A Good Day

Today is going to be good for four reasons:

1) Because I said so.

2) I finally recieved my copy of Michael Segell's The Devil's Horn: The Story of the Saxophone, From Noisy Novelty To King of Cool. (Any time you get book with a title like that, you know it's going to be good.)



3) I'm playing banjo in church again tonight (I may well be the first Colombian salsa-dancing, banjo-playing saxophonist you've ever met)

4) It's Saturday, which means that we're having service tonight at Flamingo Road Church! Woohoo!

The Best Thing

Of all of the pictures of Stephanie and I, I think that this is probably my favorite one of all. There's something in it that, for me at least, captures a bit of the innocence and simplicity that marks so much of our courtship.
I left Stephanie's house in prayer, like so many times before, wandering back over the night in my mind, asking for clarity and the grace to recognize and avoid bad decisions and the wisdom to choose the good ones. The drive home from her family's place is nearly always like this; I know that one day my role as a husband is going to require way more wisdom than I currently have. And I know I'm going to make some mistakes along the way. I know it. But that doesn't mean that I can't prepare now, can't start practicing and developing an attitude that defines my love by the degree of its sacrifice. And so I pray. And one of the things I try to always pray for is that I would chose what's best. Not what I want. Not what's even necessarily enjoyable. What's best.

As I drove farther on, my mind wandered to the Lord's prayer and the wording Jesus used when he gave it to his disciples. I can remember memorizing it as a child, embedding the "art"s and "thy name"s of the King James English in my mouth so thoroughly that it still feels strange reciting it any other way. Right around Sheridan and Stirling, it occured to me that there is no section in the prayer where Jesus prays for anyone's sick grandma. There are prayers for our daily bread and requests that we be delivered from bad things, but no real "Ask" section of the prayer, at least not in the way I understood most prayer requests. For a minute, I wondered why this was.
Fortunately, I've been reading Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy, so I was able to remember that Jesus is brilliant, and he chose his words on purpose (by the way, if you haven't read it, you should stop reading this blog and go buy his book. He's way smarter than I am).
I'm sure that this information has probably been around forever, but it means something to me because it didn't come to me directly from another person, so it feels special in a way. Jesus prayed that the will of the Father would be done on earth as it is in heaven, that his range of effective will would overcome our tiny kingdoms. If I've got brains in my head that still work, I have to realize that the best thing that could ever happen to me or anyone else is the breaking through of God's Kingdom. In that moment, I realized that I could be as poetic and eloquent as I wanted to be to try to put words to how much I have fallen completely in love with this woman, but it could all be trumped by a simple, "Father, may your will be done in her life as it is in heaven," because nothing is better in this life or the next than to know God.
Which makes me feel really good, because it means that Christ in his mercy has made it possible for me to really love Stephanie in the best way possible; by following and knowing and loving him first.
I don't have to be stronger than that guy, or wittier than that other guy, or funnier than him, or even better looking than any of them to be a great boyfriend. All that it takes to pursue the best relationship, and more importanly, the best life possible, is faith and trust in the Savior who makes it possible to know the Father.
Every poet, every Casanova, every mac daddy playa, trumped by the unstoppable love of Christ. Is that neat or what?

Those weren't my pants

Well, tonight's gig with the orchestra went fabulously. All the wrong notes were played by people other than me, and I got some great feedback about how the saxophone blended with the rest of the ensemble. So, all you frustrated classical saxopohonists out there, know that a blow was struck for equality tonight.

Of course, the night wouldn't have been complete without something going disatrously wrong, and sure enough, the third worst thing that could have happened to me before a gig happened. It all went down when I was changing into my tuxedo about fifteen minutes before the downbeat. I grabbed my clothes, and as I started buttoning up my shirt, I discovered that my tuxedo pants - a very important piece of any musician's concert attire, you must agree - were nowhere to be found. I couldn't believe it. My first time soloing with a full symphony orchestra, and I left my stinkin' pants at home.
I looked at my watch. Fourteen minutes until the concert starts. My solo was in the first piece, and I didn't even have enough time to run to Wal-mart. Heck, I barely had enough time to make it to my car.

So I just started laughing, because, really, when you forget your pants at a gig where you're responsible for representing your department, else can you do?

