New Year’s Life

January, back to normal life and work, although playing harp for friends is too fun be burdened with the connotations of work. After two days of driving back from family and Christian Youth Retreat, I walked straight into my my weekly harp event where I spend an hour strolling a senior facility playing tunes on my small harp Maywyn.

It felt funny to be walking with my harp again. I take my largest harp to camp where I play with the worship band and augment my classical repertoire with contemporary Christian rock music. It is freeing and exhilarating to play with three guitarists and a keyboardist, although I wore earplugs the entire time to protect myself from the drumset!

From the music to speakers and workshops, this camp affirmed life, our life as family, our life purpose and how to set life goals. It was amazing to see my Christian family shake off the dust of a disbelieving world and stretch spiritual muscles into life again.

Returning to my regular harp event, I learned that while I was at camp, three of my senior friends from this facility passed away. On top of that, as I walked into the room of a lady I have played for every week for two years, her family warned me that she was also near passing. This beautiful friend has never spoken to me–a stroke left her paralyzed and noncommunicative. But she responds over and over again to hymns.

At the family’s request, I played the lady’s favorite hymn O Come, O Come Emmanuel. After all, as Charles Dickens points out, we should carry the spirit of Christmas with us all year long. As my fingers fought to remember the melody I covered myself by singing, realizing that the same principle that upheld life at my youth retreat is the hand hold for the dying: “Rejoice, God is with us.”

Knowing that this lady’s favorite hymns are in minor keys, I continued into the song O Sacred Head Now Wounded while the healthy sister stroked the stroke victim’s white hair. Here are the key lyrics:

This is the focus of life. Whether playing for teenagers with a worship band or ninety year olds at an Alzheimer’s unit, the strength that keeps us from fainting is love for He who is the Life.

Happy New Year