The week before Christmas, when I taught Sunday School for the last time this year, I broke the rules. Although the guitar is not permitted in our services I took mine and played it for class. I discovered something about my own talents that I didn't previously know. I acquired more evidence that I'm unique and laudable. Sometimes in life, we don't feel like things make sense, and sometimes the words we use or hear don't mean to us what they actually mean. As we live and learn and acquire talents/experience, our understanding of things changes, and our ability to convey meaning changes. There is a great deal of difference between a guitarist and a troubadour, but most guitarists probably think of themselves as the troubadour. The words we use matter. Our understanding of words others use matters. Ultimately it will matter to us if the word is in us.
During the classical music era, the guitar was forbidden because it wasn't actually a string instrument. Although it has strings, it's technically a percussion instrument, because you pluck it, and you do not play it with a bow. According to that tradition, we do not use the guitar in musical presentations, particularly during any part of the worship services. However, I felt it appropriate because "Silent Night" was originally written for the guitar. On a Christmas centuries ago, when the Oberndorf bei Salzburg organ broke, the local priest asked a parishoner to compose music to go with the poem, and Silent Night was performed on the guitar as part of the Christmas sermon in that parish that day, and since I spent two Christmases in Austria, I felt it appropriate to recreate that first Silent Night. None of them seemed to complain, but that's probably because they might like if we followed the admonition of other churches and used a band to liven up the sermon. Personally, I don't mind the ban, because when I attend services by other faiths, I find the band distracts from the word and drives away the Spirit under most circumstances, but this song doesn't seem to fall victim to that same phenomenon.
Apparently most people who play guitar don't also concurrently sing. After I finished, one of the guys told me how impressed he was that I sang while I played. Now, I make no pretense at being a professional entertainer, but after he said that, I realized that most groups, the lead just sings. Some notable exceptions exist like Ray Charles who played piano and sang or Taylor Swift who plays guitar and sings or Lindsay Sterling who plays violin and dances. However, most of the guys I know who play better than I do only do that- they play. As much as the young girls swoon at their feet while they play, and some of them are spectacular musicians, they only play the instrument, and they do not sing. It's funny, because I think of the women who are serenaded in stories, but apparently that doesn't happen. More likely, John Cusack shows up on their lawn with a boom box and plays them a song. I can actually do both.
We take a lot of things for granted based on our own bias. We know what we know, what we do, why we do it, and without other information, we don't know that other people do things differently. I thought a lot of what I do and think and feel was normal, but apparently it's less normal. Maybe it isn't normal at all. We have unique terms in English to differentiate between different circumstances, but so many people seem uneducated or inarticulate and use the same term on multiple different circumstances. Sure, I can sing and play, but I am not a musical artist, and I am not a performer. I suppose I am a musician, because I know how to play and can play and do play. Not everyone I know is a friend, and not everything I enjoy is something I "love", and not everyone who claims to love me means the same thing as I do when they say that. Maybe we're all correct, but the words are different, and they convey different denotations based on our bias and experience. I am sad to discover that the words of so many people don't matter.
This has been a very strange year. I expected something bad to happen any moment, and as I went to bed last night without knowing about anything bad that happened to me, I felt abnormal in a new way. Much of the world lies in turmoil. Most people are not as comfortable. My own neighbor got foreclosed on just before Christmas. My best friend got divorced. Based on my own life experience, I sometimes feel oppressed or in dire straights, and even though others endure trials doesn't make mine irrelevant. They are mine. They are allowed in my life because they mean something to it. They are mine because I can endure them. They apply to my life because each of us has a different tutorial before we shuffle off this mortal coil. There are many ways to live, many choices to make, many talents to acquire, many experiences to have, and many things that happen that happen unexpectedly. However, there is only one way to have a complete life. Live life well. Turn to Christ. Let Him lift you up as He was. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. As we learn what the words mean and what the Word means, as the Word means more to us, our lives get richer, and we look forward with surety for a better world.
I am personally very thankful to the Word that 2017 was quiet. I expected my dog to die this year. I expected bad news. It was quiet. May your 2018 bring you that promotion you seek, that vacation opportunity you truly enjoy, a wiser heart, a clearer eye, someone wonderful with whom to share your life, and a better appreciation for the meaning of the Word in your life. Happy New Year.
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