Too Many Voices & Roots

The purist in me is fighting against the realist in me.

The purist in me says that music was written a specific way and matched specifically with those texts and those instruments and those harmonizations and we should not go changing everything on a whim!  (Yeah, she’s a little intense.)

The realist in me rolls her eyes and says that some of the music is so old we don’t really know what the specific way was.  Not to mention how much instruments have changed which alters harmonizations.  And what’s wrong with reworking a piece to make it fit the available group of people?  Just go with the flow, man!  (And she’s a bit of a hippie Flower Child.)

I think I nearly hit my stride with my new job though, balancing out those two inner voices which will never cease fighting.  I know I’m relatively very young compared to the other leaders in the church and those who have held my position before me.  But there is a reason I was hired for this job.  My experience far outweighs my youth.  I’m not wet behind the ears anymore.  Haven’t been for a long time.  I’m not yet to a point of being frustrated or annoyed by all the advice, but I can see it coming quickly.  There are things I want to change immediately but most of the things I want to change really can wait.  I’m joining this already thriving community and I’m not going to try and fix things that aren’t broken.  I want to observe and just go with the flow of it all for the moment.  I have strong personal ideas on certain topics, but there is a difference between Me the Individual and Me the Leader.

I think I must sound like a crazy person.  I’ve got the Individual, the Leader, the Purist and the Realist all shouting at each other in my head.  Not to forget the Pianist, the Oboist, the Student, the Teacher and the Composer.  I think I need to get baseball caps and assign each of them a certain hour of the day when they can be in control.  The rest of the time, they need to put their heads down on their desks.

With all of this, I LOVE my new job.  My brain is starting to work again.  Perhaps a little on the frenetic side, but its spinning.  I’ve been sleeping like a normal person.  This may not seem important to most people, and for them it probably isn’t.  But my sleep patterns and cycles have a direct effect on my bipolar issues.  Regular bedtimes, regular wake-up times, good solid chucks of sleeping time – all this is great.  Repetition is the name of the game.  I am in more control of my emotions and work habits and ability to focus and even basic decision-making.

And I found a home.  I don’t mean a new apartment or house.  I don’t mean I know the town or the landscape.  I’m a spider plant offshoot.  The past year I’ve been hanging around, drifting in mid-air partway between the place I came from and the rest of the world.  I had the world at my feet and could go anywhere.  Do anything!  While that might sound wonderful, its terrifying.  More terrifying that feeling stuck in the same place.  And I’ve been there too.  So I’m hanging off the main plant, swinging in the wind, not sure if I should let go or climb back up.  Then someone comes along, pulls me off and sticks me in some dirt.  As if by magic, I start to develop roots.  Tiny hair-like structures, but roots nonetheless.

That was my feeling this morning driving to church. I’m putting down roots!