Numbering Our Days

Teach us to number our days,

that we may get a heart of wisdom.

~Psalm 90:12

Today is the birthday of Neva Jane White, the piano teacher I've written about before. It's hard to let it go by without at least a quick sharing of a couple of memories that came to me this morning.

This is a piece I learned in my first year with her.

She was the first teacher, as I recall, that had me write numbers in each measure. It made so much sense, because once I got out of the teaching method books, measure numbers weren't marked in any way. I don't remember if an earlier teacher had marked them herself or if we just referred to "the top line on the secong page, that third measure there....."

I just remember that Mrs. White had me write in the numbers of every new piece I got, and although it took me some time at the begining, it saved a lot of time as we worked on the piece.

Obviously, measure seven here needed a little help with the left-hand fingering.

Thinking about measure numbers today made me think about the verse written above, from the psalms. Some versions actually say "teach us to measure our days," though it seems most say "number." Either way, it connected to the idea of numbering my measures.

And I just love this warning she put on the top of page three (photo below). It comes after two pages of essentially the same rhythms played out in many different harmonic combinations, then a measure of four quintuplets leading up to this completely different section with new rhythm patterns, new harmonies, a new pedaling pattern--essentially, a big change in the piece where new energy comes in and the sound brightens, leading to a climax about halfway down the page.

And here, I had a tendency to rush. Of course! All that newness, so many things to think about, and knowing that even bigger stuff lay just ahead. Adrenalin was probably building in my brain and body, if we could have measured it. I'm sure the measure of quintuplets had a way of distracting me from the original tempo, too.

So, "don't rush." I've found it's excellent advice for just about every new situation in life.

Because whether you rush or not, you are going to get to the end. (I laughed when I saw I had put an exclamation point after that 50--down in the next photo. Maybe this was the first piece she ever had me write measure numbers in?)

Self-control is highly underrated, it seems, in the society I see and hear all around me. One of the many things playing and singing music has done for me, is that is simply taught me self-control. I was a child who always loved to play piano, so I don't have the kinds of stories some would about being forced to sit and practice when they wanted to be out playing football. But even though I loved it, it still took self-control to put it before other things I loved when that was needed. And the focus required to stay on task with a new (harder) piece, rather than just playing anything and everything, took self-control. Everything about it took, and takes, self-control.

In a culture that is all about rushing into the next thing, switching focus from one distraction to another, and "following your passions," I'm thankful for a teacher and an activity that taught me to slow down, to do the same thing over and over, to really think things through (how does this measure fit with the one before it? what tempo can I sustain throughout this entire piece? how will I refrain from my tendency to start this piece too quickly? which of these two fingerings works best for me to get from this section to the next? how do I really want this to sound in the end? etc.)

Mrs. White, in all the years I knew her, never seemed to be in a hurry. Even when she was running behind schedule and putting on her makeup while I was there at her house after a lesson, she was calm and gentle and thoughtful of my presence, not letting her mind rush on to the next thing and allowing the future to take over the present.

I want to live that way. There are wonderful measures like the one below, with fortissimos and sforzandos, and they can be wonderfully passionate and exciting. But they lose their meaning without the careful tempos and fingerings that get you to that point. And if the whole piece is played fast and loud, then this kind of ending is meaningless.

The other memory that came to me this morning was when my chorus had begun working on Lauridsen's "Lux Aeterna." I took a recording of it to her house, along with the score. Just before I hit "play" on her CD player, I said, "I really think you're going to love this."

And in that first very long measure, as a single note began by the strings in octaves so far apart, barely, barely hear-able, just going on and on, she said,  very quietly and gently, "I already do."

She knew how to number measures, how to make and hear beautiful music, and she taught me how to number my days. I hope to grow into the heart of wisdom she possessed.

May light eternal shine upon her.

Lent, Day Twenty-Seven: Confluence

Over the weekend, while driving here and there running errands in my car, I listened to an interview by Ken Myers of Mars Hill Audio with Gerald McDermott on a recent book he cowrote on The Theology of Jonathan Edwards.  One theme that McDermott emphasized in Edwards' work is the beauty of God. Because most people's familiarity with Edwards is limited to one less-than-beautiful sermon, Edwards is not generally thought of someone who was deeply in love with God and considered God's beauty to be the primary quality of God that draws people to belief.

At one point, either McDermott or Myers said something like, "So for him, it wasn't about being driven by duty, but drawn by beauty." Which easily sticks in the mind. And it did.

Separately, yesterday at some point the thought came to me, "You can't reason people out of something they weren't reasoned into." (Turns out that comes from Jonathan Swift, but I don't know where I heard it. Probably by way of my high school English teacher, as it seems like the sort of quotation he would have on his chalkboard.)

And I was thinking about how hard it is to reason oneself out of behaviors or even ideas that did not come about primarily through reason but through "the affections," as Jonathan Edwards referred to the deeper part of the human being, what the Hebrew scriptures refer to as "the heart," though it is much more than what Americans usually mean by "heart," which they separate completely from reason. If I understood correctly about Edwards, he wasn't separating feeling and thinking and calling "the affections" the emotional part of a person. Instead, he meant the deep part of a person that influences both their thinking and their feeling. It has to do with the heart's desire for meaning and beauty and love.

And so if the heart's desire for meaning, beauty, and/or love has led someone to a particular belief, or practice, or relationship, or whatever, even if that belief, practice, or relationship turns out not to be a true or sufficient object of desire, purely reasoning about it is not likely to help a person see that or change their ways. We see this all the time with the obvious addictions. People really and truly want and need love, or peace, or happiness, and they find something that temporarily gives some semblance of that in a substance or relationship. But the drug, or drink, or relationship ends up causing more trouble than the seeming good it brings. Simply pointing this out and reasoning doesn't generally help people, even when they want to make changes. They usually have to have something greater to motivate them. Something that offers greater love, peace, or happiness.

And we can all relate to this, I think, when it comes to something as simple as food. We need food to live. It's normal to enjoy good food. Good food is a great blessing. And yet we can overeat and make ourselves unhealthy in all kinds of ways by it. But I don't know many people who succeed in changing their eating habits simply by reasoning themselves away from that luscious piece of chocolate cake on the table before them. We need a better motivation than "that just isn't logical."

So, with these things going on in my mind the past couple of days, I sat down this morning and saw on my "Ordo Kalendar" that today is the day of John Donne. One of my favorites. I decided I should read something by him to honor the day and got out our "Top 500 Poems" anthology. The first poem they had in the 25 pages on Donne was one I remember learning from my high school English teacher, who was a gifted actor and excellent reader-aloud of poetry:

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp'd town to another due,

Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,

But am betroth'd unto your enemy;

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

"Reason . . . proves weak  or untrue." Being driven by duty just isn't enough. But being drawn by beauty/love has great power, even the power to cause Donne to wish to be enthralled (which can mean both to be enchanted or captivated, and also to be enslaved) by God.

This is a rather rambling post, but I was fascinated this morning to find this poem before me and to see how it fit with the things I had been thinking about.

Oh, yes, and also that the psalm for today was Psalm 89, which begins, "I will sing of thy steadfast love, O Lord, for ever," and has several themes that connect with Edwards' themes.

And it all relates to Lent, at least in my mind (which I think can find connections between anything and anything else sometimes), because it has do with fasting and discipline in general, and with the beauty of Easter/resurrection that is the very reason for Lent in the first place.

But more on that later. And perhaps it will be less rambling. But only perhaps.

A few days later, April 8, I just found this article on "John Donne in Lent." I had no idea just how appropriate it was that these thoughts came together when they did. And I don't believe I have ever written such a hyperlinked blog post....