MUSIC and the gift

I love music.  I have been falling more in love with music lately.  It just inspires me, awes me...I love it.  I love hearing different kinds of music and hearing bits of pieces of each person's soul as they sing or play.  It is an amazing expression.  I love how it can convey so much.

I just watched some youtube videos from 89.3 the Current.  I watched Mumford and Sons, Haley Bonar, and Chastity Brown.  Earlier I watched a Paul McCartney video "Good Morning Sunshine" from a concert he gave not too long ago (I was playing it to help Chris get out of bed!).  It also, for some reason, had a space/astronaut theme which is perfect for Chris.  Hehe.  I also saw a youtube video from the band Dark Dark Dark for their song Daydreaming.  So, yes, I've been watching a lot of music videos....but it's for the music mostly...I need to get out and see a live show soon.

Anyhow, this is more or less a jumble of thoughts just like my last post, but I just want to put my thoughts and feelings down somewhere and I decided that I would just do it rather than worry if it is consistent and coherent.

Since I've been writing and playing music more it has made me love music more as well.  It's truly a gift from God.  I have been reading from Madeleine L'Engle's book about Faith and Art and she says how the we are given gifts that we may serve them, not that gifts are given to us to serve us.  As she states:
         "The important thing is to recognize that our gift, no matter what the size is, is indeed something given us, for which we may humbly serve, and, in serving, learn more wholeness, be offered wondrous newness." (p.237, Walking on Water)

I think what she says here is so key to being an artist.  I feel I have only begun to serve my gifts, but I am given life in return when I do it.  It's also good for me to be part of the worship team because it causes me to be disciplined and humbled in a setting of friends and other believers.
When I was about 16 I was part of a small youth group and one of the leaders of this group told me a nasty lie (he didn't know it was nasty but it was).  He said that he believed that music can't glorify God unless it is specifically written to do so.  I didn't believe him at the time but I thought about what he said anyway.  Now I know without doubt that he was wrong but it makes me mad to think that sometimes people like him limit the glory of God so rigidly and wrongly.  God can be glorified by any true piece of art whether or not that person knows God, because:
       "Provided, he is an artist of integrity, he is a genuine servant of the glory which he does not recognize, and unknown to himself there is 'something divine' about his work.'" (p.25, Walking on Water, L'Engle quoting Rev. A.M. Allchin of England).
Certainly, some "Christian art" is not art or Christian at all.  Sometimes people are not given the gift, even if they are a Christian, that non-Christian or atheist might have in abundance (this I am paraphrasing from L'Engle again).

So, I've gone off on a tangent, but I think it's worth restating these points because they have been really eye-opening for me in some ways. When I was in Indonesia on a mission trip a few years ago instead of feeling called overseas one of the things I felt God telling me was to continue to do art - writing, music, etc.  I realize now how important it is that I do this - to worship with the gift.  I love realizing that I am serving the gift that is placed in me.  I think often when I was younger I was reluctant to share the gift because I thought I would only be serving myself with it.  Now I see that is not true at all.  Now I see that it is a service to others even if I benefit from it.  It's sad because now looking back I see that perhaps I felt that way not just because of immaturity but even the way that some artists and musicians use their gift to serve themselves and that is what our larger culture has believed as well even if it isn't said.
      "To serve a work of art, great or small, is to die, to die to self.  If the artist is to be able to listen to the work, he must get out of the way, or, more correctly, since getting out of the way is not a do-it-yourself activity, he must be willing to be got out of the way...in order to become the servant of the work.
      To serve a work of art is almost identical with adoring the Master of the Universe in contemplative prayer...not to find self, but to lose self in order to be found." (pp.234-234 Walking on Water)