3—INTONATION – Musical Interlude to the Infinite

Day after day J-man would come home from school, dump his books on the couch, and go to his room to get his hands on that fret board. Long evenings led to long nights of tirelessly repeating sequences, runs, and riffs. There was always the emergence from the room for food and bathroom breaks, but right back into that room he would go. There were times of frustration, times of epiphany, and times of sorrow that he experienced trying to learn to master that instrument.
And, yet, he wasn’t performing at the time. He wasn’t earning a living on stage. He wasn’t even allowing
anyone outside of his immediate circle of family to hear his playing. I often wondered why in the world he kept at it. Why would he invest so much time into something that didn’t seem to reward? Why not put that kind of tenacity and self-discipline into your school work or into a sport?
That was 10+ years ago and I think I’m just now beginning to understand what was driving him—it was love. Not just a love of music—not just a love of accomplishment—no, it was much deeper than all of that. What he taught me most through the process of making that guitar a part of his very DNA was that he had fallen in love with what might be. He had fallen in love with and become consumed by how complicated it was—how delicate and, yet, powerful his world became. He had discovered that the music knew no boundaries. That it couldn’t be contained within a box and was never to be separated from the human soul. He had discovered beauty and in doing so he was able to feel beautiful.

Religion: “A set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving a devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.”
Like my brother, I am motivated by beauty. I stand in awe of the visual, auditory, tactile, succulent, aromatic beauty that I encounter in this world. These are the things that I long to experience and describe, but, oddly, I spend little time trying to understand how they work. Beauty, after all, isn’t subject to the constraints of mathematics, science, history, or logic. Beauty is real and yet it is mostly a concept. Beauty achieves a pleasure of the mind without engaging the logical wirings of the brain—it just is.
Religion certainly doesn’t seem to be beautiful at all. It seems very calculated, certain of its position, and fundamentally rigid. And, yet, I wonder how many of us are able to separate our religion from our understanding of God. I wonder if it’s possible for even 1% of Christians to be able to separate their concept of God from their concept of religion. Supposedly, God is to be experienced—not understood. Reportedly, we’re encouraged to call God “papa”—not “O, sovereign one.” It is my understanding that affection, exuberance, serenity, perseverance, compassion, and love for others are the results of encountering “papa”—not rigidity, compliance, self deprecation, and righteous indignation.
I’ve been practicing all these years with an instrument that I’ve come to hate. But no one ever explained to me that God doesn’t dwell within this system of beliefs and moral codes. It’s made me wonder how many others out there suffer the same sort of bleeding and frustration trying to get beautiful music out of an instrument that’s missing half its strings and is without several frets—it just ain’t gonna happen!

Our souls crave the beauty! Quit trying to get us to plug into your effects pedal so that our sound will more closely blend with yours. I want to plug directly into my amp (God) and when I do I will experience something profound. The experience won’t be a one-man jam session in my garage—it’ll be a symphony of believers playing now with one another instead of playing to the mirror trying desperately to get it right. There is no “getting it right”. It’s not about “getting it right”. It’s fundamentally about strumming the pick across the strings and working out the ever-changing sound that’s in our soul. Don’t be shy about it either—turn that knob up—it goes to 11! Come on, let’s jam!
You see, my bro still plays the guitar, but he doesn’t just play one guitar. Funny thing about guitarists…they always own 23 or more guitars. Seems irresponsible and fool-hardy to most of us, but they understand something that the rest of us don’t—there is a sinister beauty and elegance in the altering of a very few wavelengths. Each instrument will project something different—they are all uniquely relevant. One of the guitars might be favored for one song—another for a different song. You can hear it, but you might not be able to explain it or define exactly what has changed. You have to open your senses to the diversity necessitated by creation. To create you must open yourself to the vast diversity represented by the guitars on the wall. Different is good…different is absolutely good!

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