Singing Along the Journey

Calling

Let the adventure begin…

This is the very first post in a brand new writing adventure...a new writing adventure about a new living and learning adventure that begins for me on August 8, 2012. You see, I am finally going to seminary. It is an adventure that has been a long time coming.  A very long time.  Perhaps we would have to say that it is an adventure that began the first time I made my mother explain to me why I, an eight-year-old Presbyterian, could not take holy orders and become a nun.  The question and the call showed itself several times in my life, but I never had the strength or the…
Read More

Creating a new rumor…

All summer, ever since the end of Calvary's 150th anniversary weekend at the beginning of June, there has been something new....something new just out of reach, not visible, not clearly felt, not yet arrived...but there and clear enough to hold my attention now for a couple of months.  And the only framework my conscious mind seems to have with which to understand that feeling is through a story I heard told by John Bell at a recent conference.  I know that I won't get the details right, but that is how it goes when you repeat a story...you repeat it through the lens that has meaning for you. It seems…
Read More

It is never about the high note…

Music is, in so many ways, all about the phrasing.  When you experience someone as a "very musical" performer, the technical musical thing that is happening is phrasing--phrasing that best showcases the emotion or meaning of the music being presented.  For the best musicians, phrasing becomes like breathing and requires little thought.  Most of the rest of us work at it most of the time. But one of the most important things we learn, as we learn to phrase, is this rule:  the high note is hardly ever the point of the phrase.  This rule applies to singers and to instrumentalists;  the most important thing about a phrase is its destination...and it is…
Read More

Those little God moments…

For the past 48 hours, I have been in Atlanta attending a conference called "The Singing Church," sponsored by the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.  In these past 48 hours, I have sung more church music than I ever imagined possible, I have experienced more different types of liturgy than I imagined existed, and I have had a chance to listen to and meet some people whose books have guided my thoughts and my learning and my transformation over the past three years. I have participated in five separate worship services, sung to guitar, piano, organ, drum, and hung (Korean string instrument that is a little like a…
Read More

Playing catch-up…

I would be the first to admit that I feel like I spend most of my days playing catch-up to those around me:  especially in terms of my reading and thinking about my faith and my calling.  I have, for most of life, done things in reverse order...I was an adult before I was a child, I had my old age before my youth (although I'm guessing I'll get a second run at the old age thing), I worked as a librarian before I studied library science, I sang professionally before I studied singing, etc. etc. and so forth and so on.  And now, I am coming to see that…
Read More

Journeying with the Magi

Advent is now long behind us (well, it seems long to me), we areat the end of Christmas, and Epiphany lies ahead of us.  I am lucky; unlike most people who must return to a daily schedule as soon as the New Year is in place, I generally have an extra week to clean out the old and make space for the new, and recover from the extra services and extra music that have filled the season just past.  These are the moments when I file the old music and ready the new; finish the readings devoted to the liturgical season and select those for the coming weeks and the coming…
Read More

A pilgrimage…of sorts

Lately, I have been very interested in a way of thinking that is often referred to as the "ancient-future" view of Christianity, one that seeks to recover what we know and can know of the ways of those first Christians, struggling in faith, struggling to live together before the creation of the institution that we know as "church", and to take that knowledge and use it to forge a way of Christian living in the 21st century.  It is this view of faith that has led to such movements as the New Monasticism, among others. I however, have been approaching this interest, not by moving into a big house with…
Read More

Going to church…

It is, once again, Sunday morning.  And I am once again up at some totally-too-early-hour, getting ready to go to church and join my community in worship and in fellowship. But that, my friends, is my favorite way to spend my Sunday morning.  No lazy lay-a-bed with the New York Times for me -- 5:30 wakeup, meditation, preparation, and out the door at 9 a.m. only to return, if I am lucky, by 2 p.m. But what is really on my mind this morning as I get ready for the day ahead, is, well, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the things we read together as a study group in his work Life…
Read More

Where the music comes from…

Last Friday, on the opening concert of the Friday Morning Music Club's first resident season at Calvary Baptist Church, my good friend and frequent performing partner, Natalie, sang  (beautifully, I might add) one of my most favorite songs...a song by Lee Hoiby, called "Where the Music Comes From...", for which the composer himself wrote the words.  The text is, for me, an eloquent statement of so much that I hold true: I want to be where the music comes from Where the clock stops, where it's now I want to be with the friends around me Who have found me, who show me how I want to sing to the…
Read More

If speaking is silver, then listening is gold…

That quotation is actually an old Turkish proverb.  I offer it to you because over the past couple of weeks, the art of listening has been on my mind. Did you know that, for a musician, one of the MOST important skills is the ability to listen?  Correct.  And, in many, many instances, a performer's ability to listen will make or break a performance.  Listening is important for tuning, for ensemble singing and playing, for taking direction from a conductor or a stage director -- if you as a performer cannot listen well, you will never be part of a great performance.  That is right -- "part of".  No matter…
Read More

Let the adventure begin…

This is the very first post in a brand new writing adventure...a new writing adventure about a new living and learning adventure that begins for me on August 8, 2012. You see, I am finally going to seminary. It is an adventure that has been a long time coming.  A very long time.  Perhaps we would have to say that it is an adventure that began the first time I made my mother explain to me why I, an eight-year-old Presbyterian, could not take holy orders and become a nun.  The question and the call showed itself several times in my life, but I never had the strength or the…
Read More

Creating a new rumor…

All summer, ever since the end of Calvary's 150th anniversary weekend at the beginning of June, there has been something new....something new just out of reach, not visible, not clearly felt, not yet arrived...but there and clear enough to hold my attention now for a couple of months.  And the only framework my conscious mind seems to have with which to understand that feeling is through a story I heard told by John Bell at a recent conference.  I know that I won't get the details right, but that is how it goes when you repeat a story...you repeat it through the lens that has meaning for you. It seems…
Read More

