Oct. 18, 2015

He Leads You

He leads you, where He needs you.  The next time someone in great need asks you to play for them, no matter the task, no matter the instrument, no matter the calendar, make up your mind to do everything you can to accept their kind offer.  Here is why:

The organist stands unique in the musical world, the master of the most stupendous, the most wonderful musical instrument ever conceived by the mind of God and fabricated by the hand of man.  Make use of this instrument you know and love at every opportunity to uplift and inspire every human being you can reach with it, and you can know that you're making your own individual contribution to nudging the human race one more millimeter along its path back to God.

With their reliable electropneumatic action and refined pitman chest construction, their outstanding solo flute voicing, colorful stopped flutes, and excellent tibias, strings, color reeds, brass reeds and other high pressure stops, enclosure of all departments as a standard, and 32-foot stops in the best earth moving tradition, Kimball pipe organs can stand proud against any other builder's work.  The photo shows a close up of the console of the national treasure housed in the auditorium of the Cathedral of the Scottish Rite in Saint Louis, Missouri.  This is W.W. Kimball Co. Op. 6763, 1924, Organ Historical Society citation plaque [#291] presented 2003, 4 manuals, 53 ranks, 9 divisions, 143 speaking stops, 3,544 pipes.  Very few symphonic orchestral pipe organs like this one, of this size, were ever built.  It was my good fortune and privilege to have secured its citation from the OHS, performed on it for several years, and recently returned to performing upon this precious, historic instrument.

There's so much hatred, so much sorrow in our world today.  When we look at the most recent senseless man-made catastrophic events happening in various places in the world we're reminded, once again, of how Resistance can defeat not only an individual but entire families, clans, and even entire cultures.  Some think there's no such thing as any internal, invisible, self-generated, self-perpetuated engine of destruction that's playing for keeps to obstruct our movement upward when we seek to pursue a calling in the arts, launch an innovative enterprise, or evolve to a higher station morally, ethically, or spiritually.  But, as Steven Pressfield explains in his book The War of Art [See blog, The Book], this repelling force we feel will do anything and engage any ally to shove us away, distract us, and prevent us from doing our work.  It's fueled by fear and experienced as fear.  It will do whatever it takes to destroy a person's sense of humanity along with creativity, the most inherently human quality we possess.  It leads to unhappiness and restlessness, leading some people to hate others and hate themselves.  It will beat a human being into submission, but is has no strength of its own.  We feed it with power by our fear of it.  Every ounce of juice it possesses comes from us.  By mastering that fear, we conquer it.  When we ask ourselves the question whether organ music can unite people in the face of the kind of tragedy we see in today's world, my answer is a wholehearted yes.  Because organ music is about peace, love, and purpose, 3 things our broken world desperately needs.