First, I must inform you that I have created a separate blog for crochet-related news and opinion. And believe me, I haz me some opinions! Go here [link] for crochet and yarn content.
My first blog was about opera. I have had great fun, found great joy, and befriended many, many people in the opera world through that blog. Given the current need for social distancing, my own health and personal issues in the past few years, my geographical relocation(s), and a few other issues, I have not been able to interact with opera people as much as I'd like, but I do try to keep that blog active. I simply adore the web site operavision.eu, which offers recent live streams from European opera companies free of charge. I wrote about an amazing Magic Flute from Italy recently, as well as a devastating La Traviata from....I can't remember where. Go to taminophile.com and see for yourself. (I just viewed the first half of a double bill of La Voix Humaine and L'Heure Espagnol--I will view the second half and write it up very soon!)
This blog came about because I felt the need to write about topics that didn't fit in an opera blog. I have written about cooking, language, and social issues. In the past year, this blog evolved into a crochet blog, so I created a separate crochet blog to keep a few boundaries. I now have an opera blog, a crochet blog, and a general topic blog. This being the general topic blog, I offer the following:
Is David a man of faith?
Anyone who knows me knows of my long, long, long history with church music and my enduring love for classical church music. I have written before of a particular session with a spiritual counselor/advisor, part of a gay men's growth retreat, where the advisor in effect gave me permission to make beauty my connection to the Divine. That was a revelation. Many years later, I still think of that as a particularly freeing moment. He quoted St. Francis: "God, you are beauty!" Being both a grammar queen and a math queen, I knew that "to be" is an equal sign, and an equals statement is always correct no matter which element is stated first. Therefore (a word I think is overused, but is appropriate here), I realized that "Beauty, you are God!" is the most accurate statement about my faith I could ever devise.
Not long ago I was participating in a live chat on YouTube, and an online acquaintance for whom I have a great fondness entered, apologizing for her lateness and stating her morning devotions and prayers as her reason. I made typically cheeky remark (you did know I can be cheeky, didn't you?), and her reply was this: That's OK. I love the Lord and you don't.
Let me be clear. This is a very kind and caring woman. But I was floored by this comment. I made a feeble reply suggesting we have different ideas about what that looks like, and we both continued with the chat without causing a problem. But the more I think about this, the more it bothers me. My assumption is that, because I don't profess a belief system that mirrors hers, she considers my belief system invalid. She thinks because I am cheeky and naughty and have sinned once or twice in my life, that I am a heathen. I am probably making unfair assumptions about her opinion of me, but how else can I react to a statement like that?
Some people have a Magical Sky Daddy. I have the magic that is in pens and instruments and voices and paintbrushes and in people's hearts.
Beauty, you are God. Beauty takes many forms. J.S. Bach and W.C. Handy. The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and Reba Macintyre. Rembrandt and Keith Haring. Gothic and Romanesque cathedrals and ultra-modern architecture. Shakespeare and Terrence McNally. Get me? Just like God, beauty is in the hearts of all of us if we would but acknowledge it.
Today is Palm Sunday. I especially miss doing church music during Lent and Easter. (Don't get me started on Advent and Christmas, or we'll be here all day!) I grieve for the singing voice I once had, for the connection with composers of great music, with a community of fellow performers having the same intent, and with an audience eager to experience our expression of beauty, of the presence of God.
This is why live performance is vital. This is why music and other forms of beauty MUST be a part of every person's life. Balance sheets/checkbook registers and exotic cars and big houses certainly have their appeal, but I would not dream of comparing that to the memory of a 1988 performance of La Clemenza di Tito in Salzburg in the Felsenreitschule with Carol Vaness at the height of her powers and the experience around seeing that performance; or seeing the great soprano Jennifer Rowley's introduction to the world replacing the scheduled diva headliner in a performance of Donizettie's Maria di Rohan at Caramoor in 2010. Or having seen three productions of Porgy and Bess, when most people are lucky to see one. Or visiting a great museum like the Brooklyn Museum or Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum and walking around a corner to have the wind taken out of me by an amazing work of art. Or seeing the architectural wonders of the great cities in Europe, or indeed of the US. Or experiencing the beauty of words by Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde and W.H. Auden and Tennessee Williams. Or seeing the beauty that does lie within the hearts of people in acts of kindness and tenderness.
Hell yeah, I wish I had money. I am 100% broke. But--and I know this sounds trite--I have many spiritual treasures. And a roof over my head. I am indeed a fortunate man. So, Kate (not the real name of that YouTube acquaintance), I do love the Lord. I just do it differently. And that's OK.