It is never about the high note…

Music is, in so many ways, all about the phrasing.  When you experience someone as a "very musical" performer, the technical musical thing that is happening is phrasing--phrasing that best showcases the emotion or meaning of the music being presented.  For the best musicians, phrasing becomes like breathing and requires little thought.  Most of the rest of us work at it most of the time. But one of the most important things we learn, as we learn to phrase, is this rule:  the high note is hardly ever the point of the phrase.  This rule applies to singers and to instrumentalists;  the most important thing about a phrase is its destination...and it is…
Read More

Those little God moments…

For the past 48 hours, I have been in Atlanta attending a conference called "The Singing Church," sponsored by the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.  In these past 48 hours, I have sung more church music than I ever imagined possible, I have experienced more different types of liturgy than I imagined existed, and I have had a chance to listen to and meet some people whose books have guided my thoughts and my learning and my transformation over the past three years. I have participated in five separate worship services, sung to guitar, piano, organ, drum, and hung (Korean string instrument that is a little like a…
Read More

Playing catch-up…

I would be the first to admit that I feel like I spend most of my days playing catch-up to those around me:  especially in terms of my reading and thinking about my faith and my calling.  I have, for most of life, done things in reverse order...I was an adult before I was a child, I had my old age before my youth (although I'm guessing I'll get a second run at the old age thing), I worked as a librarian before I studied library science, I sang professionally before I studied singing, etc. etc. and so forth and so on.  And now, I am coming to see that…
Read More

Journeying with the Magi

Advent is now long behind us (well, it seems long to me), we areat the end of Christmas, and Epiphany lies ahead of us.  I am lucky; unlike most people who must return to a daily schedule as soon as the New Year is in place, I generally have an extra week to clean out the old and make space for the new, and recover from the extra services and extra music that have filled the season just past.  These are the moments when I file the old music and ready the new; finish the readings devoted to the liturgical season and select those for the coming weeks and the coming…
Read More

A pilgrimage…of sorts

Lately, I have been very interested in a way of thinking that is often referred to as the "ancient-future" view of Christianity, one that seeks to recover what we know and can know of the ways of those first Christians, struggling in faith, struggling to live together before the creation of the institution that we know as "church", and to take that knowledge and use it to forge a way of Christian living in the 21st century.  It is this view of faith that has led to such movements as the New Monasticism, among others. I however, have been approaching this interest, not by moving into a big house with…
Read More

Going to church…

It is, once again, Sunday morning.  And I am once again up at some totally-too-early-hour, getting ready to go to church and join my community in worship and in fellowship. But that, my friends, is my favorite way to spend my Sunday morning.  No lazy lay-a-bed with the New York Times for me -- 5:30 wakeup, meditation, preparation, and out the door at 9 a.m. only to return, if I am lucky, by 2 p.m. But what is really on my mind this morning as I get ready for the day ahead, is, well, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the things we read together as a study group in his work Life…
Read More

Where the music comes from…

Last Friday, on the opening concert of the Friday Morning Music Club's first resident season at Calvary Baptist Church, my good friend and frequent performing partner, Natalie, sang  (beautifully, I might add) one of my most favorite songs...a song by Lee Hoiby, called "Where the Music Comes From...", for which the composer himself wrote the words.  The text is, for me, an eloquent statement of so much that I hold true: I want to be where the music comes from Where the clock stops, where it's now I want to be with the friends around me Who have found me, who show me how I want to sing to the…
Read More

If speaking is silver, then listening is gold…

That quotation is actually an old Turkish proverb.  I offer it to you because over the past couple of weeks, the art of listening has been on my mind. Did you know that, for a musician, one of the MOST important skills is the ability to listen?  Correct.  And, in many, many instances, a performer's ability to listen will make or break a performance.  Listening is important for tuning, for ensemble singing and playing, for taking direction from a conductor or a stage director -- if you as a performer cannot listen well, you will never be part of a great performance.  That is right -- "part of".  No matter…
Read More

Let the adventure begin…

This is the very first post in a brand new writing adventure...a new writing adventure about a new living and learning adventure that begins for me on August 8, 2012. You see, I am finally going to seminary. It is an adventure that has been a long time coming.  A very long time.  Perhaps we would have to say that it is an adventure that began the first time I made my mother explain to me why I, an eight-year-old Presbyterian, could not take holy orders and become a nun.  The question and the call showed itself several times in my life, but I never had the strength or the…
Read More

Creating a new rumor…

All summer, ever since the end of Calvary's 150th anniversary weekend at the beginning of June, there has been something new....something new just out of reach, not visible, not clearly felt, not yet arrived...but there and clear enough to hold my attention now for a couple of months.  And the only framework my conscious mind seems to have with which to understand that feeling is through a story I heard told by John Bell at a recent conference.  I know that I won't get the details right, but that is how it goes when you repeat a story...you repeat it through the lens that has meaning for you. It seems…
Read More

It is never about the high note…

Music is, in so many ways, all about the phrasing.  When you experience someone as a "very musical" performer, the technical musical thing that is happening is phrasing--phrasing that best showcases the emotion or meaning of the music being presented.  For the best musicians, phrasing becomes like breathing and requires little thought.  Most of the rest of us work at it most of the time. But one of the most important things we learn, as we learn to phrase, is this rule:  the high note is hardly ever the point of the phrase.  This rule applies to singers and to instrumentalists;  the most important thing about a phrase is its destination...and it is…
Read More

Those little God moments…

For the past 48 hours, I have been in Atlanta attending a conference called "The Singing Church," sponsored by the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.  In these past 48 hours, I have sung more church music than I ever imagined possible, I have experienced more different types of liturgy than I imagined existed, and I have had a chance to listen to and meet some people whose books have guided my thoughts and my learning and my transformation over the past three years. I have participated in five separate worship services, sung to guitar, piano, organ, drum, and hung (Korean string instrument that is a little like a…
Read More

Playing catch-up…

I would be the first to admit that I feel like I spend most of my days playing catch-up to those around me:  especially in terms of my reading and thinking about my faith and my calling.  I have, for most of life, done things in reverse order...I was an adult before I was a child, I had my old age before my youth (although I'm guessing I'll get a second run at the old age thing), I worked as a librarian before I studied library science, I sang professionally before I studied singing, etc. etc. and so forth and so on.  And now, I am coming to see that…
Read More

