Music, Tears, and Waves.

There are times when I weep while at my piano.

I’m not a good pianist. I cannot play straight through relatively simple pieces. But this bears fruit as regret, not tears. When I first took lessons as a child, I assumed the joys of making music would come to me quickly. Surely by way of effortless, inherent ability. Probably in a few weeks.

This was, of course, folly. But my childhood expectations led to a rebellion against the forge of discipline. It shouldn’t feel like work, I thought, so I fought for several years before I won the battle, securing a life-long loss.

So I pick my way through sheet music now, many years later, extracting mosaic bits of joy. But, tears? If not from regret, where do they come from?

Despite my halting rhythm and deformed chords, there are moments when I experience something ‘otherly.’ It’s not by my own power, but I sense that beauty has become nearly tangible in the music and I’m caught up into it. Emotion overwhelms me. With that wonder, there often comes a tear.

It makes me think of visits to the beach and wading into the Atlantic, my bare feet on the swirling sand under the water’s surface. Far enough out into the surf is a place where the water is deeper, but I am not yet buoyant. Behind the breaking point of the waves is the space where the water gathers and rises just before it falls over itself.

When I stand in this place, sometimes a mounding wave pulls me from the sand, upward and forward with frightful ease, and places me down again a few feet away. For a moment, this power takes me into itself—it’s ‘otherly’ self, and I experience weightlessness in tandem with sobering power.

To me, this is like an expereince with beauty. Except, instead of a physical lifting, an encounter with the sublime draws my spirit, or emotions, or senses, into it's larger nature, effortlessly carrying me along, bouyant and out of control. My perceptions seem lifted and heightened, but there is also a humbling recognition of my smallness relative to its magnitude. I take part in delightful lightness and motion that I cannot achieve, but can position myself to sometimes experience. With that elation comes awareness that this buoyant, liquid lifting could easily undo me, yet I am also welcome there.

Moments of beauty feel like sobering, buoyant joy. I wish it happened more often, and I wish I could follow a formula to cause the encounter. Creative acts are not a cause of beauty, but help me get to places where I may experience something greater than myself. Creative discipline feels like a struggle to pass through crashing breakers to the border between my world and another. Sometimes a wave comes along willing to carry me if I can get to the right place.

There, I am a participant, not a cause. Swells of beauty fill me with both gratitude and longing. That's when I might shed tear. Though hardly comparable in scope to the depthless might of that ocean, a joyful tear is more similar to a sea of beauty than it is different.

For now, I struggle against the current of my poor musical skill. But when I do experience a swell of beauty that lifts my feet from the sand, it is enough to remind me that creative work is worthy, and discipline leads to more and more moments of lifting. A lesson I could not see as a child.

Now, a mere youth in terms of eternity, I must struggle and practice to be caught up by beauty, learning to attune my self to it. It’s a discipline, but I know it will yield joy. I must practice. I also know that I am preparing for the day when the full ocean of God’s goodness is available—when there is no more turbulent border between kingdoms.

When that day comes, what music will we enter into? What tears of joy will we shed—and how buoyant shall we be?