Madeleine L'Engle wrote a lovely volume entitled Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. I have decided to use it for part of my CPE study. As some of you recall, I pitched a whine about music and its place in my life a week or more ago. More than once, my talent as a musician has been a subject of conversation here at the hospital. People expect that my musicianship is or should be an active part of my ministry. I have often thought it was. I sing in choir. I lead singing at church. I play in the band. The usual drill, if you will. I think that my fellow residents have something else in mind.
Should I be singing to the patients? One of my colleagues does. She is from Arica and sings hymns and service music to her patients on the hospice floor. I have never had the guts (gall on bad days) to do such a thing, but I am hearing the challenge differently and think I need to do some more active discernment of how or if my musical gifts should eb used similarly. I just do not know, but I hear the questions and wonder myself why I do not sing (play) as part of an active pastoral ministry.
So, I thought I'd get back into this book and see what it has to offer me. I have other books on church musicians and the like, but this one came off the shelf as something useful. This is the quote from the back jacket.
To paint a picture or to write a story or to compose a song is an incarnational activity. The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birth giver. In a very real sense the artist should be like Mary who, when the angel told her that she was to bear the Messiah, was obedient to the command. I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, "Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me."Huh. Live into that one, you Baptist. Ha! Posted by tripp at October 19, 2004 11:29 AM
My composition class has been giving birth lately. However, we have been giving birth
to polytonal pieces -- each instrument is in a different key simultaneously.
Next, we are working on 3-motif atonal.
Do you think Madeleine would go for that?
This type of music sometimes makes people want
to crawl out of their skin!
I wasn't singing *for* anyone--my talent in this area isn't yours-- but I did sing *with* a patient more than once, last summer. Call it comfort, or prayer, or what, I don't know; but there it is.
Posted by: Jane Ellen at October 19, 2004 10:50 PM