Journeying with the Magi

Advent is now long behind us (well, it seems long to me), we areat the end of Christmas, and Epiphany lies ahead of us.  I am lucky; unlike most people who must return to a daily schedule as soon as the New Year is in place, I generally have an extra week to clean out the old and make space for the new, and recover from the extra services and extra music that have filled the season just past.  These are the moments when I file the old music and ready the new; finish the readings devoted to the liturgical season and select those for the coming weeks and the coming…
Read More

A pilgrimage…of sorts

Lately, I have been very interested in a way of thinking that is often referred to as the "ancient-future" view of Christianity, one that seeks to recover what we know and can know of the ways of those first Christians, struggling in faith, struggling to live together before the creation of the institution that we know as "church", and to take that knowledge and use it to forge a way of Christian living in the 21st century.  It is this view of faith that has led to such movements as the New Monasticism, among others. I however, have been approaching this interest, not by moving into a big house with…
Read More

Going to church…

It is, once again, Sunday morning.  And I am once again up at some totally-too-early-hour, getting ready to go to church and join my community in worship and in fellowship. But that, my friends, is my favorite way to spend my Sunday morning.  No lazy lay-a-bed with the New York Times for me -- 5:30 wakeup, meditation, preparation, and out the door at 9 a.m. only to return, if I am lucky, by 2 p.m. But what is really on my mind this morning as I get ready for the day ahead, is, well, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the things we read together as a study group in his work Life…
Read More

Where the music comes from…

Last Friday, on the opening concert of the Friday Morning Music Club's first resident season at Calvary Baptist Church, my good friend and frequent performing partner, Natalie, sang  (beautifully, I might add) one of my most favorite songs...a song by Lee Hoiby, called "Where the Music Comes From...", for which the composer himself wrote the words.  The text is, for me, an eloquent statement of so much that I hold true: I want to be where the music comes from Where the clock stops, where it's now I want to be with the friends around me Who have found me, who show me how I want to sing to the…
Read More

If speaking is silver, then listening is gold…

That quotation is actually an old Turkish proverb.  I offer it to you because over the past couple of weeks, the art of listening has been on my mind. Did you know that, for a musician, one of the MOST important skills is the ability to listen?  Correct.  And, in many, many instances, a performer's ability to listen will make or break a performance.  Listening is important for tuning, for ensemble singing and playing, for taking direction from a conductor or a stage director -- if you as a performer cannot listen well, you will never be part of a great performance.  That is right -- "part of".  No matter…
Read More

Let the adventure begin…

This is the very first post in a brand new writing adventure...a new writing adventure about a new living and learning adventure that begins for me on August 8, 2012. You see, I am finally going to seminary. It is an adventure that has been a long time coming.  A very long time.  Perhaps we would have to say that it is an adventure that began the first time I made my mother explain to me why I, an eight-year-old Presbyterian, could not take holy orders and become a nun.  The question and the call showed itself several times in my life, but I never had the strength or the…
Read More

Creating a new rumor…

All summer, ever since the end of Calvary's 150th anniversary weekend at the beginning of June, there has been something new....something new just out of reach, not visible, not clearly felt, not yet arrived...but there and clear enough to hold my attention now for a couple of months.  And the only framework my conscious mind seems to have with which to understand that feeling is through a story I heard told by John Bell at a recent conference.  I know that I won't get the details right, but that is how it goes when you repeat a story...you repeat it through the lens that has meaning for you. It seems…
Read More

It is never about the high note…

Music is, in so many ways, all about the phrasing.  When you experience someone as a "very musical" performer, the technical musical thing that is happening is phrasing--phrasing that best showcases the emotion or meaning of the music being presented.  For the best musicians, phrasing becomes like breathing and requires little thought.  Most of the rest of us work at it most of the time. But one of the most important things we learn, as we learn to phrase, is this rule:  the high note is hardly ever the point of the phrase.  This rule applies to singers and to instrumentalists;  the most important thing about a phrase is its destination...and it is…
Read More

Those little God moments…

For the past 48 hours, I have been in Atlanta attending a conference called "The Singing Church," sponsored by the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.  In these past 48 hours, I have sung more church music than I ever imagined possible, I have experienced more different types of liturgy than I imagined existed, and I have had a chance to listen to and meet some people whose books have guided my thoughts and my learning and my transformation over the past three years. I have participated in five separate worship services, sung to guitar, piano, organ, drum, and hung (Korean string instrument that is a little like a…
Read More

Playing catch-up…

I would be the first to admit that I feel like I spend most of my days playing catch-up to those around me:  especially in terms of my reading and thinking about my faith and my calling.  I have, for most of life, done things in reverse order...I was an adult before I was a child, I had my old age before my youth (although I'm guessing I'll get a second run at the old age thing), I worked as a librarian before I studied library science, I sang professionally before I studied singing, etc. etc. and so forth and so on.  And now, I am coming to see that…
Read More

Journeying with the Magi

Advent is now long behind us (well, it seems long to me), we areat the end of Christmas, and Epiphany lies ahead of us.  I am lucky; unlike most people who must return to a daily schedule as soon as the New Year is in place, I generally have an extra week to clean out the old and make space for the new, and recover from the extra services and extra music that have filled the season just past.  These are the moments when I file the old music and ready the new; finish the readings devoted to the liturgical season and select those for the coming weeks and the coming…
Read More

A pilgrimage…of sorts

Lately, I have been very interested in a way of thinking that is often referred to as the "ancient-future" view of Christianity, one that seeks to recover what we know and can know of the ways of those first Christians, struggling in faith, struggling to live together before the creation of the institution that we know as "church", and to take that knowledge and use it to forge a way of Christian living in the 21st century.  It is this view of faith that has led to such movements as the New Monasticism, among others. I however, have been approaching this interest, not by moving into a big house with…
Read More

Going to church…

It is, once again, Sunday morning.  And I am once again up at some totally-too-early-hour, getting ready to go to church and join my community in worship and in fellowship. But that, my friends, is my favorite way to spend my Sunday morning.  No lazy lay-a-bed with the New York Times for me -- 5:30 wakeup, meditation, preparation, and out the door at 9 a.m. only to return, if I am lucky, by 2 p.m. But what is really on my mind this morning as I get ready for the day ahead, is, well, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the things we read together as a study group in his work Life…
Read More

