The Melody of Lent

 

This is the fourth day of Yiruma ministering to us through his music; opening our hearts to see what flows from us.  On Monday, I gave you this prayer practice:

·        First, listen one time through the entire piece.  Pay attention to any emotion that is evoked or provoked from the piece.

·        Second, listen again, this time you may want to imagine a story that goes along with this piece of music – or write down words that stir and swirl in response.  One day this week, you may want to get out your crayons or colored pencils connecting your hand to the melody of the music.

·        Third, enter a period of silence.  Attend, pay attention to the reverberations of both the music of Yiruma and the response from your soul sit side-by-side.  What awakens within your awareness of this moment? 

The piece from Yiruma today is entitled, May Be.  I invite you to click on the link above and enter prayerfully and purposefully into this time.

Sometimes I see the title of this piece is written, May Be.  Other times I see the piece title written, Maybe.  I love that both titles invoke and provoke something in my soul.  Maybe, as in I am not sure or certain.  And may be as in a promise that is just beginning to wake up and not yet fully realized.  Maybe, as in a fear that still sits critically and cynically pointing out all the ways things could go off the rails.  May be as a persistent prayer that keeps on saying, “And yet, God is up to something here.”  Maybe as in the cloud of unknowness.  May be God is in the messy, muddleness of life.  I also find the abrupt ending brings a smile to my face.  No easy resolution, because that is life here and now.

I think that Maybe and May Be are the twin themes of my life right now.  Maybe there are signs of hope with the vaccine and we may be starting to emerge from the cocoons of the past year.  Maybe there is new life and we may be starting to find new life from the womb of the last year.  Maybe our lives will continue to become and we may be finding God guiding us with a grace in the next right step.

Where is there maybe in your life?  And where do you find the may be right now softly whispering to you?

What does each word look like?  Or, better yet, what would it feel like?

What colors from your crayon box would you use to color this picture?  What words surface as you lean in and listen to this beautiful piece?  Feel free to post in the comments.

Prayer: Holy One, You met Elijah in a still small voice, in Your native language of silence, with the sound of his own breathing…meet us in the maybes and the may bes of our life today. Amen.

The Melody of Lent

 

This is day three of opening our hearts and soul to Yiruma, a South Korea-born piano player.  I recently learned that his father is a pastor, and he began studying the piano at age 5.  I am always amazed watching his finger fly effortlessly across all 88 keys on the piano.  I am also a bit envious wishing I could do that because the sounds he brings forth speak and sing to me.  Remember, the invitation this week is to listen not only critically, but creatively.  Not to write a review of what we are hearing, but to see what is renewed within you.  On Monday, I gave you this prayer practice:

·        First, listen one time through the entire piece.  Pay attention to any emotion that is evoked or provoked from the piece.

·        Second, listen again, this time you may want to imagine a story that goes along with this piece of music – or write down words that stir and swirl in response.  One day this week, you may want to get out your crayons or colored pencils connecting your hand to the melody of the music.

·        Third, enter a period of silence.  Attend, pay attention to the reverberations of both the music of Yiruma and the response from your soul sit side-by-side.  What awakens within your awareness of this moment? 

The first piece from Yiruma is entitled, A River Flows in You.  I invite you to click on the link above and enter prayerfully and purposefully into this time.

Okay, confession time: this is my hands down favorite Yiruma piece.  I could listen to this countless times and never get tired.  I love the refrain that he plays starting at the 45 second mark, for me that is the soundtrack to my soul.  There is an energy to the melody that causes me to feel fully alive.  I find the repetition of notes to be like the way life finds a repeating rhythm and melody.  There are moments when life is flowing as the piece starts.  Then there are times when life is crashing and crumbling – like the way the piece slows down at the 2-minute mark.  Only to have that refrain come back like a grace that revives and restores us.  My soul says, “Amen” to all this. 

I ponder the way there is a river running through the Bible.  In the beginning how the river watered the Garden of Eden; how Jacob wrestled with God by a river; how Moses parted a river (okay, I know it was the Red Sea…but go with me on this); how Joshua parted the Jordan River; how Jesus went down to that same river to be baptized and blessed by God.  This piece of music stirs my soul in ways that reminds me who and whose I am baptized and beloved by God. 