Luckily, Greg came to my rescue. Greg, who is pretty close to twice my size, who also happened to be wearing black pants that day. I thanked him profusely and climbed into his cavernous pantalones, cinched up his belt and tucked it into the belt loops (it wrapped around me almost twice), and went on my merry way, all the while hoping that they wouldn't make me stand up to play.

Fortunately, no one really noticed, since they sat me in hte back in between the second clarinet and the first horn. Still, it was a fun night. And I can now tell people about that one time when I had to play an orchestra gig without my pants.

Apology

My mission for this morning: make an apology.

Here's the hard part. I'm not allowed to make excuses or try to micro-manage the other person's reaction by anything I say. In other words, I need to let my yes be yes and my no be no. It's a simple acceptance of responsibility.

Sheesh, this is going to be hard.


UPDATE ON THIS POST:
Things went really well. It was surprisingly difficult to just apologize without adding any extra explanations to justify my behavior. Knowing that I was going to post this later helped, so thanks guys!

BTW, the conversation went great!

Thoughts from the editing room

The thing about video editing is that it takes hours for each minute of film you're trying to produce.

Right now I'm in the office finishing up the teaching video for our Doral campus. Before that, I was in my car, driving away from Stephanie's house, marveling at all of the signs I have been able to see of God's grace in our relationship, in awe at the circumstances and decisions that have made possible a courtship where to this day, shame and regret are foreign concepts.

That being said, there's a definite understanding on my part that if/when we end up married, the close proximity to another imperfect human being will bring out those human imperfections real quick, but for now, I'm just enjoying being floored and amazed by the fruit that just the smallest bits of obedience on our part has produced (think: loaves and fishes).
And trust me, it's small, at least on my part. I was realizing tonight as I drove along, and moreso now as I mull things over, that I spend a lot of time living my life with Christ on my terms rather than his.
Here's how it works. It's so easy for me to define my Christian experience in terms of obedience to a set of boundary markers. I'm a straight shooter. It's how I'm wired. Give me rules, routine, boundaries, clean black and white divisions, and I'm a happy camper. The less complicated for me, the better. What I realize in times like these is that Jesus wants to change me into the right kind of person so I can know God, not just a person who does the right things because he has to.

Troy used a paintball gun and a target to demonstrate our inability to hit the mark 100% of the time; in other words, we blow it. Paul in Galatians tells us (and me) that trying to live life by following rules won't get me anywhere, and one of the reasons for this is because it doesn't do anything about my heart. The rules don't produce the righteousness I need. I could sing poetry all day, but if I don't mean it, my girlfriend will know that I'm just going through the motions.
I think the reason that the rules are sometimes so difficult to follow, or at least follow well, is because I haven't been fully changed into the right kind of of person; I'm a child of God, but sometimes would rather trade His Kingdom for mine, would rather choose the lack of security that comes from living my life my way rather than Christ's. It's control. It's lack of trust. And it's something that someday, by the grace of God, I'm going to have to learn to get past if I'm going to fully live the life I was intended to live.

Which brings me back to Stephanie. Tomorrow-or, today I should say, as I look at the time-we celebrate 8 months of courtship, which is probably a bigger deal to us than to anyone else. Times like these often make me wonder about the person I'm becoming.

(By the way, my sax professor told me after my lesson this week that he doesn't want to know me when I'm old, because I'm going to be insufferable; apparently he was trying to imply that I am somewhat anal retentive. Needless to say, I have no idea what hes's talking about.)

Random tangents aside (further proof that this DVD needs to hurry up and finish burning so that I can go home and go to sleep), I think that this is one of the most beautiful promises in Scripture. It's God's presence in us. It's the hope that, by relying on His Spirit, my our dead life is crucified so that he can birth something better in us, so that he can awaken us to the fact that this was the way life was meant to be lived all along, and by doing so, he can give us the real treasure of the Gospel: Himself.
I seriously think this is possible. As a Christian, I have to believe it's possible, because Jesus said it was.
I just have to learn to live in that reality.

Classical saxophone

Sometimes art music gets tedious because of all the rehearsing involved with getting it off the ground. There's looking for a practice room, finally finding a practice room, getting kicked out said practice room because an ensemble had the room reserved, and then there's the joy of spending an hour on one three-measure passage so that you can get it up to a speed that's still ten clicks below the tempo you actually need to play it at.
In my orchestration book, there is the following quote:

To err is human, to forgive is not our policy.

