in which music and poetry renew my soul

Thanks to my dear friend Brie’s husband, Daniel and I were able to go the Austin Symphony last night, during which we were graced and inspired by the works of Mendehlssohn (Midsummer Night’s Dream), and Cary Ratcliff’s “Ode to Common Things”, which involved the Conspirare Symphonic choir's singing of selected poems within the eponymous work by Chilean writer Pablo Neruda.

There is really no way to capture the power, majesty, and profundity of the vocal and musical arrangements that wafted through the Long Center concert hall….the notes and words did not just resonate in my ears, but in my soul. Words that began by creatively describing the beauty of common things like scissors, a bed, a guitar, bread…were transformed into extended metaphors about the intensity of human longing, joy, birth and death, and the struggle for justice and the meaning of its arrival for humanity.

In the spaces between quiet solemnity and crescendos of emotion, my heart—lately hardened and burdened by the frenetic pace of grad school demands—grew tender and rapt. Important things that had become blurry came into clear focus once again. Why I am here? What is all of this striving for? What is the meaning of these days, these words on a page? When I heard these words sung last night, my eyes glistened with tears, and my soul remembered.

“we will make our own bread/out of sea and soil/we will plant wheat/on our earth and the planets/bread for every mouth, for every person, our daily bread. Because we plant its seed and grow it not for one man but for all, there will be enough: there will be bread for all the peoples of the earth. And we will also share with one another whatever has the shape and the flavor of bread: the earth itself, beauty and love—all taste like bread and have its shape, the germination of wheat. Everything exists to be shared, to be freely given, to multiply.

Crowned with sheaves of wheat, we will win earth and bread for everyone.
Then life itself will have the shape of bread, deep and simple, immeasurable and pure.
Every living thing will have its share of soil and life,
and the bread we eat each morning, everyone's daily bread,
will be hallowed and sacred, because it will have been won
by the longest and costliest of human struggles.

This earthly Victory does not have wings:
she wears bread on her shoulders instead.
Courageously she soars, setting the world free,
like a baker born aloft on the wind.” –Neruda, Oda al Pan

My mind has been active and engaged, and yet my spirit has gone relatively undernourished over the last few months. I find there is a never ending tension between being who I am and projecting the image of a competent professional and intellectual. What is more, I live in a liminal space--a borderland, if you will--because of the way my identity has been shaped and changed through living overseas. And yet also, in the university, there is another borderland to be crossed as I try to follow this path, faithful to my highest principles and values, my spiritual formation and convictions, into the world of analysis, critique, deconstruction.

As the stress escalates in these final weeks of the semester, I am determined that I must not lose sight of these things--that at the end of it all, I desire to be relevant, for my learning to serve a higher purpose than a grade, that it would promote the good of others. I will cling to my Maker and seek His strength and peace. I cannot and will not define success by anyone else's standard. I will not forfeit my soul in this place. I will NOT.