room for what is
for anyone who has ever been misunderstood (you, myself, Jesus...) it is so comforting when someone knows and really sees your heart. i've been thinking about this alot; our propensity to get part of the story right but interpret the rest wrongly. the good news is, we find what we're looking for (in the case of joy and life). and the bad news is, we find what we're looking for (when we think we're right but we don't have the whole picture).
a practical example of this is music rehearsal. i love beethoven's 9th symphony. we worked hard on it in the fall. it is rich, tonal, melodic. when we started playing shostakovich's 5th symphony this winter, my ear couldn't find a resting place. i even listened to two different recordings (one conducted by leonard bernstein and one by shostakovich's son). i realized i was listening for beethoven and not making room in me for what we were actually playing.
tonight i tried to go with a more open sense of tonality, if you will. i didn't find rich melodies per se. this piece is atonal, dissonant. (what i learned was that, politically, he was portraying russian patriotism while simultaneously writing to communicate the people's unrest. no wonder it's not relaxing to me, but it is effective when you know the whole story).
i don't want to start with the truth but let my presuppositions and filtered perceptions run amok. it is a constant discipline to stay open, to practice seeing, or, in this case, really listening to something for what it is whether that's a person, idea, book or piece of music.
have we still not found what we're looking for? where are we expecting beethoven when shostakovich is playing? can we really see God, others and ourselves accurately? is there room for what really is...not just what we think it should be?
a practical example of this is music rehearsal. i love beethoven's 9th symphony. we worked hard on it in the fall. it is rich, tonal, melodic. when we started playing shostakovich's 5th symphony this winter, my ear couldn't find a resting place. i even listened to two different recordings (one conducted by leonard bernstein and one by shostakovich's son). i realized i was listening for beethoven and not making room in me for what we were actually playing.
tonight i tried to go with a more open sense of tonality, if you will. i didn't find rich melodies per se. this piece is atonal, dissonant. (what i learned was that, politically, he was portraying russian patriotism while simultaneously writing to communicate the people's unrest. no wonder it's not relaxing to me, but it is effective when you know the whole story).
i don't want to start with the truth but let my presuppositions and filtered perceptions run amok. it is a constant discipline to stay open, to practice seeing, or, in this case, really listening to something for what it is whether that's a person, idea, book or piece of music.
have we still not found what we're looking for? where are we expecting beethoven when shostakovich is playing? can we really see God, others and ourselves accurately? is there room for what really is...not just what we think it should be?
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