Advent Journal - Day 6 : Today I Am Greatful For Music

Music has always been a part of my life.  I fell in love with singing at Sunday School.  I have been in church choirs since the age of 5.  I took piano lessons for 10 years.  I never got very good at playing because I never practiced enough.  My real motivation was to learn to read music.  (And that is easier when you have an instrument like the piano to relate to.) 
I take voice lessons now.  I have for more than eight years now.  There is always something new to learn about a voice, especially your own.  I have discovered a depth of  sound that I never thought I could produce.  The technique isn't easy when you are learning it, but the results are worth the hard work!  (And it IS work to sing well, it only LOOKS effortless.)

So many songs run through my head all the time.  When I am fretting over something, I will often hear the refrain of an old hymn running through my mind.  Usually,, it is very appropriate to what I am fretting about, and usually, it makes me feel better.  I call that phenomenon Holy Spirit Radio.  The Spirit supplies the message I need to hear by sticking a hymn in my brain. 
Whatever anthem we are working on in choir that seems to need attention, I will find that running through my head a lot, also.  There are arias I have worked on that continuously show up.  Non Mi Dir, Deh Viene Non Tardar, Les Oiseaux, , the Trees on the Mountain, to name a few.  My head seems to constantly have music playing somewhere in the back ground.  Strangely enough, I don't listen to music much at home any more.  Perhaps it is because the world at large is so full of sound that I like a bit of quiet at home, or perhaps it is just too difficult to decide what I want to listen to when there are SO many choices in my collection.
Music can set a mood, it can lift spirits, it can get people moving, or it can lull them to sleep.  Music can be a cultural identifier.  (Bagpipe music, for instance.  You know immediately that there are Scots around!) 
Singing means so much to me.  I feel I can get lost in the music, become part of the sound, my whole being is an instrument.  To sing well, it makes me feel alive!  That is why I get so testy when I have a cold and lose my voice.  I NEED to sing! (Also, I think about the progress I have made in recent lessons, and fret over the lost ground that will need to be made up when the voice is back enough to use.)  I am always praying that I don't catch a cold close to a singing occasion.  So, I better not have a cold anytime in the next two months!  I have choir every Sunday, an Evensong AND a recital on the 19th, then of course the special Christmas services, and then there is a special Evensong in January.  I really need my voice to be here and in good shape until all that is over.  If I can]t practice, I won't perform well, and I really would rather perform at my best.

I am so grateful for music, for all the composers and lyricists, for all the musicians over the centuries that have made the very air rejoice with the sound of their music!
The ladies in the photo above are from the Handbell Choir at St. Andrew's Catholic Church in Moore, OK.