I have no clear idea what the sounds meant or what my life was telling me ... And yet as I listened to those sounds, and listened with something more than just my hearing, I was moved by their inexpressible eloquence and suggestiveness, by the sense I had that they were a music rising up out of the mystery of not just my life, but life itself. In much the same way, that is what I mean by saying that God speaks into or out of the thick of our days. - Fredrick Buechner, The Sacred Journey
I started playing the trumpet when I was in the fourth grade. I could hardly contain myself when my parents brought home my first instrument. They set the rectangular black case down in front of me and my eyes stared at it with wild excitement. I ran my hands gently over the edges until I came to the latches and I popped them open. The brass was cold to the touch as I pulled it out of its case. It glistened in the light as I held it firmly in my hands and stared at my smiling distorted face being reflected in the perfect curve of the bell. I knew almost nothing about this twisted mass of brass tubes and moving parts other than press your lips together and blow. This was the revelation I had received from a friend’s older brother. In fourth grade, it was all I needed to know and I could contain myself no longer. Without so much as a hesitation, I took the mouthpiece out, suck it on the end, pressed my lips against the cold steel and blew ... out came the most god-awful noise you’ve ever heard, but it was music to my ears. How my parents endured that night as I marched around the house honking and hooting on that thing, as if a lame goose were trapped and desperately trying to get free, I’ll never know. But it happened; the sounds of music had begun.
I would play that trumpet for many years, learning scales, how to read music and developing tone. But I found that there was something more to it than just learning the nuts and bolts of how to play. In a way that’s the easy part. Anyone can learn to make noise by them self, but add a saxophone, a flute, clarinet, trombone, a tuba. Pretty soon, to know how to play wasn’t enough, I had to learn how to listen. I had to listen for the delicate melody of the flute as they danced upon the clouds. I had to hear the march of the trombones as they lock stepped down the street. This to me was the magic of music, the way in which all these different sounds come together to produce something with texture and emotion. Each sound, each instrument speaking its part to bring the notes on a page to life. Have you ever listened to how each instrument works together to give meaning to the whole? Playing the trumpet taught me that sometimes you have a leading role and sometimes you are there to support, but all the parts are important and must work together to make the composer's music come alive.
On a hot, hazy summer day, Frederick Buechner began to listen. Not to the sounds of Wagner or Bach but to a different kind of symphony. He listened to the sound of an old banjo clock ticking on the wall. He listened to the sound of swallows swooping in and out of the eaves of the barn. There was the sound of a rooster crowing and two men doing carpentry in another part of the house, their low voices and muffled hammers adding to the ensemble. He listened as his own stomach grumbled anticipating the strike of noon (2). They were ordinary sounds. Nothing special sounds. The kind of sounds that largely go unnoticed unless one stops to listen. Perhaps that is precisely why they sounded so special to him that day. He had stopped to listen, to hear them with more than his hearing. What played in his ears was a symphony, the symphony of his life. In those sounds, his life was speaking to him, trying to say something, but what?
It’s a challenging question to figure out what our life is saying to us, or perhaps who it is that is speaking. Most of us go along at mach speed. Drinking double shots of espresso, and Red Bull to keep the pedal to the floor. There’s no time in the planner to sit in the park and listen to the sound of leaves rustling or the whistle of duck wings as they land in the pond. There’s barely time to eat, much less pine away the day doing nothing more than listening. But why do we do it? Why do we push our lives so fast and so hard that each day seems to bring us nearer and nearer to the breaking point? Why does that sense of guilt seem to flood over us if we stop even for a moment to catch our breath? Who decided that life would be measured by our coefficient of productivity? Perhaps we have no one but our selves to blame. Maybe we travel through life at such an unruly pace because we are afraid of what our lives might sound like if we stopped long enough to listen. Is there a fear that if you stopped long enough to listen, you would hear the most god-awful sound you have ever heard? Or is the greatest fear that if you stopped, there would be nothing to listen to, only silence ... no one speaking, no one caring, no meaning to be found. It’s easy to run through life believing that playing higher, faster, and louder will create its own meaning, but unless we stop to listen, to find out how our life fits into the larger symphony, we may find ourselves like a child playing alone, which isn’t really playing at all.
All the moments of life are part of the symphony. Some things in our life happen for good and some for bad, some by chance and some not, yet as Frederick Buechner discovered, “there is no chance thing through which God cannot speak-even the walk from the house to the garage that you walked ten thousand times before, even the moments when you cannot believe there is a God who speaks at all anywhere. He speaks and the words he speaks are incarnate in the flesh and blood of our selves and of our own footsore and sacred journeys (77).” Buechner reveals for us that the sounds and experiences that make up the symphony of our lives is the way in which God speaks. Through our pain and grief and in our joys and celebration he speaks his way into our lives. The blessed joy of this life is that God has given each of us a part in the symphony of his creation. He has given meaning and purpose to your life. God does allow you to carry your own melody, but if we don’t stop to listen and reflect, it is possible to find ourselves playing alone. Playing alone means you bear the weight of all the grief and pain life can bring. But what happens if you hear it in the context of the larger piece? Does it bring a greater sense of hope and comfort that you are not alone, but rather are part of something bigger in which God is speaking and caring? Could it be that, in the midst of your life, through the day-to-day coming and goings, God stands on the podium conducting a grand symphony? Only the magic of this piece, you see, is that your life is a unique composition. No one will be able to hear the same thing as you, as long as you slow down to listen. So the question remains, the question that I cannot answer, is what might God be saying to you?
Suggested Prayer: Creator God, you are so big and yet you choose to make yourself small. You fit yourself into the cracks of my life, in the simple and the mundane, and from there you speak to me if only I would listen. Teach me to hear, O Lord, the music of my life and set my heart upon you, the Orchestrator and Perfector of my faith. Amen.