Where the music comes from…

Last Friday, on the opening concert of the Friday Morning Music Club's first resident season at Calvary Baptist Church, my good friend and frequent performing partner, Natalie, sang  (beautifully, I might add) one of my most favorite songs...a song by Lee Hoiby, called "Where the Music Comes From...", for which the composer himself wrote the words.  The text is, for me, an eloquent statement of so much that I hold true: I want to be where the music comes from Where the clock stops, where it's now I want to be with the friends around me Who have found me, who show me how I want to sing to the…
Read More

If speaking is silver, then listening is gold…

That quotation is actually an old Turkish proverb.  I offer it to you because over the past couple of weeks, the art of listening has been on my mind. Did you know that, for a musician, one of the MOST important skills is the ability to listen?  Correct.  And, in many, many instances, a performer's ability to listen will make or break a performance.  Listening is important for tuning, for ensemble singing and playing, for taking direction from a conductor or a stage director -- if you as a performer cannot listen well, you will never be part of a great performance.  That is right -- "part of".  No matter…
Read More

Let the adventure begin…

This is the very first post in a brand new writing adventure...a new writing adventure about a new living and learning adventure that begins for me on August 8, 2012. You see, I am finally going to seminary. It is an adventure that has been a long time coming.  A very long time.  Perhaps we would have to say that it is an adventure that began the first time I made my mother explain to me why I, an eight-year-old Presbyterian, could not take holy orders and become a nun.  The question and the call showed itself several times in my life, but I never had the strength or the…
Read More

Creating a new rumor…

All summer, ever since the end of Calvary's 150th anniversary weekend at the beginning of June, there has been something new....something new just out of reach, not visible, not clearly felt, not yet arrived...but there and clear enough to hold my attention now for a couple of months.  And the only framework my conscious mind seems to have with which to understand that feeling is through a story I heard told by John Bell at a recent conference.  I know that I won't get the details right, but that is how it goes when you repeat a story...you repeat it through the lens that has meaning for you. It seems…
Read More

It is never about the high note…

Music is, in so many ways, all about the phrasing.  When you experience someone as a "very musical" performer, the technical musical thing that is happening is phrasing--phrasing that best showcases the emotion or meaning of the music being presented.  For the best musicians, phrasing becomes like breathing and requires little thought.  Most of the rest of us work at it most of the time. But one of the most important things we learn, as we learn to phrase, is this rule:  the high note is hardly ever the point of the phrase.  This rule applies to singers and to instrumentalists;  the most important thing about a phrase is its destination...and it is…
Read More

Those little God moments…

For the past 48 hours, I have been in Atlanta attending a conference called "The Singing Church," sponsored by the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.  In these past 48 hours, I have sung more church music than I ever imagined possible, I have experienced more different types of liturgy than I imagined existed, and I have had a chance to listen to and meet some people whose books have guided my thoughts and my learning and my transformation over the past three years. I have participated in five separate worship services, sung to guitar, piano, organ, drum, and hung (Korean string instrument that is a little like a…
Read More

Playing catch-up…

I would be the first to admit that I feel like I spend most of my days playing catch-up to those around me:  especially in terms of my reading and thinking about my faith and my calling.  I have, for most of life, done things in reverse order...I was an adult before I was a child, I had my old age before my youth (although I'm guessing I'll get a second run at the old age thing), I worked as a librarian before I studied library science, I sang professionally before I studied singing, etc. etc. and so forth and so on.  And now, I am coming to see that…
Read More

Journeying with the Magi

Advent is now long behind us (well, it seems long to me), we areat the end of Christmas, and Epiphany lies ahead of us.  I am lucky; unlike most people who must return to a daily schedule as soon as the New Year is in place, I generally have an extra week to clean out the old and make space for the new, and recover from the extra services and extra music that have filled the season just past.  These are the moments when I file the old music and ready the new; finish the readings devoted to the liturgical season and select those for the coming weeks and the coming…
Read More

A pilgrimage…of sorts

Lately, I have been very interested in a way of thinking that is often referred to as the "ancient-future" view of Christianity, one that seeks to recover what we know and can know of the ways of those first Christians, struggling in faith, struggling to live together before the creation of the institution that we know as "church", and to take that knowledge and use it to forge a way of Christian living in the 21st century.  It is this view of faith that has led to such movements as the New Monasticism, among others. I however, have been approaching this interest, not by moving into a big house with…
Read More

Going to church…

It is, once again, Sunday morning.  And I am once again up at some totally-too-early-hour, getting ready to go to church and join my community in worship and in fellowship. But that, my friends, is my favorite way to spend my Sunday morning.  No lazy lay-a-bed with the New York Times for me -- 5:30 wakeup, meditation, preparation, and out the door at 9 a.m. only to return, if I am lucky, by 2 p.m. But what is really on my mind this morning as I get ready for the day ahead, is, well, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the things we read together as a study group in his work Life…
Read More

Where the music comes from…

Last Friday, on the opening concert of the Friday Morning Music Club's first resident season at Calvary Baptist Church, my good friend and frequent performing partner, Natalie, sang  (beautifully, I might add) one of my most favorite songs...a song by Lee Hoiby, called "Where the Music Comes From...", for which the composer himself wrote the words.  The text is, for me, an eloquent statement of so much that I hold true: I want to be where the music comes from Where the clock stops, where it's now I want to be with the friends around me Who have found me, who show me how I want to sing to the…
Read More

If speaking is silver, then listening is gold…

That quotation is actually an old Turkish proverb.  I offer it to you because over the past couple of weeks, the art of listening has been on my mind. Did you know that, for a musician, one of the MOST important skills is the ability to listen?  Correct.  And, in many, many instances, a performer's ability to listen will make or break a performance.  Listening is important for tuning, for ensemble singing and playing, for taking direction from a conductor or a stage director -- if you as a performer cannot listen well, you will never be part of a great performance.  That is right -- "part of".  No matter…
Read More

