I love music

Have I ever mentioned before how much I love music? Maybe once... maybe twice... well, I do. Today I had a neat realization and I thought I'd, you know, document it.

This morning I had choir practice with my choir. Low turnout again... looks like I'm loosing a bunch of sopranos :(. Anyway, with the amount of support I've had over the last 9 months, I wanted to end the season with a bang before we quit for summer, hopefully we'll be able to pull it off with some smaller numbers. So anyway, since a choir is only as good as it's director thinks it is, I've picked a tough song, but one I know we can do because it's one of my top five favorite songs of all time (and you can't imagine how hard that is for me to narrow down!). We're singing Gounod's 'Oh Divine Redeemer'.

This song and I go way back to high school singing it in duet with Lisa Cowley Gillespie. I pray that one day I'll have to the chance to perform this piece with the MoTab myself, but until then, I'm going to subject my little ward choir to those soaring A's! I love the amount of passion this song conveys. It truly is a prayer that I've felt before.

So after practicing that song for nearly an hour this morning, I came home and decided to read several of October's conference talks before getting ready for church. One of the talks I read was Richard G. Scott's talk called To Acquire Spiritual Guidance. In this talk he says, "Have patience as you are perfecting your ability to be led by the Spirit. By careful practice, through the application of correct principles, and by being sensitive to the feelings that come, you will gain spiritual guidance. I bear witness that the Lord, through the Holy Ghost, can speak to your mind and heart. Sometimes the impressions are just general feelings. Sometimes the direction comes so clearly and so unmistakably that it can be written down like spiritual dictation." This whole talk is basically about learning how the Spirit communicates with you personally. This is something I need to work on in a bad way, especially as we are trying to make some major life decisions in the very near future.

Well, during sacrament meeting, I ended up not being able to sing the sacrament hymn due to an overwhelming feeling of the Spirit. Reflecting on that (after wiping up my mascara streaked cheeks), and in combination with singing 'Oh Divine Redeemer' that morning, I understood how profoundly the Lord communicates with me through sacred music. I love the hymns of the gospel and try my darndest to help my boys develop a love for them too. Singing in church is my favorite part of our worship because in reality, other than those rare circumstances when you're asked to speak in sacrament, it's the only significant participation and worship we do as Latter-Day Saints. To me, saying 'Amen' at the end of a handful of prayers and a couple of talks doesn't make me feel like I've spent much of my time actually worshipping my God. But by singing the hymns and speaking the words, I find myself communicating feelings of Love for my Creator, Savior and Redeemer. And sometimes, like today, the words of the hymn are as if He is the one speaking and the Spirit is able to bear testimony that He love me too. Not many prayers of mine have been answered in the words of many songs, but sure and undeniable feelings of belonging and peace have been imprinted on my heart through song.

We concluded the day by attending an Easter Hymn Sing-in that our stake was holding tonight. Our ward was asked to sing a song we'd prepared in November of last year, "For the Beauty of the Earth" by John Rutter. My accompanist had emergency brain surgery this week, so my darling/talented/fabulous/can't-thank-her-enough Mother-in-law came and saved our bacon for the performance tonight. It's an extremely difficult song to play... and sing... and direct... but Rhyll and our choir did a great job. What a blessing. So tonight, I'm a little high on music with amazing gratitude for the Lord and this telephone-line like connection that He and I have together. We've had a LOT of good conversations today!