Discerning the Music and One's Place Within It

The CD player malfunctioned. It happened Sunday evening during a Christmas program while a visiting liturgical dance group was performing. Propped up on the organ bench, the operators had labored with some difficulty to get it to play in the first place, and then scurried to find a microphone they could lay nearby when the volume proved inadequate. But then halfway into the routine, the music simply stopped.

I wasn't familiar with the song, but had noticed that I was in the minority. Most of the congregation had started singing along. So when the technology failed, several supportive onlookers tried to undergird the dancers from the pews. But it limped. Then, out of the corner of my eye I noticed movement from the guest musical director who had been leaning against the wall beside me. Precariously he threaded his way between the music stands and the microphone cords, the extra chairs and the guitars leaning nearby and took his place at the keyboard where his hands stopped short, hovering above the keys.

And he listened. He listened to the handful of people still singing the song. He listened to the fading memory of the melody through the speakers. And after patient attending, his hands adjusted over the keyboard, landed, and began to play...

...exactly on key. Exactly on melody. Seamlessly. Beautifully.

I never knew quite when, but eventually I realized that the CD player had revived, and the keyboardist gradually withdrew to the background of the music -- while remaining involved, just in case. So deft had been the musician's finesse that the line between his involvement and the recording was almost indiscernible.

It was, I'm sure, musical excellence and expertise. I commend his training and his craft. But I am just as sure that the artfulness of the moment emerged from his patience between the fall and the rise. He waited. He listened. He paid attention. And only then -- only after discerning the moment, the music, and his place within it -- did his fingers begin to play.

As one too often impetuous, too often quick to fill the silences and the gaps with words or motions any one of which will do, I learned something Sunday night about pausing, listening, and discerning the key.