Merging is a New Journey - Revived (and Music is my Obsession)

 I just looked and I have been writing these blog entries since February, 8 months.  And I know I just wrote an entry last week.  But participating in the Laity Sunday service yesterday really got to me in a way I totally did not expect.

My vocal warmup 10/18/2020

My iPod playing all 1,000+ songs in a random manner happened upon this particular song as I headed to church on Sunday. It was a good song to have a vocal warmup to with my planned early morning solo.  It was the first time I really belted out a song before I had properly woken up, before I had consumed my morning coffee, and certainly before the afternoon.  I tend to sing in the car, sometimes, on my drive home from places but never in the morning.  For no reason other than I usually am still in the process of waking up and I don't really feel like singing then.

So I get to church and go over some last-minute things and pray together before the service started.  And then I participated in the service.  By the postlude several things had happened:

1) I felt like a member of the congregation who did things for church, not just someone who was sitting and enjoying worship week after week.  I thought I had wanted to remain "dormant" and "resting" for longer, but that was no longer the case.

2) I had sung a solo in front of a bunch of people, some of whom I have gotten to know over the past few months, some of whom I remember the top half of faces from seeing them week after week, and some I had no idea who they were.  Yes, I was nervous. But I got through it.

3) I wanted to jump and dance to the music that was being shared.  Every so often that would happen with particular hymns.  But I haven't experienced it in awhile, until yesterday.

4) I have become obsessed with music.

I want to explain the last statement a bit.

I have always loved music.  I remember learning songs with whatever the children's choir was called at the Presbyterian church in Wappingers where we went before we started attending Wappingers UMC.  Music was always my favorite class in school from elementary school right through high school.  I sang in school choruses and played in band.  My love of music eventually grew to enjoying movie soundtracks, with John Williams as my first favorite composer.  Music classes gave me interest in my favorite movie musicals (Fiddler on the Roof) and large music performances such as Carl Orff's Carmina Burana and Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio.  Church choir, as I got older, introduced me to John Rutter's Requiem, the entirety of Handel's Messiah (not just the Hallelujah Chorus), and Vivaldi's Gloria.

But at some point, there was this disconnect between music and what it did to me.  But that disconnect has been repaired.  I suddenly now have a reinvigorated love of music, that I was singing in the car this morning on my way to work.  I am singing songs with lyrics or musical parts of instrumental songs.  And not quietly.  Loudly.  Music is my obsession.

I do not know what is in my future for continued involvement at church.  But I am eagerly looking forward to whatever lies ahead.  Especially if it is music-based.