Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Personal Update from the Summer

I’d just like to step in here and update my readers on my recent adventures. In June, I terminated my employment with VCY America in order to look for new opportunities. As the prudent know, the economy has taken a hit or two over the last months, and so finding a job was not the quick and easy project I thought it would be, causing me some anxious moments. I spent the summer months doing custodial work for my church to bring in some extra cash while I applied for many different types of jobs.

At the end of August, I found half-time employment with Principal Financial Group, which gives me time to work on wedding plans and give piano and voice lessons at Milwaukee Lutheran School. I must say the variety of what I now do is very inspiring, and I have greatly enlarged my circle of contacts and opportunities. Having my routine upset again and again has been bad for my writing and blogging habits, and I apologize for not finding time to keep up. Special thanks to my Bryant for his incredible morale support during this difficult time of transition, and to Liz without whom I would still be floundering.

I’ve compiled a list of questions I’d like to discuss with other music aficionados. I’ve been thinking about the arguments often used against “contemporary” Christian music, and have decided that many of them are heavily colored with opinion rather than informed by Biblical principles. Here’s one to get us thinking:

Does it make sense to say that a composer may be creative with every element of music EXCEPT rhythm?

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

The Arrow and the Song

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ~