Belated reflections

I wrote this sometime several months ago; maybe early July, when I was missing my violin so much. My mind works at an incredibly slow pace. There is a long period of information gathering, then a long period of processing information and forming opinions (that part can take years) and eventually I might be able to articulate it all. Then, some months later, I feel ready to share. Oh, well, here are some belated opinions on things I heard in Malibu.

The Violin is a really awesome instrument. When I went to Malibu, there was all that emphasis on a cappella as the only kind of music suitable for worship. It got me thinking about why I played violin for five years and why it's still so special to me. Did that make any sense? Probably not. I was hearing people say that man made instruments, like the violin, were unworthy of God's praise. I tried to imagine going to church and never hearing anything but the human voice. There is that saying about singing and praying twice. I can't remember which way it goes now cause our choir director always said "he who sings prays twice." but I seem to remember hearing "he who prays twice sings." That has always made a lot of sense for me, either way. I plan to spend most of my eternity singing. Ah, heaven, where there is no such things as a sore throat. But the problem with singing your prayer is that singing almost always involves words. Catholics have the reputation (mostly true) for being no good at spontaneous prayers, we're just an inarticulate lot when it comes to talking to our creator. It's just so much easier to say what we mean by reciting psalms or the Lords Prayer. But sometimes even these fail us and this is the reason I can't say that only the human voice can truly worship God.

When you play an instrument like a violin, you end up carting it around with you a lot of places. Carrying it around so much, I always harbored a hope that I would find myself in an empty church with my violin and no one else around. It happened a few times and I would play all the hymns I could think of by ear plus some improvisations of my own and this was a deep form of prayer for me. I didn't need words. Words would not have been enough.

Anyone who has heard some of the religious music of Bach and so many others knows you don't really need the words to pray those songs. After the communion hymn is over in some parishes there is an instrumental piece which serves as a meditation. I hate it when they pick songs with words for that, it kind of defeats the purpose: they should have songs that let every heart provide it's own words or let Jesus sing to each heart alone.