Of Symphonies and Spirit

There’s an orchestra getting ready for rehearsal down the hall. Seriously, an entire orchestra in our parish hall. For the last 15 minutes or so the sound has been chaotic—everybody warming up his or her instrument as needed, setting up, moving chairs, nobody playing anywhere near the same thing. I’d like to say it sounded pretty, but it really didn’t. I should have shut my door, but that would have required getting up, and really, who needs to do that?

Funny thing just happened though. Somebody (concertmaster? conductor?) just gave the signal, and suddenly the random bits of sound, both musical and non, ceased. It is as if everyone paused at once, took in one big breath and then, music. OK, not really “music,” but sound—one sound. One glorious note, one stunningly beautiful attempt to be in the same key at the same time. A few more moments of fine tuning and then another pause, breathe in, wait…and there they go. Off into whatever piece they are playing (I don’t recognize it just yet). Off together on an adventure that is largely scripted and predictable but that, I know, still leaves a great deal to chance. Tempo. Volume. One’s ability to actually play what is in the score.

These lovely musicians, and all musicians are lovely when they play even if they are as difficult and tempermental as all human beings at other times, these lovely musicians are practicing. Rehearsing. Going back over the same territory again and again. Yes, to work towards some level of perfection, but even more than that, to mine those notes for every drop of beauty possible, for every meaning, for every subtle point and every dramatic statement.

This to me is the spiritual life, particularly the spiritual life in community. We come together making a million different noises, warming up and stretching and yawning and complaining. We need to move our chairs and set up our “space” and then somebody gives the signal and we tune ourselves to one another and set off to pray, to worship, to question, to quest, together. I’m gonna hit a few bad notes. I am going to be too loud or too soft. And so we’ll do it again. Tomorrow, next week, next year. We do it—we go over the same territory, the same texts, the same songs, the same rituals, over and over again. Not because we desire perfection, or at least not because we believe we will achieve it, but because we are constantly seeking God in all places, and constantly discovering that there is more to discover. The well does not run dry, there is always something more to learn, to uncover.

I love the symphony down the hall. I love the symphony that is the church.

Island of Stability

OK, let me open with a disclaimer. I'm a pretty smart gal, but the complex scientific and mathematical details that comprise the discipline of physics are often just beyond (well, way beyond sometimes...) my ability to really get what the folks with all the smarticles are talking about. So, forgive me now for the technical mistakes which you will, no doubt, find in this brief musing. I'm a big picture girl who is forever grateful to those of you who have the gift of understanding the tiniest details of creation.

So, today's the day they fired up the Large Hadron Collider. This is big news, Steven-Hawking-mind-blowing big news. The potential to confirm or negate so much of what we think we know about the universe is amazing. Scientists will be sorting through the data for years.

However, my take on this event is most profoundly shaped by a comment that Max made about it this morning. As he was listing off all the cool things about the collider, he casually mentioned that some part of what is going on in there (in there? on there? is that the way to describe this thing?) might allow us to finally find the island of stability. And that hooked me.

The Island of Stability. A point at which all the magical, tiny elements inside the atom, inside you and me and everything that is, are stable. Can you imagine it? I'm not a huge fan of being still, and I'm not even sure that stillness is our ideal state, but stable? That's a plan I can get behind. Stable implies, to me, not a lack of motion, but a point at which the motion up and down and back and forth and in and out and in all those other infinite directions, the point at which all those vectors are in balance. And balance is all that. All that.

And, because there have been so many times in his life that Max has been just about anywhere but the Island of Stability, this little moment in the kitchen, as he was putting his breakfast dishes in the dishwasher, was particularly poignant. Of all the details he could recall about LHC, the idea of stability on an atomic, sub-atomic level was the one that made him smile. I'm sure he was thinking about all the cool scientific and mathematical implications, but his mother was thinking about all the cool Max implications. He hopped on his bike and headed off to school, and I stood in the kitchen and looked out at the tree in the front yard, and the comings and goings of the neighborhood children, parents, dogs, bikes, etc., praying for him to know that his own particles have achieved some island of stability. Praying that he know Julian's confidence that all will be well.

So sure, I'm no particle physicist, but maybe Max is. And maybe someday he'll discover something no one has ever known, or done, or seen before. That would be totally cool. But the coolest thing would be for him, for all of us, to discover what I am sure God created for our renewal, refreshment, redemption--an island of stability.