Talk about anal retentive.

Aside from brain surgery, I don't know a field that demands as much consistent precision as music. Sometimes it's tedious, because when you look at the kind of money musicians make (and by "musicians" I don't mean most pop stars you hear on the radio. No offense, Britney), it tends to make you scratch your head and wonder why all the effort. Why not just get a job as a mailman? At least it's steady income.

And then a night like tonight happens.

My quartet got together for the first time and we rehearsed tonight, and it was seriously off the hook. We dug into Glauzunov's Quartet for Four Saxophones, and my word, it was gorgeous. It's not even anywhere near performance tempo, and it's gorgeous.
The Rascher Sax Quartet has a recording of this piece that you'll love; look them up on amazon. The cover looks like this:

The quartet is made up of myself, two of my professors, and another guy who teaches Middle School Band up in North Broward, which means that rehearsals move pretty quickly, but that's not the best part. What I loved tonight was that point in the middle of the second movement where we stopped sight reading and were just grooving, following each other, moving the speed and the dynamics of the piece forward and back, up and down, each person just feeling it out. It was a conversation without words, and it reminded me of the gift that I have in being able to produce the sounds that I do on my horn. Saxophones, played correctly, blend well with almost any instrumental combination you can think of, but there's nothing like experiencing a quartet of them playing in one accord. Difference tones flying around everywhere, the vibration through your whole body as you feel your sound fitting hand in glove with the guys across and next to you, that point where suddenly the four of you are like one instrument...it's pretty flippin' sweet.

Anyway, all that to say that I am floored when I remember that those harmonies, all the sync of those moments, all of that is an invention of God's. It's designed. That it moves us the way that it does is a gift, and it makes me wonder what it will sound like on that day when we're all finally home, standing in the presence of the creator of harmony. Way too much to properly take in right now, but definitely something to sit and think about later.

Random Post of the day!

This has no deep theological significance; I jut thought it was really funny.

Pre-sleep musings

You know what? I am really glad that I periodically take time to put things down in writing like this. Looking back helps me remember that God still works, which at this point, the normal response is probably something akin to "duh," but I still get a kick out of it when common sense works for me. I had one of those moments Wednesday night.


You see, this past Wednesday I had the rather neat oppertunity to share a part of my story at The Loft, which is the post-collegiate singles group here at FRC. It was a lot of fun, and for a time I found myself feeling that same feeling that influenced me to leave home and pursue a Music Ed. degree FSU.
I think what I liked the most about the whole experience, though, was what I learned from being up front - or rather, what I was reminded of (warning: pithy quote ahead).

According to Google (therefore I get no credit for knowing this), it was Samuel Johnson who said that people "more frequently need to be reminded rather than informed," which perfectly describes me, a guy for whom years of public school testing has sharpened my short term memory into a well-oiled machine - to the point that I can learn something and forget I ever heard it mere days later.

Anywho, Benn and Debbi asked me to talk about the journey I've been on, what I've been through, and as I thought through and read over some of my past entries, I was reminded of something very true and very much needed at this point in my life.

I talked about last year, starting with January of '05. How I found myself one night in a very distressing awareness of how selfish and immature I really was, and how, having no idea of how to fix it on my own, I prayed a very scary prayer that went something like "God, you need to break me or this isn't going to change." And it totally sucked (they don't call it brutal honesty for no reason), but at the same time, as I heard Louie Giglio say once, it "hurt good." Anyone who's known brokenness will understand what I'm getting at.
Fast forward to a year later, after I'd almost forgotten about the whole thing, when I finally starting taking small steps towards focusing on Christ and not on the waves around me. Among my entries, I found a small, innocuous sentence that is slowly coming to mean a whole lot to me, because it represents a shift in me that I can in no way take credit for:

"...I think that more than anything else, this [entry] is another sign that I'm slowly learning to believe the truth that in the end, where I end up and who I end up there with isn't up to me anymore...",

Learning to believe...the story of my life.
Such a small thing on the outside. Miniscule, really. After all, how many times do people grow out of things, or eat something that makes them feel different, or hear the right song, whatever. Yeah, it doesn't seem like a big deal.
But it is to me.
That last year. The courtship I'm a part of. The very fact that I can look back on eight months of serious relationship with absolutely nothing to hide and the confidence that Christ has been at the center, not because we're so great, but by God's grace alone...those things mean a whole lot.
And I've still got a long way to go. But it's nice to be reminded that God really does still change people.

