Why I sing

Why I Sing

The Eucharist can be viewed through many lenses.  Each lets us see different facets of this bottomless mystery.  One such lense sees the Eucharist as an exchange of gifts.  We present the bread and wine and receive back Christ's precioius body and blood.  But there is another dynamic transpiring as well.  Just before the Eucharistic prayer is offered, the collection is taken and put before the altar.  That collection represents our effort, our energies, our creativity, our very selves.  All of it, the bread, the wine, our offerings, are transformed, transubstantiated, and by extension, we are on that altar,we are transformed, and missioned to go out in to the world.

By nature, I am not well suited to art.  I took a bachelor's degree in Physics, not because I had vocational goals to meet, but because I thought that it would be fun.  It was, though it was also a ton of work.  Shortly after completing my BS, I started in graduate work.  I knew I didn't have what it took to get an MS in Physics, so I gave myself a break and got a MS in Electrical Engineering.  Whe my wife & I got married, the photographer told her that I danced like a scientest.  I figure a creative person like a professional photographer must know a dancing scientest when he sees one.  I've born that stigma ever since.

I like to express myself fully, leaving nothing of my thoughts, and lately emotions, to the imagination.  My thought process is somewhat chaotic, rather slow, and uninspired.  And when I come to a conclusion or sort something out in my heart and mind, I like to get it out thoroughly.  Assuming that I have an audience, a community to share that with.

To perform, celebrate, proclaim a piece of muic puts you into a community that may never meet, never see.  The composer often is inspired by a community that they belong to.  The composer expresses themselves within that context.  That community is ineffably woven into every note, every line of the lyrics.  And it comes out when the music is celebrated.  Liturgical music, like the Mass, finds its fullest expression in the context of full, active and conscious participation of a community.  And it is this context that gives a musical celebration its greatest fulfillment.

And yet there is a third community present in any celebration: the Trinity and us.  We are daily invited into that divine fellowship, that holy community.  From our acceptance of that generous invitation springs the heart of our liturgical music celebration.  It is that conversation that we have within the Trinity that fires in us a response, a prayer.

I am not an accomplished vocalist.  My choir director looks at me through the eyes of an old and dear friend, not those of a performer.  But still I strive to push more air, watch my dynamics, mind the way that my voice blends with the rest of my choir community's for one simple reason: in so doing, I get out of the way.

Nothing is served by attention drawn to me.  This is a ministry of humility if ever there was one.  When my harmony is in perfect blend, when we are able to make the music accessible and familiar to the assembly that we serve, when we are able to midwife within them their own urgent prayer, help them stoke the fires of their celebration of the Trinity, we are truly bringing the Kingdom here to earth, and offering all that all of us are to God in union with His offering of His Son to us in one cosmic exchange of gifts that transcends time and space, race and religion, gender and nationality.

Singing at its very best helps me to find myself in a larger purpose, to see the world through the eyes of a poet, and to fulfill my calling as a member of the priesthood of believers.

In short, I sing because my life makes little sense without prayer.