Where do you need the refreshing water to flow through you today?

What would it look like to have water gush forth from you?  Or, better yet, what would it feel like?

What colors from your crayon box would you use to color this picture?  What words surface as you lean in and listen to this beautiful piece?  Feel free to post in the comments.

Prayer: God, You promise us that there is a healing river that can renew and restore all things.  Help us drink deeply of that water this day and help us share Your love with each person whose path crosses our own this day. Amen.

The Melody of Lent

 

This week we are letting Yiruma, a South Korea-born piano player, guide us.  We are listening not as an objective observer; not from a distance or being disconnected; not for whether we even “like” or what to give a frownie face to the piece, but we are being enfolded and held by each note.  Yesterday I gave you this prayer practice:

·        First, listen one time through the entire piece.  Pay attention to any emotion that is evoked or provoked from the piece.

·        Second, listen again, this time you may want to imagine a story that goes along with this piece of music – or write down words that stir and swirl in response.  One day this week, you may want to get out your crayons or colored pencils connecting your hand to the melody of the music.

·        Third, enter a period of silence.  Attend, pay attention to the reverberations of both the music of Yiruma and the response from your soul sit side-by-side.  What awakens within your awareness of this moment? 

The first piece from Yiruma is entitled, Lord Hold My Hand.  I invite you to click on the link above and enter prayerfully and purposefully into this time.

When I listen to this piece, I hear a tenderness and tenaciousness.  That we are both pleading with God prayerfully to hold our hands and that God is patiently persistently holding us – even (or especially) when we are not sure we should be held.  Unlike the piece yesterday which had a flowing quality, there are moments Yiruma emphatically pounds the notes like a prayer insisting God answer us.  Those resolve to moments of softness, only to have the passion of the notes come back.  I can hear a dialogue between God and myself, times I raise my voice when I am worn out and weak and weary from this world, and God meeting me there in the messiness of this art called, “My life”.  I hear the notes ascend causing emotions of hope to stir and the descending melody that meets me in the valley places of my life right now.

I wonder if this melody was what Jesus sang in the garden of Gethsemane?  Remember how he passionately pleaded for God to let the cup of the cross pass by.  How often do I passionately plead for God to stop the chaos or cacophony of life when it is too much?  Only to have God reach out God’s hand gently and grace-filled to meet me in my pain and fear and uncertainty.

Where does you need God to hold your hand?  In a relationship you cannot resolve or a situation where you feel overwhelmed?

What would it look like to have your fingers intertwined with the Divine?  Or, better yet, what would it feel like?

What colors from your crayon box would you use to color this picture?  What words surface as you lean in and listen to this beautiful piece?  Feel free to post in the comments.

Prayer: Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on and help me stand.  Meet me in the woundedness and wants of life with Your love that makes all the difference.  Amen.

The Melody of Lent

 

This week I invite you to lean in and listen to Yiruma, a South Korea-born piano player, whose music I find soulful and soothing.  As the notes of his instrumental pieces wash over you, I invite you each day to this prayer practice:

·        First, listen one time through the entire piece.  Pay attention to any emotion that is evoked or provoked from the piece.

·        Second, listen again, this time you may want to imagine a story that goes along with this piece of music – or write down words that stir and swirl in response.  One day this week, you may want to get out your crayons or colored pencils connecting your hand to the melody of the music.

·        Third, enter a period of silence.  Attend, pay attention to the reverberations of both the music of Yiruma and the response from your soul sit side-by-side.  What awakens within your awareness of this moment? 

The first piece from Yiruma is entitled, Kiss the Rain.  I invite you to click on the link above and enter prayerfully and purposefully into this time.

When I listen to this piece, I hear the cascading notes like rain splattering and splashing on the cement.  I sense the waves of notes washing over me meeting me in both the peacefulness and pain of the soul – which often sit side-by-side.  I imagine being out in the rain, soaked and saturated, in that moment feeling refreshed and renewed.  After repeating the chords a few times, around the 2:45 mark in the video, there is a crescendo, a build-up, like a storm letting loose.  Until that tension is resolved and released.

This piece makes me wonder if Noah ever went out and kissed the rain on the ark?  Or a farmer, who after days of a drought, when the land is cracked and craving water, goes out to kiss the rain when it finally starts to fall.