Practice time!

Today was my first saxophone lesson since May.
I mention this because this was also the day that I discovered just how out of shape I've gotten over the summer.
Don't ask me why, but for some reason I figured that with me graduating in December, things on the classical end of things would be less intense than in time past. In hindsight, this obviously makes no logical sense, since my junior recital (which was only a half hour long) almost kicked my butt last Spring, and I now have a little over two months to full-out prepare a Senior recital (which is twice as long and will determine whether I start 2007 in a good mood or not).

Add to that another semester as section leader in wind ensemble, the confirmation received today that my quartet will indeed be rehearsing and gigging this season, and a possible shot to play a solo with the orchestra, and suddenly I've found myself with more necessary preparations than you could shake a really big stick at.

Yeah, don't tell me, I already know.

But you know what? There is good news, though, and it is this: I may have slacked on saxophone this summer, but I got really good at video. I promise.

Just kidding, there's better news than that.
After evaluating where things were and checking the urge to go running screaming into the hills, I went into a practice room spent some time wood shedding the basics like I hadn't done in a while, and wouldn't you know, once the cobwebs got cleared up I found that I'm not in as terrible a shape as I thought.
The diminished scales are a little rocky and some of the high notes have wandered a little sharp, but it's mostly there. Mostly.

The moral of the story?
I should have graduated last year.

Home, sweet home

Vacations are a blast, but there's nothing quite like these moments when the day's over and all the goodbyes are said and I find myself here in the quiet comfort of my own room.
I love the pace of my life most days; it's a good feeling for me to put in a good effort, to give the full day all it's worth. That being said, I think my favorite part is usually after all's said and done, when all the activity is over. It was Frost who wrote that "the fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows," and I think I agree. The quiet moments of reflection are where it's at for me, when I can unwind and think things like "holy crap, I hope I never tell a joke that corny again," or hopefully learn something.
Anyway, all that to say that it feels really, really good to be here in this moment.

The time spent in Orlando and Ocala was an absolute blast. Rock the Universe went as well as could possibly be expected, given the bad weather and crowds and the loss of my favorite $5 Wal-mart sunglasses, which were sacrificed to The Mummy about ten minutes after we entered the park (just goes to show you, when they say hang on to your belongings, they really mean it).
The best part of it all, though, was spending time with Stephanie's family.

It seems to me that as I observe much of the interactions between people these days, pretense seems to be a recurring theme. By this I don't mean to accuse anyone of being false on purpose; far from it. What I mean is that intimacy is tough. Think about it. When was the last you asked how someone was doing and really had time to hear their entire answer? That's why we use pretense, because distance is easy and convenient and saves time. The trouble is, it is impossible to get to know someone deeply without spending some serious chunks of unhurried time with them. I figured this one out after spending high school trying to be everyone's best friend and realizing I couldn't do it. I don't think anyone can. Even Jesus had his levels of intimacy (the twelve, and then the inner circle of Peter, James, and John), my point being that this weekend was a chunk of unhurried time, and I loved it.

I can remember driving the van today and looking over at Stephanie in the passenger seat beside me, my hand in hers, both of us quietly enjoying the sounds of her younger cousins and brother and older uncle playing cards and laughing. "This is a moment we're going to be remembering and telling people about one day," I said, and she nodded, because we both knew it was true.
And the whole weekend was dotted with these gems of unhurried time spent just being, not doing, not on a deadline, but just enjoying each other's company.
Teaching Steph's cousin worship tunes on her guitar with Uncle Martin.
Soccer with the guys (which I'm actually not completely horrible at).
Grocery shopping in our pajamas with Steph and the cousins.
That's what I call a vacation.

If you ever get the chance to spend unhurried chunks of time with people you love, I think you should. It'll remind you of what it means to be human again.

Success!

Well, at long last, it looks like this blog is ready to roll!
It took me forever to figure out the banner and there's still a bunch more that I want to do, but for now, I'm pleased with how it turned out.

That, plus the finishing of the last weekend video means that it's time for me to knock out.

I'll start posting actual posts in the morning. I look forward to seeing you then!

Godspeed,

M

Development

The blog is almost up...the delay is mainly due to a bit of laziness on my part, but I really want to figure out how to customize this...more coming soon