I believe we spend our lives trying to discover our true selves. This is beautifully expressed in Psalm 139, prayed most often in the Evening Prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours. We want to know our selves as God knew them when we were created in our mothers’ wombs.
From the time I was in 3rd grade (about the time this photograph was taken of me at camp), when I first sat down at a piano, I knew my life revolved around music. By the time I reached my 12th birthday, I knew that my life’s purpose was composing music. Against the advice of my high school counselor, I continued to pursue music as my major in college, and though there were many more talented and skilled musicians around me, I held my own among them. It was not my chief purpose to be a music educator or performer, however, those occupations did put bread on the table and have helped to provide for my family. And, so, I wrote music. I have written a lot of music. Any of it published? No. I have never really pursued publication. I wrote for the sheer joy of writing music. Is any of the music worthy of publication? I believe some of it might have some promise in that area.
So why all this music now? While I was laid up recovering from a fall I had in late summer, I could only really sit at the dining room table. So I started to look over all the music I had written and began painstakingly transcribing it to a digital format on my computer. Were someone to ask me who are you? I would tell them to listen to the music I wrote, particularly the piano music. It is within this music that my true self is found. The greatest benefit of that fall which forced me into this endeavor was a rediscovery of myself, that person whom God named while I was being created in my mother’s womb.
There is a great overreaching arch that stretches from the point of our birth to the point of our death. Throughout that arch I have found my life revolving around music, my beloved Ruth, and the Church. As I am on the downward side of the arch I have reencountered my self as composer of music. In all the transcribing I have done and continue to do, I am rediscovering my self, where I began and where I am today. And when the transcribing is completed, I will pick up where I left off and continue to compose music, just like I intended to do when I first sat down at a piano keyboard in 3rd grade.
