In my office
11/09/14 04:32
When we left Chicago for North Dakota back in 1978, I had friends who couldn’t figure out what the attraction to such a rural and isolated location might be. They seriously asked about whether or not we would be able to take the winter weather. (Remember these are people who live in Chicago where the winters are really cold.) The wondered if there would be any other educated people in our town. They were so filled with inaccurate perceptions of life in the west that I considered telling them tall tales about wild bears and marauding Lakota. The problem was that they might have believed me.
I wonder how they would feel about my world had they been able to sit with me in my office yesterday.
Bill Rounds is cellist with the Boston Pops Esplanada Orchestra and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He also performs with the Portland, Maine Symphone Orchestra and has appeared around the world with a wide variety of orchestras.
We live in his home town. His grandparents, cousins and a number of other family members have been members of our congregation. And he is in town this week for a solo appearance with the Black Hills Chamber Music Society on Sunday. Our church is home to the Black Hills Chamber Music Society. Although we don’t think of our sanctuary as a venue, it has excellent acoustics and is also home to the finest concert piano in the hills.
This week I have been able to sit in my office and listen to world-class live cello coming from our sanctuary. Bill says he doesn’t need lights to practice, so he sits in the dark at the front of the sanctuary and pours his soul into his instrument and the music wafts out of the sanctuary and seduces me away from my work. My mind wanders. My spirit soars.
I daresay that no one in the world has had a better office than I this week. Out my window wild turkeys and deer - and seven a dinosaur on the horizon - in my ears the most beautiful music ever produced by the combination of the best of human imagination and the skill of practiced fingers.
The craftsmanship invested in the instrument alone is a triumph of human endeavor.
Of course there are many who have the privilege of being in an audience when great music is made. The sublime pleasure of listening to a well-rehearsed musical production that has been honed for the moment of communal entertainment is one of the great joys of being human. There have been moments when I have been so transported by music that I have felt privileged just to live in the same generation as people with such great talent.
But this week has been different than all of that.
This week has been a journey as a witness to the creative process. We are sharing the same building. I am writing weddings and doing worship planning and counseling people and Bill is rehearsing. He is about crafting the music, seeking perfection, preparing for a moment that is still in the future. If a sound is too harsh or a passage too rushed, he goes back and polishes. He listens as he plays as only one who is intimate with the music can listen. The days of learning the notes, of mastering the technique, of memorizing the patterns are now behind. This week has been about connecting with the music so that its emotion can flow like the trickle that forms at the bottom of the snowdrift in the mountains: pure and clean and innocent and intimate.
I am sure that Bill is not conscious of my listening.
Can the universe be contained in a single note? Is the voice of a cello able to speak the entire history of philosophy? Has time been suspended as it waits for the subtle ending of the echo that fades so slowly that you can no longer tell where the music is and where it isn’t?
There is no doubt that our sanctuary has been filled with prayer this week. Like the deepest prayers, the conversation of silence and sound in music is so intimate that you find yourself listening to the silence as intently as you had been listening to the sound.
My colleagues, sitting in their offices on busy streets filled with the cacophony of traffic and hustle and bustle of the world surrounding them, are probably unaware of how unfortunate their surroundings are compared with the place where I work.
And on the weeks when I don’t have a world class cellist to caress my soul, I work in a building with a preschool. The music of 40 three-year-olds has distinctive phrasing and an alternate rhythm to the voice of solo cello. This week has been children in the morning and cello in the afternoon.
I can tell the difference.
Both songs are music that reaches deeper than the surface.
Both songs remind me of how fortunate I am to live where I live and work where I work.
Heaven must be something like this.
And yet I have not yet died. In this life I have to get the paper towel dispenser in the preschool bathroom relocated to a level where the children can reach it. I need to develop a strategy for the replacement of a roof and a boiler and the maintenance of a 54-year-old building. I have to wipe away the tears of a widow and check in on a teen who came way too close to suicide for comfort. I have programs to plan and people who need to bend my ear because they like the way things used to be and frankly there is no way I can make time stand still. If only I could play the cello for the complainers. They, like me, would be rendered speechless.
