familiar and have heard time and again, is now ringing true in my own experience. It is okay and probably very good to be devoted to a canon since it is an inherent aspect of the nature of a canon that the preserved material has been found to be of value by generations. You can trust the music to be strong, dependable, even powerful.

Another thing that has brought me peace during this move, and something that has been pretty much a spiritual bottom-line for me, is the sense of calling to this place, this work, this home, and so forth. When I wake up and am surprised that I am living in Florida, I just remind myself that it's fine because I was called to make this move. When I'm out walking and am tempted to covet someone else's house, I remind myself that everything happened in such a way with our house as you let us know that we are in the house we are suppose to be in. And when I wonder what I should be playing and where, I can look for a sense of calling to repertoire and events, and all will be well.

It occurs to me that the concept of calling, which is so important to many of us, is rarely explored in our popular culture.

Finally, on a really different note, as I was eating an orange a few mornings ago (an orange grown near here, I think, but packaged in New Jersey for some reason) our lovely wooden wind chime, made by disabled veterans and bearing the single word "peace," fell from the ceiling to the floor. I wonder what that means!?

Peace

We visited St. Paul's Church which is across the street from where the World Trade Center stood. 14,000 volunteers traveled to St. Paul's to support the rescue workers in the months following 9/11. There were also 500 musicians who played in the church to minister to rescue workers as they tried to rest between shifts.

It seems that being the focal point for so much ministry following 9/11 revitalized the church's sense of mission.

Today the church is also a shrine for many who come to reflect on 9/11 and to remember lost loved ones.

In the church, one hears the inspiring story of volunteers from around the U.S. who reached across all sorts of boundaries in acts of love because of their common cause and their shared humanity. I think that outpouring was a beautiful beginning of healing.

I wonder if that healing movement could have grown into a spiritual revival that would have swept around the world.

But my intuition tells me that the healing and the revival were cut short as war ensued.

The phrase "cycle of violence" and humanity's need to break the cycle of violence really sunk in with me as I thought of that lost opportunity.

As I write that, I must also confess that it must be incredibly hard for politicians to seek peace in the wake of such an event.

And that brings me to another often-heard phrase - "give peace a chance." Frequently, what we learn about and call "peace" is a less-than-ideal agreement dictated by the victors after war has been given a chance.

While war is often presented as the only possible choice, I have heard very little about the times when peace has really been tested as an option.

It seems to me that the anger and indignance that are stirred up by even the most basic talk about peace indicate how unwilling our society might be to really considering peace as a way forward.