Listening for the Music

I’ll never forget sitting in the low light of an empty corridor outside the church sanctuary, listening to my daughter Esther’s violin lessons one evening a week. I knew I needed to hold onto the beauty of those moments—commit them to memory, treasure them up. Do you ever have that feeling like you’ve stumbled across holy ground? Like the veil between heaven and earth is thin? That’s how those evenings felt to me. 

If you’ve ever heard someone learning to play violin, you may wonder over my reaction to the violin lessons. When Esther first began practicing at home our cat would stand outside her room and cry, clearly distressed by the discordant squeaks and moans of the bow scratching across the strings. 

But once a week, Esther would meet with her teacher and I would sit outside and listen for the music. First the teacher would play. The melody rang through the quiet halls of the church in such a lovely, haunting way. Then Esther would play the same stretch of music. And I could hear it—the beauty she was reaching for. Yes there were squeaks and moans, but the music was there too. If I hadn’t heard the teacher play first, I might not have been able to find it in Esther’s first attempts, but because I’d heard it, I knew what to listen for. I could hear her progress every week. I could hear her reach toward beauty and the reach itself was so very beautiful. 

In addition to the music, a story was unfolding there outside the sanctuary. I’d brought the book, The Neverending Story, to read as I waited. Most people are familiar with the movie but it’s only a shadow of the book itself. I’ll never forget reading about the moment the Luck Dragon caught a glimpse of The Childlike Empress—the scene set to the backdrop of Esther’s violin reaching toward the beauty of her teacher’s music… Speaking of his encounter, the Luck Dragon says, “She cast a glance at me, just one short glance, but—I hardly know how to say it—that glance made a new dragon out of me.” I knew exactly what he meant. There are encounters that change you forever and ever.

There seemed such a connection between the miraculous change of the dragon in one glance and the slower reach toward beauty I was listening to. When you realize the God of the universe, the maker of the stars, cares about you? It changes the trajectory of your hope. It changes it in an instant. And from that moment on, even amidst all the squeaks and moans of imperfection—and there are many—the music does emerge. And slowly it takes on the Teacher’s melody. 

~Amy