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.