Let the adventure begin…

This is the very first post in a brand new writing adventure...a new writing adventure about a new living and learning adventure that begins for me on August 8, 2012. You see, I am finally going to seminary. It is an adventure that has been a long time coming.  A very long time.  Perhaps we would have to say that it is an adventure that began the first time I made my mother explain to me why I, an eight-year-old Presbyterian, could not take holy orders and become a nun.  The question and the call showed itself several times in my life, but I never had the strength or the…
Read More

Creating a new rumor…

All summer, ever since the end of Calvary's 150th anniversary weekend at the beginning of June, there has been something new....something new just out of reach, not visible, not clearly felt, not yet arrived...but there and clear enough to hold my attention now for a couple of months.  And the only framework my conscious mind seems to have with which to understand that feeling is through a story I heard told by John Bell at a recent conference.  I know that I won't get the details right, but that is how it goes when you repeat a story...you repeat it through the lens that has meaning for you. It seems…
Read More

It is never about the high note…

Music is, in so many ways, all about the phrasing.  When you experience someone as a "very musical" performer, the technical musical thing that is happening is phrasing--phrasing that best showcases the emotion or meaning of the music being presented.  For the best musicians, phrasing becomes like breathing and requires little thought.  Most of the rest of us work at it most of the time. But one of the most important things we learn, as we learn to phrase, is this rule:  the high note is hardly ever the point of the phrase.  This rule applies to singers and to instrumentalists;  the most important thing about a phrase is its destination...and it is…
Read More

Those little God moments…

For the past 48 hours, I have been in Atlanta attending a conference called "The Singing Church," sponsored by the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.  In these past 48 hours, I have sung more church music than I ever imagined possible, I have experienced more different types of liturgy than I imagined existed, and I have had a chance to listen to and meet some people whose books have guided my thoughts and my learning and my transformation over the past three years. I have participated in five separate worship services, sung to guitar, piano, organ, drum, and hung (Korean string instrument that is a little like a…
Read More

Playing catch-up…

I would be the first to admit that I feel like I spend most of my days playing catch-up to those around me:  especially in terms of my reading and thinking about my faith and my calling.  I have, for most of life, done things in reverse order...I was an adult before I was a child, I had my old age before my youth (although I'm guessing I'll get a second run at the old age thing), I worked as a librarian before I studied library science, I sang professionally before I studied singing, etc. etc. and so forth and so on.  And now, I am coming to see that…
Read More

Journeying with the Magi

Advent is now long behind us (well, it seems long to me), we areat the end of Christmas, and Epiphany lies ahead of us.  I am lucky; unlike most people who must return to a daily schedule as soon as the New Year is in place, I generally have an extra week to clean out the old and make space for the new, and recover from the extra services and extra music that have filled the season just past.  These are the moments when I file the old music and ready the new; finish the readings devoted to the liturgical season and select those for the coming weeks and the coming…
Read More

A pilgrimage…of sorts

Lately, I have been very interested in a way of thinking that is often referred to as the "ancient-future" view of Christianity, one that seeks to recover what we know and can know of the ways of those first Christians, struggling in faith, struggling to live together before the creation of the institution that we know as "church", and to take that knowledge and use it to forge a way of Christian living in the 21st century.  It is this view of faith that has led to such movements as the New Monasticism, among others. I however, have been approaching this interest, not by moving into a big house with…
Read More

Going to church…

It is, once again, Sunday morning.  And I am once again up at some totally-too-early-hour, getting ready to go to church and join my community in worship and in fellowship. But that, my friends, is my favorite way to spend my Sunday morning.  No lazy lay-a-bed with the New York Times for me -- 5:30 wakeup, meditation, preparation, and out the door at 9 a.m. only to return, if I am lucky, by 2 p.m. But what is really on my mind this morning as I get ready for the day ahead, is, well, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the things we read together as a study group in his work Life…
Read More

Where the music comes from…

Last Friday, on the opening concert of the Friday Morning Music Club's first resident season at Calvary Baptist Church, my good friend and frequent performing partner, Natalie, sang  (beautifully, I might add) one of my most favorite songs...a song by Lee Hoiby, called "Where the Music Comes From...", for which the composer himself wrote the words.  The text is, for me, an eloquent statement of so much that I hold true: I want to be where the music comes from Where the clock stops, where it's now I want to be with the friends around me Who have found me, who show me how I want to sing to the…
Read More

If speaking is silver, then listening is gold…

That quotation is actually an old Turkish proverb.  I offer it to you because over the past couple of weeks, the art of listening has been on my mind. Did you know that, for a musician, one of the MOST important skills is the ability to listen?  Correct.  And, in many, many instances, a performer's ability to listen will make or break a performance.  Listening is important for tuning, for ensemble singing and playing, for taking direction from a conductor or a stage director -- if you as a performer cannot listen well, you will never be part of a great performance.  That is right -- "part of".  No matter…
Read More

Let the adventure begin…

This is the very first post in a brand new writing adventure...a new writing adventure about a new living and learning adventure that begins for me on August 8, 2012. You see, I am finally going to seminary. It is an adventure that has been a long time coming.  A very long time.  Perhaps we would have to say that it is an adventure that began the first time I made my mother explain to me why I, an eight-year-old Presbyterian, could not take holy orders and become a nun.  The question and the call showed itself several times in my life, but I never had the strength or the…
Read More

Creating a new rumor…

All summer, ever since the end of Calvary's 150th anniversary weekend at the beginning of June, there has been something new....something new just out of reach, not visible, not clearly felt, not yet arrived...but there and clear enough to hold my attention now for a couple of months.  And the only framework my conscious mind seems to have with which to understand that feeling is through a story I heard told by John Bell at a recent conference.  I know that I won't get the details right, but that is how it goes when you repeat a story...you repeat it through the lens that has meaning for you. It seems…
Read More