Where does your life need to be saturated and soaked right now by the sacred?

What would it look like to kiss the rain?  Or, better yet, what would it feel like?

What colors from your crayon box would you use to color this picture?  What words surface as you lean in and listen to this beautiful piece?  Feel free to post in the comments.

Prayer: God of rainfall that renews and revives us, wash over us this day with Your presence that meets us where we are and guides us each second of this day.  Amen.

The Melody of Lent

 

Today, I want to offer space for you to name and notice your learnings this week.

What was one pain you identified?

What was one balm that seems to help/heal right now?

How did this Spiritual, There is a Balm in Gilead, sing to your soul?

What questions do you have?

 

Sit with this hymn, letting the words and melody hover and hang within you and around you.  And may you sense more than a trace of God’s grace every day.  Amen.

The Melody of Lent

 

There is a balm in Gilead

To make the wounded whole

There is a balm in Gilead

To heal the wounded soul

Rev. Howard Thurman once wrote of this Spiritual, “The peculiar genius of the Negro slave [song] is revealed here in much of its structural splendor. The setting is the book of Jeremiah. The prophet has come to a “Dead Sea” place in his life. Not only is he discouraged over the external events in the life of Israel, but he is also spiritually depressed and tortured. [Wounded,] he cried out, ‘Is there no balm in Gilead? Is no physician there?’ It is not a question of fact that he is raising—it is not a question directed to any particular person for an answer. It is not addressed either to God or to Israel, but rather it is a question raised by Jeremiah’s entire life. He is searching his own soul. He is stripped to the literal substance of himself, and is turned back on himself for an answer. Jeremiah is saying actually, “There must be a balm in Gilead; it cannot be that there is no balm in Gilead.” The relentless winnowing of his own bitter experience has laid bare his soul to the end that he is brought face to face with the very ground and core of his own faith.”

Rev. Thurman help us notice that the balm doesn’t just come magically in the mail like your prescription.  Sometimes it is only when we have laid our souls bare, worn out, and weary that we get the sip of water for which we are so thirsty.  Sometimes our woundedness is an openness, vulnerability, if we doggedly stay hopeful in the hurt ~ which is a spiritual muscle that many of us have not been taught to exercise ~ or that even exists.

I invite you to re-read Thurman’s words and find yourself in them.  Are you like Jeremiah feeling in exile?  Do you feel like you have laid your soul bare?  Do you long for a Spirit to strengthen and sustain you? 

Where have you found a balm in these Lenten days so far?

Where do you continue to search for the Sacred stirring and swirling in such a time as this?

May your reflections and responses to these questions, even if all you can say is, “I don’t know”, open you to the peace and presence of God. Amen.

The Melody of Lent

If you can't pray like Peter

If you can't preach like Paul

Go home and tell your neighbor

He died to save us all

Yesterday, we talked about prayer.  Prayer is one of those topics that gets tossed and thrown around.  Beyond saying that you should pray, do we ever try to describe what prayer feels like?  Sounds like?  Smells or tastes like?  Prayer is more than folding your hands and bowing your head.  Prayer is more than a monologue we lob at God.  Prayer is an encounter and experience of the divine.

Re-read that last sentence again, please.

An encounter, a sense that the Spirit is hovering and hanging around.  We trust the holy is near.

An experience, something we can taste or touch or hear or feel.

Of the divine – that God is everywhere.

Prayer happens all the time in our lives.  Prayer can be brushing your teeth, eating, walking, sitting in silence, listening to music, talking to a friend, reading the Bible or a book.  You can fill in the blank of other moments.

At the heart of prayer is attention and intention.

Attention – that you are open to God moving in your midst.

Intention – that you set your gaze toward God to move in your midst.

This is why I suggested listening to music as a prayer practice for Lent this year.  It is a different form, but one I believe we can all find meaning in.  Today, listen again to your piece of music for this week, either the hymn I am reflecting on, or the one you selected.  Slowly savor each note, every word, and then repeat.  Repeat again until the Holy Spirit revives your soul again.

Prayer: Composer and conductor of my life, help me find Your rhythm in this day I pray.  Amen.