Whose music are we going to listen to in the car? That is a very important question that we have to deal with when we go on mission trip every year. I spent last week with the CYF mission team in Chicago. My music tends to be a little more on the “folk” end of things when I’m driving. I’m a fan of the whole “one person and a guitar” kind of sound to keep me from getting stressed. The youth are generally a little more into music that you can bounce around in your seat to.

This week thinking about listening to music as a spiritual practice made me think of my friend Patrick. Patrick is possibly the silliest human being I’ve ever met. Because of Patrick there is no shortage of fun in my life. One of the best gifts that Patrick has to offer is the fact that when we go dancing he has no realization that we look ridiculous on the dance floor and makes it the most fun it could possibly be. While other people are striving to look cool and together, Patrick and I tend to jump around a lot. We act out the words to the song, we pretend to be grocery shopping, fishing, or possibly ballet dancers on the New York stage.

When I walked past the choir room at church the other day, Rev. David Diebold was playing some classical music (loudly…very loudly).  It blows my mind that music, which was created hundreds of years ago, still speaks to me.  These composers used the same musical notes that we use today and will be using for as long as music is being created.  Somehow with these limited resources we have been able to create a huge variety of music over the centuries.  The creativity comes from putting the limited resources together to express what is happening in the heart and the mind of the composer.  The art is taking something limited and common, like a sound, and crafting it to make something that is artful and expressive.   Music reveals the beauty, pain, joy, praise – all of the things that make life wonderful and scary that are already around us.   

This month my spiritual discipline has been exercising. I’ve decided that it’s about goal setting. I made a goal last week to be able to complete a 5 k within a ½ hour, and I’ve achieved it. My goal is now to work on being able to do the same run, without feeling like I’m dying. You should have seen me when I finished the first goal of a 5k in ½ an hour, I was clinging to the bars of the treadmill with all my might and trying not to look around to see if other people were noticing me make a fool of myself. The mantra in my head has become “just a little better today.”  It’s happening, every day, I’m getting a little better.