It is never about the high note…

Music is, in so many ways, all about the phrasing.  When you experience someone as a "very musical" performer, the technical musical thing that is happening is phrasing--phrasing that best showcases the emotion or meaning of the music being presented.  For the best musicians, phrasing becomes like breathing and requires little thought.  Most of the rest of us work at it most of the time. But one of the most important things we learn, as we learn to phrase, is this rule:  the high note is hardly ever the point of the phrase.  This rule applies to singers and to instrumentalists;  the most important thing about a phrase is its destination...and it is…
Read More

Those little God moments…

For the past 48 hours, I have been in Atlanta attending a conference called "The Singing Church," sponsored by the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.  In these past 48 hours, I have sung more church music than I ever imagined possible, I have experienced more different types of liturgy than I imagined existed, and I have had a chance to listen to and meet some people whose books have guided my thoughts and my learning and my transformation over the past three years. I have participated in five separate worship services, sung to guitar, piano, organ, drum, and hung (Korean string instrument that is a little like a…
Read More

Playing catch-up…

I would be the first to admit that I feel like I spend most of my days playing catch-up to those around me:  especially in terms of my reading and thinking about my faith and my calling.  I have, for most of life, done things in reverse order...I was an adult before I was a child, I had my old age before my youth (although I'm guessing I'll get a second run at the old age thing), I worked as a librarian before I studied library science, I sang professionally before I studied singing, etc. etc. and so forth and so on.  And now, I am coming to see that…
Read More

Journeying with the Magi

Advent is now long behind us (well, it seems long to me), we areat the end of Christmas, and Epiphany lies ahead of us.  I am lucky; unlike most people who must return to a daily schedule as soon as the New Year is in place, I generally have an extra week to clean out the old and make space for the new, and recover from the extra services and extra music that have filled the season just past.  These are the moments when I file the old music and ready the new; finish the readings devoted to the liturgical season and select those for the coming weeks and the coming…
Read More

A pilgrimage…of sorts

Lately, I have been very interested in a way of thinking that is often referred to as the "ancient-future" view of Christianity, one that seeks to recover what we know and can know of the ways of those first Christians, struggling in faith, struggling to live together before the creation of the institution that we know as "church", and to take that knowledge and use it to forge a way of Christian living in the 21st century.  It is this view of faith that has led to such movements as the New Monasticism, among others. I however, have been approaching this interest, not by moving into a big house with…
Read More

Going to church…

It is, once again, Sunday morning.  And I am once again up at some totally-too-early-hour, getting ready to go to church and join my community in worship and in fellowship. But that, my friends, is my favorite way to spend my Sunday morning.  No lazy lay-a-bed with the New York Times for me -- 5:30 wakeup, meditation, preparation, and out the door at 9 a.m. only to return, if I am lucky, by 2 p.m. But what is really on my mind this morning as I get ready for the day ahead, is, well, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the things we read together as a study group in his work Life…
Read More

Where the music comes from…

Last Friday, on the opening concert of the Friday Morning Music Club's first resident season at Calvary Baptist Church, my good friend and frequent performing partner, Natalie, sang  (beautifully, I might add) one of my most favorite songs...a song by Lee Hoiby, called "Where the Music Comes From...", for which the composer himself wrote the words.  The text is, for me, an eloquent statement of so much that I hold true: I want to be where the music comes from Where the clock stops, where it's now I want to be with the friends around me Who have found me, who show me how I want to sing to the…
Read More

If speaking is silver, then listening is gold…

That quotation is actually an old Turkish proverb.  I offer it to you because over the past couple of weeks, the art of listening has been on my mind. Did you know that, for a musician, one of the MOST important skills is the ability to listen?  Correct.  And, in many, many instances, a performer's ability to listen will make or break a performance.  Listening is important for tuning, for ensemble singing and playing, for taking direction from a conductor or a stage director -- if you as a performer cannot listen well, you will never be part of a great performance.  That is right -- "part of".  No matter…
Read More

Let the adventure begin…

This is the very first post in a brand new writing adventure...a new writing adventure about a new living and learning adventure that begins for me on August 8, 2012. You see, I am finally going to seminary. It is an adventure that has been a long time coming.  A very long time.  Perhaps we would have to say that it is an adventure that began the first time I made my mother explain to me why I, an eight-year-old Presbyterian, could not take holy orders and become a nun.  The question and the call showed itself several times in my life, but I never had the strength or the…
Read More

Creating a new rumor…

All summer, ever since the end of Calvary's 150th anniversary weekend at the beginning of June, there has been something new....something new just out of reach, not visible, not clearly felt, not yet arrived...but there and clear enough to hold my attention now for a couple of months.  And the only framework my conscious mind seems to have with which to understand that feeling is through a story I heard told by John Bell at a recent conference.  I know that I won't get the details right, but that is how it goes when you repeat a story...you repeat it through the lens that has meaning for you. It seems…
Read More

It is never about the high note…

Music is, in so many ways, all about the phrasing.  When you experience someone as a "very musical" performer, the technical musical thing that is happening is phrasing--phrasing that best showcases the emotion or meaning of the music being presented.  For the best musicians, phrasing becomes like breathing and requires little thought.  Most of the rest of us work at it most of the time. But one of the most important things we learn, as we learn to phrase, is this rule:  the high note is hardly ever the point of the phrase.  This rule applies to singers and to instrumentalists;  the most important thing about a phrase is its destination...and it is…
Read More

Those little God moments…

For the past 48 hours, I have been in Atlanta attending a conference called "The Singing Church," sponsored by the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.  In these past 48 hours, I have sung more church music than I ever imagined possible, I have experienced more different types of liturgy than I imagined existed, and I have had a chance to listen to and meet some people whose books have guided my thoughts and my learning and my transformation over the past three years. I have participated in five separate worship services, sung to guitar, piano, organ, drum, and hung (Korean string instrument that is a little like a…
Read More

Playing catch-up…

I would be the first to admit that I feel like I spend most of my days playing catch-up to those around me:  especially in terms of my reading and thinking about my faith and my calling.  I have, for most of life, done things in reverse order...I was an adult before I was a child, I had my old age before my youth (although I'm guessing I'll get a second run at the old age thing), I worked as a librarian before I studied library science, I sang professionally before I studied singing, etc. etc. and so forth and so on.  And now, I am coming to see that…
Read More

