Weaving the Web: Together, apart, together

Pat LandmanHerriot, a member of our choir, shared this offering from the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra this morning, and I’m passing it along to you in hopes that it will mean as much to you as it does to me.

Ode to Joy

It’s not just the music that moves me. It’s seeing each person playing, alone in a room, unable even to hear the others in real time as they play. (Due to the lag time of the internet, a sound engineer had to put them all together later.) These are people whose lives are about making music with others, and now they are so isolated. Like many of us, they are cut off from what they love to do, and the face-to-face, side-by-side togetherness that normally sustains them.

This is orchestral music (and with a full choir, also added digitally); you can’t create the Ode to Joy all alone in your apartment. How incredibly frustrating for a professional musician. Yet the joy is there–you can see it in their playing. And then they send it out to us.

No wonder they are joyful. They have found a way to follow their calling, even in their loneliness and frustration, and make music with other people, for other people.

My favorite part of ministry is being right in the same room with you, hearing your ideas and feelings and what’s happening in your life. Meeting via video conference or phone is in a distant second place. But it is far, far better than not being with you at all. These orchestra members remind me that, even though we each may feel alone in our rooms, the music of our lives is still interwoven. We just need to put it all together now and then, so that we don’t forget. So please join me, join Dan, join each other, for gatherings throughout the week.