Musical musings
I escaped work early, today. I still had an hour to go and decided to finish it up at home, remotely. As I was finishing up my day reading endless emails I decided to play some music from a talented artist I met at the 2021 NCSC conference, Zuriel Merek. At some point I gave him and a few others a ride from a pre-conference event back to our hotel. He played live. He's good. He really is talented. I read the description of the album on his website and he played all the instruments on it. I was thinking back to my own performance: I am a lector at my church. We cant the epistles and prokemenon and kontakions and irmos and so on. In the Byzantine Catholic tradition, we don't sing. We just cant (that joke never gets old, for me). I reflected on my own performance. My canting. My dancing. And other things.
I am not all that good at it. I miss the rhythm or am off key when canting. I miss the beat and misstep while dancing. The prosphora (communion bread) doesn't come out right and has too many bubbles or the crist is too hard or brown. I see the people wincing when I am off key. I wince, too. I hear it. It was wrong. I blew the rhythm, too. I can't keep my feet in time and misstep for the umpteenth time, yet again, much to my dance partner's annoyance, never to dance with her again. I dread that my prosphora will only be good enough for antidoron, a wonderful tradition of breaking the fast with blessed, but not consecrated, bread after communion. Is my prosphora good enough to be Christ's body?
But, listening to the beautiful music, I realize that I am flawed. The things I do are flawed. The things I make are flawed. But, I tried. I tried and did it to, in some small way, glorify God. It is my own "widow's mite". It is not good enough for me. It is not good enough for you. I did see your face when I hit the off note and when I almost stepped on your toes. But it IS good enough for God. Because I tried. Because I wanted to please Him. It is good enough for God, and that should be good enough for me.