Journeying with the Magi

Advent is now long behind us (well, it seems long to me), we areat the end of Christmas, and Epiphany lies ahead of us.  I am lucky; unlike most people who must return to a daily schedule as soon as the New Year is in place, I generally have an extra week to clean out the old and make space for the new, and recover from the extra services and extra music that have filled the season just past.  These are the moments when I file the old music and ready the new; finish the readings devoted to the liturgical season and select those for the coming weeks and the coming…
Read More

A pilgrimage…of sorts

Lately, I have been very interested in a way of thinking that is often referred to as the "ancient-future" view of Christianity, one that seeks to recover what we know and can know of the ways of those first Christians, struggling in faith, struggling to live together before the creation of the institution that we know as "church", and to take that knowledge and use it to forge a way of Christian living in the 21st century.  It is this view of faith that has led to such movements as the New Monasticism, among others. I however, have been approaching this interest, not by moving into a big house with…
Read More

Going to church…

It is, once again, Sunday morning.  And I am once again up at some totally-too-early-hour, getting ready to go to church and join my community in worship and in fellowship. But that, my friends, is my favorite way to spend my Sunday morning.  No lazy lay-a-bed with the New York Times for me -- 5:30 wakeup, meditation, preparation, and out the door at 9 a.m. only to return, if I am lucky, by 2 p.m. But what is really on my mind this morning as I get ready for the day ahead, is, well, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the things we read together as a study group in his work Life…
Read More

Where the music comes from…

Last Friday, on the opening concert of the Friday Morning Music Club's first resident season at Calvary Baptist Church, my good friend and frequent performing partner, Natalie, sang  (beautifully, I might add) one of my most favorite songs...a song by Lee Hoiby, called "Where the Music Comes From...", for which the composer himself wrote the words.  The text is, for me, an eloquent statement of so much that I hold true: I want to be where the music comes from Where the clock stops, where it's now I want to be with the friends around me Who have found me, who show me how I want to sing to the…
Read More

If speaking is silver, then listening is gold…

That quotation is actually an old Turkish proverb.  I offer it to you because over the past couple of weeks, the art of listening has been on my mind. Did you know that, for a musician, one of the MOST important skills is the ability to listen?  Correct.  And, in many, many instances, a performer's ability to listen will make or break a performance.  Listening is important for tuning, for ensemble singing and playing, for taking direction from a conductor or a stage director -- if you as a performer cannot listen well, you will never be part of a great performance.  That is right -- "part of".  No matter…
Read More

Let the adventure begin…

This is the very first post in a brand new writing adventure...a new writing adventure about a new living and learning adventure that begins for me on August 8, 2012. You see, I am finally going to seminary. It is an adventure that has been a long time coming.  A very long time.  Perhaps we would have to say that it is an adventure that began the first time I made my mother explain to me why I, an eight-year-old Presbyterian, could not take holy orders and become a nun.  The question and the call showed itself several times in my life, but I never had the strength or the…
Read More

Creating a new rumor…

All summer, ever since the end of Calvary's 150th anniversary weekend at the beginning of June, there has been something new....something new just out of reach, not visible, not clearly felt, not yet arrived...but there and clear enough to hold my attention now for a couple of months.  And the only framework my conscious mind seems to have with which to understand that feeling is through a story I heard told by John Bell at a recent conference.  I know that I won't get the details right, but that is how it goes when you repeat a story...you repeat it through the lens that has meaning for you. It seems…
Read More

It is never about the high note…

Music is, in so many ways, all about the phrasing.  When you experience someone as a "very musical" performer, the technical musical thing that is happening is phrasing--phrasing that best showcases the emotion or meaning of the music being presented.  For the best musicians, phrasing becomes like breathing and requires little thought.  Most of the rest of us work at it most of the time. But one of the most important things we learn, as we learn to phrase, is this rule:  the high note is hardly ever the point of the phrase.  This rule applies to singers and to instrumentalists;  the most important thing about a phrase is its destination...and it is…
Read More

Those little God moments…

For the past 48 hours, I have been in Atlanta attending a conference called "The Singing Church," sponsored by the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.  In these past 48 hours, I have sung more church music than I ever imagined possible, I have experienced more different types of liturgy than I imagined existed, and I have had a chance to listen to and meet some people whose books have guided my thoughts and my learning and my transformation over the past three years. I have participated in five separate worship services, sung to guitar, piano, organ, drum, and hung (Korean string instrument that is a little like a…
Read More

Playing catch-up…

I would be the first to admit that I feel like I spend most of my days playing catch-up to those around me:  especially in terms of my reading and thinking about my faith and my calling.  I have, for most of life, done things in reverse order...I was an adult before I was a child, I had my old age before my youth (although I'm guessing I'll get a second run at the old age thing), I worked as a librarian before I studied library science, I sang professionally before I studied singing, etc. etc. and so forth and so on.  And now, I am coming to see that…
Read More

Journeying with the Magi

Advent is now long behind us (well, it seems long to me), we areat the end of Christmas, and Epiphany lies ahead of us.  I am lucky; unlike most people who must return to a daily schedule as soon as the New Year is in place, I generally have an extra week to clean out the old and make space for the new, and recover from the extra services and extra music that have filled the season just past.  These are the moments when I file the old music and ready the new; finish the readings devoted to the liturgical season and select those for the coming weeks and the coming…
Read More

A pilgrimage…of sorts

Lately, I have been very interested in a way of thinking that is often referred to as the "ancient-future" view of Christianity, one that seeks to recover what we know and can know of the ways of those first Christians, struggling in faith, struggling to live together before the creation of the institution that we know as "church", and to take that knowledge and use it to forge a way of Christian living in the 21st century.  It is this view of faith that has led to such movements as the New Monasticism, among others. I however, have been approaching this interest, not by moving into a big house with…
Read More

Going to church…

It is, once again, Sunday morning.  And I am once again up at some totally-too-early-hour, getting ready to go to church and join my community in worship and in fellowship. But that, my friends, is my favorite way to spend my Sunday morning.  No lazy lay-a-bed with the New York Times for me -- 5:30 wakeup, meditation, preparation, and out the door at 9 a.m. only to return, if I am lucky, by 2 p.m. But what is really on my mind this morning as I get ready for the day ahead, is, well, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the things we read together as a study group in his work Life…
Read More