If the invitation to forgive seven times seventy, I’m on about forgiveness number four. The cello is forgiving by the dozens or maybe the hundreds in a single stroke of the bow.
This is how I experience grace. I don’t have to wait until I die for a glimpse of heaven. All I have to do is lean back in my chair and listen.
I wonder how they would feel about my world had they been able to sit with me in my office yesterday.
Bill Rounds is cellist with the Boston Pops Esplanada Orchestra and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He also performs with the Portland, Maine Symphone Orchestra and has appeared around the world with a wide variety of orchestras.
We live in his home town. His grandparents, cousins and a number of other family members have been members of our congregation. And he is in town this week for a solo appearance with the Black Hills Chamber Music Society on Sunday. Our church is home to the Black Hills Chamber Music Society. Although we don’t think of our sanctuary as a venue, it has excellent acoustics and is also home to the finest concert piano in the hills.
This week I have been able to sit in my office and listen to world-class live cello coming from our sanctuary. Bill says he doesn’t need lights to practice, so he sits in the dark at the front of the sanctuary and pours his soul into his instrument and the music wafts out of the sanctuary and seduces me away from my work. My mind wanders. My spirit soars.
I daresay that no one in the world has had a better office than I this week. Out my window wild turkeys and deer - and seven a dinosaur on the horizon - in my ears the most beautiful music ever produced by the combination of the best of human imagination and the skill of practiced fingers.
The craftsmanship invested in the instrument alone is a triumph of human endeavor.
Of course there are many who have the privilege of being in an audience when great music is made. The sublime pleasure of listening to a well-rehearsed musical production that has been honed for the moment of communal entertainment is one of the great joys of being human. There have been moments when I have been so transported by music that I have felt privileged just to live in the same generation as people with such great talent.
But this week has been different than all of that.
This week has been a journey as a witness to the creative process. We are sharing the same building. I am writing weddings and doing worship planning and counseling people and Bill is rehearsing. He is about crafting the music, seeking perfection, preparing for a moment that is still in the future. If a sound is too harsh or a passage too rushed, he goes back and polishes. He listens as he plays as only one who is intimate with the music can listen. The days of learning the notes, of mastering the technique, of memorizing the patterns are now behind. This week has been about connecting with the music so that its emotion can flow like the trickle that forms at the bottom of the snowdrift in the mountains: pure and clean and innocent and intimate.
I am sure that Bill is not conscious of my listening.
Can the universe be contained in a single note? Is the voice of a cello able to speak the entire history of philosophy? Has time been suspended as it waits for the subtle ending of the echo that fades so slowly that you can no longer tell where the music is and where it isn’t?
There is no doubt that our sanctuary has been filled with prayer this week. Like the deepest prayers, the conversation of silence and sound in music is so intimate that you find yourself listening to the silence as intently as you had been listening to the sound.
My colleagues, sitting in their offices on busy streets filled with the cacophony of traffic and hustle and bustle of the world surrounding them, are probably unaware of how unfortunate their surroundings are compared with the place where I work.
And on the weeks when I don’t have a world class cellist to caress my soul, I work in a building with a preschool. The music of 40 three-year-olds has distinctive phrasing and an alternate rhythm to the voice of solo cello. This week has been children in the morning and cello in the afternoon.
I can tell the difference.
Both songs are music that reaches deeper than the surface.
Both songs remind me of how fortunate I am to live where I live and work where I work.
Heaven must be something like this.
And yet I have not yet died. In this life I have to get the paper towel dispenser in the preschool bathroom relocated to a level where the children can reach it. I need to develop a strategy for the replacement of a roof and a boiler and the maintenance of a 54-year-old building. I have to wipe away the tears of a widow and check in on a teen who came way too close to suicide for comfort. I have programs to plan and people who need to bend my ear because they like the way things used to be and frankly there is no way I can make time stand still. If only I could play the cello for the complainers. They, like me, would be rendered speechless.
If the invitation to forgive seven times seventy, I’m on about forgiveness number four. The cello is forgiving by the dozens or maybe the hundreds in a single stroke of the bow.
This is how I experience grace. I don’t have to wait until I die for a glimpse of heaven. All I have to do is lean back in my chair and listen.