From today's Spoken Word: "Of course, the great God of the universe wants to bless us, and He invites us to ask, seek, and knock. But it’s also true that one of the greatest blessings He offers is the peace and perspective that fill our souls when we live in thanks."
Along with the beautiful songs we were able to sing today, I pondered a bit about how the last line of that quote, above, is true for me. Do I really feel more peace and more perspective when I live in thanks? And what does "living in thanks" really mean?
I guess for me, living in thanks means that I don't wait until I pray to express thanks to God for my blessings. Sure, expressing thanks in a formal prayer is definitely a good thing. But when I do it that way, I think I miss a lot. The bigger blessings always stand out and it's pretty easy to remember those. But if I am actively looking for blessings throughout the day, I can recognize them better (including some of the precious "smaller" ones) and I can give thanks for them in real-time.
This proactive approach is hard to do when you're having a bad day, when you just don't feel good, or things have happened that have caused disappointment or despair. But I guess that's the best type of day to really put this blessing of "peace and perspective" to the test. While I'm not very good at this proactive approach on bad days, I can say that when I stop for a few seconds and open my eyes to what's around me and think about things from a more holistic point of view, I actually do feel an increase of peace and perspective. It doesn't take away any of the hurt or frustration, but is lessens the effects of it just a bit. And, actually, it can help in having that hurt and frustration either go away more quickly, or, I end up learning something valuable that can help me the next time such difficult emotions encircle and threaten to consume.
My invitation to you is to try it. Be actively thankful not only on the good days, but on the bad ones. And see what happens.
Switching gears, I did want to report on the semi-annual business meeting that the Choir organization was invited to this past Tuesday. You can actually read about what was discussed, HERE. As for my take on it all... Well, I'm really happy that our weekly program will start to be offered in Spanish and Portuguese. And to emphasize, this does not mean that they are going to take the regular English program and just add subtitles or audio dub to it. No. Everything that gets displayed on the screen (including the Music & Spoken Word logo), and everything that is spoken (i.e. the "spoken word") will be in the native language. Obviously the music itself will still be in English primarily, but everything else will more country-friendly. INCLUDING, might I add, those video segments you often see on screen while we sing. Instead of seeing a white family of four running in a field of flowers in slow motion for example, you'll perhaps see a Latino family participating in some country-specific activity. Anyway, I think this is a very good move.
For the next initiative of going on tour more frequently but for shorter periods of time, I think that's also a great thing. Taking three weeks of personal leave from work to go on tour (thus sacrificing those vacation days to spend with family) was a tall order. Seven to 10 days is much more do-able. And I think more people will be able to make that work. The big blow that came to choir member spouses during that announcement was that spouses will no longer be invited to go on tour. And for some spouses, that was a very hard thing to hear. Spouses already have a difficult time feeling included in this choir journey, and despite the occasional "thank you for your sacrifice and support" that comes from choir leaders, there really isn't a lot that is done for spouses to actually show them how much they are valued. Case in point: we typically have had a nice dinner the week after the Christmas Concert, held at the Grand America. This was a nice fancy occasion that plenty of the spouses looked forward to. It was seen as a nice token of thanks for all the support they had given throughout the year. Unfortunately, that dinner was discontinued and replaced with some unspecified summer activity. And many of us weren't very happy about it.
The third pilot program that was spoken about was flying people in from other countries to sing at Conference. I'm waiting to hear more details on this (you can read the announcement linked above for a few more details), but I sort of struggle with this one. Are they doing this just so that the choir can appear more diverse? And what will happen to these people who go through a try-out process, get picked to learn the songs and participate in conference, and then fly back to their home country once conference is over? Are they done? Do they get to do it again? What do they do between the time they fly back and the next conference? Too many questions, so I will defer judgment on this one until I know more.
Well, this blog entry is running a bit long so I'll wrap it up. Just two quick things. One, after the meeting each choir member had to fill out a survey, and one of the questions was an open-ended one regarding general feedback. It was rather amazing! They've never asked for feedback and have never encouraged us giving it before. Two, my friend Willy had his sister sing with the choir at Thursday night's rehearsal as a guest and it was fun to see how excited he was. He introduced me to her after the rehearsal and it sounded like the whole experience for her was a positive one.
And with that, I'll bid you all adieu!
Until next time, God be with you.
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