Loved into Being

Five Good Things for April

Orchestra by Max Oppenheimer, 1923

I’ve been thinking a lot about the word partake, recently.

The word means part-taker, literally, “a sharer”, from the Latin particeps.

As in, participation.

As in, Holy Communion.

As in, Take this and eat.

//

One Friday morning, I take my daughter to the orchestra.

She sits like a little frog in her seat, knees tucked under her chin, eyes wide, her fingers thrumming along to the frenetic pace of the music.

I watch her body out of the corner of my eye, watch her mouth form a perfect O when the timpani reverberates through the entire room, watch her lean forward ever so slightly when the music crescendoes, feel her startle when the brass blasts its brash exclamation. And when the orchestra hushes to a low hum and the violinist stands for his solo, she grabs my hand.

“This is the sad part,” she whispers in my ear, as he saws dramatically with his bow, the melody soaring.

I watch her feel her way through each of the pieces, like someone traversing a wide and varied landscape, and I remember that the reason I learned to love music is because I experienced it with my body, first.

//

One year ago, I wrote about a scene in one of my favorite movies on the life of Mr. Rogers, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. I described the scene like this:

Mr. Rogers takes his cynical journalist friend Lloyd out to lunch. When Lloyd confesses that he believes he is a broken person, Mr. Rogers asks him, “Would you just take, along with me, one minute to think of all the people who have loved you into being?”

Mr. Rogers sets down his fork and looks at his watch. “Just one minute of silence.”

The remainder of the scene is completely silent. I am left staring into the unflinching, kind face of Mr. Rogers for sixty full seconds.

By the time the minute is up, Lloyd—despite his best intentions—has quiet tears streaming down his cheeks.

And when I touch my face, I realize I do, too.

The scene still brings me to tears, every time I watch it.

And yet, watching the scene back now, I notice something with fresh eyes: how Mr. Rogers counters Lloyd's core identity of broken with a core identity of beloved.

//

Music was the first way I found my way back into my body, growing up.

Before I knew about meditation and yoga and breath and the written word, it was me and my parents’ Baldwin piano and all the emotion my tiny five-year-old body could pour into it.

Still, I had my fair share of school field trips to the orchestra, of moments next to my parents’ giant Sony stereo listening to casette tapes of Beethoven Lives Upstairs and Mozart’s Magic Fantasy, and I recognized a distinction even then.

There is a difference between merely listening to music and wholly participating in it.

When I listened, I only received. Perhaps something shifted inside of me and I walked through the world feeling somehow changed, but it was a one-way street, and I offered nothing in this exchange.

But when I participated—when I took my seat at the piano, or picked up my violin, or stood up with the choir—the music and I overlapped in some mysterious way. The notes filled me and lifted me, somehow became part of me. It was impossible to discern where I began and where the notes ended, and in the best moments, I lost track of space and time and cared only about the communion between myself and the music.

At the orchestra with my daughter, I watch the faces of the musicians, the full-bodied presence of the conductor, and remember all the times I had felt that same sense of participation.

There was the year I spent learning and performing Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major for piano quartet, and the years I sang in choir with my best friends. There was the time I accompanied our high school choir while they sang Eric Whitacre’s Seal Lullaby, and the time I played Debussy’s Reverie until I knew it by heart.

When my daughter and I arrive home from the orchestra, I dig out all my old sheet music and sit down at the piano. I play tentatively at first, letting my fingers move slowly over the keys.

Before long, it all rushes back to me and I’m playing Reverie again and slowly cutting a hole in the fabric of space and time, entering into whatever sacred space one might call that—

Maybe holiness.

Maybe transcendence.

Maybe communion.

//

I used to believe the foundation of faith was my own passive reception of it. My role tended to be about how little I was able to contribute—that I was unable to offer anything, that I must be on guard against anything that smacks of “good works”, that I was a depraved wretch first and foremost and loved by God second.

There’s a weird pride that comes with being “the kind of believer who relies on grace the most—who is most aware of humanity’s level of need. And in that way, I convinced myself my pride was actually humility.

But the idea that God loves me into being is different—it’s good news for my whole self.

I’m learning to live a fuller, more integrated, embodied kind of faith. I am learning, again, what I have forgotten over the years: the reason I learned to love Jesus is because I experienced Him with my body, first.

After all, didn’t Jesus ask his followers to take and eat?

By Him, we are nourished and strengthened. We feed on Him in our hearts and we ask Him to send us out to do the work He has for us to do.¹

It’s the difference between mere listening, mere mental assent, mere passive receptivity…and full-bodied participation.

It’s the difference between sitting and listening to an orchestra, and participating in one.

It’s the feeling of getting lost while playing a piece of music, of experiencing a hole being cut in the fabric of space and time, and entering into whatever sacred space one might call that—

Maybe holiness.

Maybe transcendence.

Maybe communion.

//

Five Good Things:

1. Recent/Current Reads: Dear Writer, The Book of Alchemy, In the Shelter, I Cheerfully Refuse, Heavenly Participation. (I had the absolute delight this month of going to see

   Maggie Smith
   on tour in Minneapolis with
   Liv Holloway
   and it was one of the highlights of my life).

2. Andy Patton over at

   The Darkling Psalter
   is doing some beautiful work, writing creative renditions of the Psalms. I’ve really been enjoying reading and praying my way through these.

3. I also loved reading

   James K.A. Smith
   ’s piece reflecting on the life of Pope Francis and my friend Sue’s gorgeous reflection on grief and transience.

4. Jon Guerra’s new album has been playing on repeat over here, and I find it so nourishing and tender.

5. Kate Bowler’s conversation with Sarah Bessey on building a faith that survives was just what I needed this month. Similarly, Kate Bowler talked on Soul Boom about faith and anger. What can I say, I guess I’m on a Kate Bowler kick.

May each of you remember afresh that you are loved into being.

Peace to you friends,

Krista

1. Excerpts from the liturgy of Holy Communion— BCP, 2019 ed.