Where the music comes from…

Last Friday, on the opening concert of the Friday Morning Music Club's first resident season at Calvary Baptist Church, my good friend and frequent performing partner, Natalie, sang  (beautifully, I might add) one of my most favorite songs...a song by Lee Hoiby, called "Where the Music Comes From...", for which the composer himself wrote the words.  The text is, for me, an eloquent statement of so much that I hold true: I want to be where the music comes from Where the clock stops, where it's now I want to be with the friends around me Who have found me, who show me how I want to sing to the…
Read More

If speaking is silver, then listening is gold…

That quotation is actually an old Turkish proverb.  I offer it to you because over the past couple of weeks, the art of listening has been on my mind. Did you know that, for a musician, one of the MOST important skills is the ability to listen?  Correct.  And, in many, many instances, a performer's ability to listen will make or break a performance.  Listening is important for tuning, for ensemble singing and playing, for taking direction from a conductor or a stage director -- if you as a performer cannot listen well, you will never be part of a great performance.  That is right -- "part of".  No matter…
Read More

Let the adventure begin…

This is the very first post in a brand new writing adventure...a new writing adventure about a new living and learning adventure that begins for me on August 8, 2012. You see, I am finally going to seminary. It is an adventure that has been a long time coming.  A very long time.  Perhaps we would have to say that it is an adventure that began the first time I made my mother explain to me why I, an eight-year-old Presbyterian, could not take holy orders and become a nun.  The question and the call showed itself several times in my life, but I never had the strength or the…
Read More

Creating a new rumor…

All summer, ever since the end of Calvary's 150th anniversary weekend at the beginning of June, there has been something new....something new just out of reach, not visible, not clearly felt, not yet arrived...but there and clear enough to hold my attention now for a couple of months.  And the only framework my conscious mind seems to have with which to understand that feeling is through a story I heard told by John Bell at a recent conference.  I know that I won't get the details right, but that is how it goes when you repeat a story...you repeat it through the lens that has meaning for you. It seems…
Read More

It is never about the high note…

Music is, in so many ways, all about the phrasing.  When you experience someone as a "very musical" performer, the technical musical thing that is happening is phrasing--phrasing that best showcases the emotion or meaning of the music being presented.  For the best musicians, phrasing becomes like breathing and requires little thought.  Most of the rest of us work at it most of the time. But one of the most important things we learn, as we learn to phrase, is this rule:  the high note is hardly ever the point of the phrase.  This rule applies to singers and to instrumentalists;  the most important thing about a phrase is its destination...and it is…
Read More

Those little God moments…

For the past 48 hours, I have been in Atlanta attending a conference called "The Singing Church," sponsored by the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.  In these past 48 hours, I have sung more church music than I ever imagined possible, I have experienced more different types of liturgy than I imagined existed, and I have had a chance to listen to and meet some people whose books have guided my thoughts and my learning and my transformation over the past three years. I have participated in five separate worship services, sung to guitar, piano, organ, drum, and hung (Korean string instrument that is a little like a…
Read More

Playing catch-up…

I would be the first to admit that I feel like I spend most of my days playing catch-up to those around me:  especially in terms of my reading and thinking about my faith and my calling.  I have, for most of life, done things in reverse order...I was an adult before I was a child, I had my old age before my youth (although I'm guessing I'll get a second run at the old age thing), I worked as a librarian before I studied library science, I sang professionally before I studied singing, etc. etc. and so forth and so on.  And now, I am coming to see that…
Read More

Journeying with the Magi

Advent is now long behind us (well, it seems long to me), we areat the end of Christmas, and Epiphany lies ahead of us.  I am lucky; unlike most people who must return to a daily schedule as soon as the New Year is in place, I generally have an extra week to clean out the old and make space for the new, and recover from the extra services and extra music that have filled the season just past.  These are the moments when I file the old music and ready the new; finish the readings devoted to the liturgical season and select those for the coming weeks and the coming…
Read More

A pilgrimage…of sorts

Lately, I have been very interested in a way of thinking that is often referred to as the "ancient-future" view of Christianity, one that seeks to recover what we know and can know of the ways of those first Christians, struggling in faith, struggling to live together before the creation of the institution that we know as "church", and to take that knowledge and use it to forge a way of Christian living in the 21st century.  It is this view of faith that has led to such movements as the New Monasticism, among others. I however, have been approaching this interest, not by moving into a big house with…
Read More

Going to church…

It is, once again, Sunday morning.  And I am once again up at some totally-too-early-hour, getting ready to go to church and join my community in worship and in fellowship. But that, my friends, is my favorite way to spend my Sunday morning.  No lazy lay-a-bed with the New York Times for me -- 5:30 wakeup, meditation, preparation, and out the door at 9 a.m. only to return, if I am lucky, by 2 p.m. But what is really on my mind this morning as I get ready for the day ahead, is, well, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the things we read together as a study group in his work Life…
Read More

Where the music comes from…

Last Friday, on the opening concert of the Friday Morning Music Club's first resident season at Calvary Baptist Church, my good friend and frequent performing partner, Natalie, sang  (beautifully, I might add) one of my most favorite songs...a song by Lee Hoiby, called "Where the Music Comes From...", for which the composer himself wrote the words.  The text is, for me, an eloquent statement of so much that I hold true: I want to be where the music comes from Where the clock stops, where it's now I want to be with the friends around me Who have found me, who show me how I want to sing to the…
Read More

If speaking is silver, then listening is gold…

That quotation is actually an old Turkish proverb.  I offer it to you because over the past couple of weeks, the art of listening has been on my mind. Did you know that, for a musician, one of the MOST important skills is the ability to listen?  Correct.  And, in many, many instances, a performer's ability to listen will make or break a performance.  Listening is important for tuning, for ensemble singing and playing, for taking direction from a conductor or a stage director -- if you as a performer cannot listen well, you will never be part of a great performance.  That is right -- "part of".  No matter…
Read More