Sunday, November 12, 2006

A Symphonic Life

In my Spiritual Disciplines class we keep a personal journal. I've really enjoyed doing this. I thought I'd share today's journal:

As I write I am listening to Leo Kotke’s album, 6 and 12 String. It is a really wonderful album full of amazing guitar picking. Even as I write I am completely engaged and loving this sound…recorded and not truly present…by a man I do not really know…experiencing only an echo of an experience. In the background I hear my wife and son talking. My wife points out the features of person in a catalogue and suggests that it looks like someone we know. I disagree and quickly return to these words. The feet of my son have been pitter-pattering throughout the house…sometimes a loud drumming and other times soft and slight. Things bump around me, cabinets open and close and all of this with a rhythm and harmony unmistakable to family life. These sounds are so familiar and so natural to my existence and life I too often do not really hear them. They occur like the sound of my own breathing which sometimes I am surprised to hear…amazed that I am in fact breathing and this is what it sounds like to be alive. And this is what it sounds like to be alive and have a family. Leo Kotke is no longer the main piece of music but rather just one sound among many creating the symphony of a life…a musical piece that God writes and has written.