Being in Rhythm

The year after I finished high school, I studied music at a local community college. My hope was to become a professional jazz guitarist. Having been surrounded with music my whole life (both my parents were music majors in university) I felt drawn toward this art form, especially jazz which nurtured my need for moment by moment creativity through improvisation.

Little did I know how hard jazz improvisation actually is. Not only does it require mastery of the instrument you are playing, but it also requires thorough understandings of music theory, music history, and the art of playing with other musicians.

“To perform jazz improvisation requires nerves of steel.”

It also requires nerves of steel. When you’re in front of hundreds of people, expressing some of your innermost feelings through your instrument, things can get a bit scary. You have to be listening to everything that’s going on around you. You have to be responding to what the other musicians are doing. You have to engage the audience in ways they will find inspiring.

Ultimately it was my lack of nerve that led me away from music as a career. When in front of people my performance anxiety would get the better of me. I also discovered I enjoyed ideas more than I enjoyed performing. Philosophy, religious studies, psychology, and sociology held my attention and interest more than practicing scales for hours on end. Call me crazy, but some of my books are my closest companions–they shape my understanding of myself and my worlds more than music ever did or could.

Looking back on that time, however, I have now come to appreciate the incredible lessons music taught me about life and spirituality. I will summarize the biggest lesson with the phrase: Being in Rhythm.

As I have come to see it, spirituality concerns how we understand and engage reality. It is true each of us can shape reality in some significant ways. This begins mainly by paying attention to our inner lives, specifically our perceptions about reality. Shaping reality also takes deep roots when we truly and deeply know ourselves.

But part of knowing ourselves is also knowing how we have been shaped by significant people and events in our lives. It means having some understanding of where our values and desires for ourselves and others come from. It means striving to be conscious and awake in every area of life, no matter how painful this might be.

During my years playing music publically, I knew I needed to know myself and my playing very well if I was to contribute to the ensembles of which I was a part. I knew that my unique voice would only be heard if I knew what role I played in those bands, how best I could play with the other musicians. The rhythms to which I played were not just those written on the pages of music in front of me. They were also the rhythms of the other musicians’ musical personalities. Unless I understood these subtler and more complex rhythms, I would never be the kind of musician I really wanted to be.

“Spirituality is all about rhythm.”

In some ways, spirituality is all about rhythm. By deepening our knowledge of ourselves, by plumbing the depths of our personality, we also come to understand how we as individuals are deeply connected with the rest of reality. We get to see how others live, love, fear, hope, experience disappointment, dream, and, ultimately, leave this existence. We see how, in some ways, their experiences are similar to our own; in other ways they couldn’t be more different.

Yet through it all, we come to recognize that life, reality itself, has a rhythm, and we are all gifted the opportunity of playing along with it. In this opportunity there is the potential for beautiful music; there is also the potential for incredible dischord.

Here are some questions to help you consider how you might or might not be playing along with life’s rhythms:

1. Have you ever felt like life is a fight, just simply to get by? If so, why? If not, why not?
2. What are the attitudes you bring to life? How do they make your life easier? How do they make your life more difficult?
3. What are some times you’ve experienced when things worked out in just the way you thought they should? What enabled this to happen? How did you contribute to having this work out this way?
4. What are some of the big lessons you’ve learned about life and reality? How have these helped you? How have they limited you?
5. What are some big lessons you believe you still need to learn? What do you think it will be like to learn them?

Life and reality are so big and so complicated it can often take a lifetime to master them.

But, in truth, nobody masters them. Rather, we work in concert, one with another, learning to engage life and reality fully, deeply, and richly in the hope that all of us, together, at the same time, might make beautiful music of our lives in the great cosmic symphony of which we are all a part.

May all of our lives be characterized by beautiful and rich music.

References

Bourgeault, C. (2013). The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three: Discovering the Radical Truth at the Heart of Christianity. Boulder, CO: Shambhala.

Lasair, S. (2019). A Narrative Approach Spirituality and Spiritual Care in Health Care. Journal of Religion and Health [Online First]. https://rdcu.be/bSZY3

Panikkar, R. (2010). The Rhythm of Being: The Unbroken Trinity; The Gifford Lectures. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.

Disclaimer: The advice and suggestions offered on this site are not substitutes for consultation with qualified mental or spiritual health professionals. The perspectives offered here are those of the author, not of those professionals with whom readers might have relationships as clients or patients. In crisis situations, readers are encouraged to contact these professionals for appropriate support and treatment if needed.