The beauty that already exists

A Note From Our Music Director

“Consider the lilies. How do they grow? They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.” Matthew 6:28-29

Victor Wooten tells us that when he was a child, his mother would tell him,You are already a musician. You just don’t know it yet. You, too, reader, are a musician and if you don’t know it yet, it is my fervent prayer that you do. And in the spirit of Jesus’s words above, I would add: not even the greatest musicians, the greatest compositions, the most beautiful instruments in all of their splendor compare to that most perfect and beautiful musician that resides in you. You just don’t know it yet.

The world – in other words: us – is obsessed with sowing and reaping, profit and loss, specialization and efficiency, progress and innovation. Jesus and Victor’s mother call us to consider a more profound, more basic reality. They call us to look and see what we already have, who we really are. They call us to stop trying to do stuff and start seeing what we already are, what we always have been.

When Victor teaches at his Music/Nature Camp in Only, Tennessee, he talks about looking with a wide angle lens vs a small angle lens. When we are making music, are we focused only on what we are doing, on whether we are getting things right? Or, are we making music with a wide open awareness and view, taking in everything that is happening while moving and being in this wideness. Can we move into a state that is receptive and free of judgment and yet at the same time is moving, is acting, is singing, is playing? Isn’t this just what children do? Isn’t this what Jesus meant when we said,unless you become like children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven? This simple change of focus can have immediate and profound results. Try it. Play with it.

There are literally billions of gorgeous flowers all over this planet, in incredible splendor, more beautiful than Solomon in all of his splendor. They have no value, no one seeks them out, they don’t compel our economy, they don’t create status for anyone. We are surrounded by beauty. We are beauty. And yet, how often are we narrowed into the pains and sufferings of our lives, the tedium and need to accumulate and save and plan. The difference between spiritual awakening and suffering, heaven and hell, is perhaps just a change in perspective. As the gospels proclaim, if you but only believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be saved. What is belief other than a change in perspective?

Making sublime and beautiful music does not require 10,000 hours in the practice room. It doesn’t require the most expensive instruments and the best acoustics. It doesn’t require having the greatest, most in demand musicians. It simply requires a change in perspective, a moment by moment awareness of the fundamental beauty that already exists, that is already there, that is always and forever there. As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. You have perfect rhythm – if you didn’t, how could you possibly tell the difference when you hear something out of rhythm? You have perfect pitch – if you didn’t, how could you possibly tell something was out of tune? There is no problem, there is no achievement, there is no goal, there is nothing to do except. Except. Look, with wide open awareness. Listen, appreciate, surrender. Open and play. Relax and jump right in. Find the little kid inside of you, find that place of perfect joy and perfect fun and sing and dance and play. If you do, you can and you will find that perfect musician that is already inside you, as it was in the beginning, is now, and forever will be.

— Jack Barben