Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Love In Any Language, Straight From The Heart!

There have been times when I've felt very much like one of those birds pictured below. Imagine with me, there I am, center stage singing with all of my heart, praying that everyone will like the song and join in, but only one or two actually do. The rest are silent, watching, wondering what is going on. They can see the lips moving, they can see the rhythmic movements of the body language that is keeping time to the music, but they can't hear it, and they can't feel it, they only see the imagery of what I'm hearing and feeling. Like the silence that confronts us from our reflection in a mirror, we attempt to get a response, all the while knowing that there can be none. In my heart I don't believe this is the "different drummer" syndrome at work, it is something far deeper. Have you ever been in a situation where both you and the person with whom you were attempting communications had no tongue in common? Tried them all, German, Spanish, Hebrew, Greek, English and a few others more obscure, while they in turn spoke a half dozen different languages back and neither of us found anything that could draw us together, linguistically speaking. That's when it is truly time to laugh out loud, grunt and point, guffaw and giggle, because that is a starting point. A foundation upon which one can build some form of mutual point of reference. It may not happen often, if ever, like this for you, but in our everyday relationships we are in contact with many whose "language" we don't speak even though the words that come out of our mouths are the same, and easily understood. Maybe we need to experience that frustration of a foreign tongue once in awhile so that we can appreciate how good it is to have a whole dictionary at our disposal for the purpose of communicating thoughts and feelings, ideas and perceptions. Music, in my opinion, is a truly international language, one that anyone, anywhere who reads instrumentally or vocally can use to communicate. There is another, that supercedes music, though, it is the written language of faith in our Savior that at one time was spoken with a single line drawn in the dirt or the sand. If the person you drew it for completed the drawing you had the fundamental beginnings of a relationship. One based on faith in the same deity. Today we listen to the rhetoric of politicians and speechmakers, famous and infamous personages, and then wait for someone else from the media field to "tell" us by way of explanation what has been said. Can it be that we see their lips moving, watch the gestures that they make, but don't "hear" the words or understand the languages that are being spoken? As the Pledge of Allegiance was removed, as prayer became disallowed in our schools, as the Ten Commandments are in the process of being erased from our day to day lives, are we trying to sing along but just can't seem to get it? Maybe we are headed back to the drawing of lines on the ground, and a few simple grunts, to reassure one another that we can still communicate in our 21st century world. In Christ's Love, Preacher.

Summer Music Fest Now In Session. Come As You Are! Refreshments Will Follow. Posted by Picasa