A Psalm in Times of Threatening Weather

O Holy Being, the waters begin their approach.
The beating of my heart rivals the pounding surf...
Every muscle tense, every breath aware that it is numbered.
Where are you to be found?

Ascribe to the Lord all thanks and praise, I know.
Mark all creation with the citation of Sacred Authorship.
Lie prostrate before the mighty "acts of God" that are the wind and the waves.
Yet where is the logic in this destruction?

I try to take refuge in your omniscience and omnipotence.
Perhaps you test, you teach, you toughen through devastation.
But what reward, what lesson, what strength is worth lives which you carefully crafted?
I find none.

I fail to distract myself from my fear with these unanswerable questions.
What I wish I could say, what I wish I could sing, what I wish I could pray...
What I long to know, to believe, to sense in my innermost being, I speak into existence:
Be here.

Love in Parable: On Authentic Experience

If asked to name my first true love, and if pressed to be completely and brazenly honest, I would have to name that dangerously alluring siren - music.  Music and I go way back.  In fact, I cannot recall the moment of our first encounter.  It was simply always there.  But my initial expressions of interest surfaced at age three or four, when I would compose delightful songs about animals while sitting at my grandmother's piano.  I then made my compositional debut as a kindergartner performing in the elementary school talent show.  Since then, music and I have had a complicated history, though never lacking in passion.

Sure, there were times when I felt I didn't understand it at all.  There were certainly tears of frustration when it didn't respond the way I wanted it to.  I remember welcoming the arrival of new music teachers who would help me achieve delicate nuance and technical proficiency, and mourning those relationships during times of transition.  I still wince at accusations of being "instrumentally promiscuous" (I simply could not choose between flute and piano, to say nothing of my on-again-off-again flirtation with the organ).  But it mattered less who was doing the coaxing or through what medium the music was channeled... so long as I could have the experience of being one with the Sound.

In a recent church visioning retreat, I and the other participants were invited to consider what sort of "experience" we as a community hope to provide or enable.  Something about this question resonated deeply with my life, my aspirations, even my dissertation.  Because that's really what makes life worth living, isn't it?  That's really what makes us human.  Not intellectual understanding or superficial titles and categories, but authentic experiences that demand to be shared.  Encounters that are worth talking about, singing about, praying about.  In other words, it's all about keeping it real.  May this search for authentic relationship guide us in our daily lives - at home, at work, at play, at worship.  Amen.