This band has been playing across the street from the coffee shop in which I am writing these days. I love watching how much they love their music. When they stop for a break I bring them water and coffee and we chat for a while until they get back to their music; and I find that they do this for the pure enjoyment of it all. They make very little money. They just love making music together and making it on Royal Street in the Quarter. On this corner.
This causes me to wonder about why we do what we do. As a pastor, I speak to people who immediately and without reservation open up to me. They so often tell me they hate what they do for a living and I really do understand the need to earn a living. But I also wonder about how very short life is and how beautiful the present moment is – and how it is all that really exists. This moment. Then another moment. Then another.
Being alive and finding our song in life is what God is reflecting back to us when Advent begins the showcase of life. See. A child is born. Life exists. Flesh works to make life and to hold thought and to bear voice and Word.
If God bears life to us in Jesus and through Jesus makes Word as a tool for peace on earth, then I wonder what Word we bear onto the planet as our peace-making? And, similarly, I wonder what word-withholding also contributes to peace on earth?
This man loves music. His whole body seems part of his sound. What is our sound? Yours? Mine? What music do we make? What noise? How shall we live such that we find and sing our song?
