“I love this
song.” It’s a phrase that is much more likely to come out of some of my best
friends’ mouths than out of my own. You can ask them. I’ve never really been
one to fall in love with a song, to hanker after music, to desire it. And I
don’t usually go out of my way to listen to music, because, in general, I
prefer silence.
But music, I’m
beginning to slowly discover, can make the times of silence in my life more
fruitful. Or at least music makes the silence more reflective than routine.
It’s like the difference between digging a hole in the ground for the sheer
entertainment of seeing how deep you can get and digging a hole for the purpose
of planting a seed in it.
Music in the
in-between-times can help the silence to have a purpose. Music plants seeds.
So silence and
sound work together, and sometimes it is good to soak myself in sounds in order
that my silence will benefit from it.
I know this
because the lyrics of Josh Garrels’ song “At The Table”—which I have been listening
to and learning to play on guitar—have been stirring around in my brain for the
past week.
I went the ways of wayward
winds
In a world of trouble and
sin
A story of
prodigality, reconciliation, and conversion, the lyrics cry out to me as a
sinner. There is always a place for me at the table of my Mother, the Church.
For each of us,
there is a place. We are welcomed in the arms of our loving mother; our Father
comes running to meet us. The prodigal son is welcomed to the banquet of the
Eucharist.
Quotation from "At The Table," by Josh Garrels
