Between the Notes

“C’mon,” my two-year-old nephew said as he took my hand. “Play me.” (Let me translate for you. Play with me.)

“What do you want to play, buddy?”

“Pano,” he said. (Let me translate again. “Piano.”)

So, we sat down at the piano together. I started to play and, for a moment, he just listened.

Then he joined in.

Now, I’m a mediocre pianist at best but let’s just say it got a lot louder and lot more chaotic when he started banging on the keys.

That, of course, didn’t bother me. We were just spending time together. We weren’t trying to make a masterpiece.

But as I listened to him play – or rather, make noise – I thought about how so often my life is just that. Noise.

There’s nothing beautiful about it. It’s chaotic and cluttered – and usually that’s my fault.

I choose chaos and clutter by what I allow in.

See, ours is a culture that wears busyness as a badge of honor. We boast of our full calendars. We brag about our frazzled lives. We are worn out and proud we are.  If I slowed down long enough to think about it, I'm sure it would sound crazy. But, alas, I rarely slow down, so it seems perfectly sensible to me.

What if God never intended our lives to look like that? What if when He told us to rest He actually meant that? What if by grasping for more we were actually experiencing less?

"It's the space between the notes," says Noah benShea, "that make the music."

Without the space between the notes, music disintegrates into noise.

There will always be more notes we could play. That doesn't mean we should.

Allow for space between the notes.

Stop making noise. Start making music.

What We Have Left

The hall burst in applause as Itzhak Perlman appeared on the stage, took up his violin, and signaled to the conductor.

A couple of bars into the first song, one of Perlman’s strings snapped. It would have been quite understandable for the great violinist to bring the concert to a brief halt so that he could change the string and continue as he had rehearsed.

But, that’s not what he did.

He paused for a moment before signaling to the conductor to start from where they left off.

Perlman resolved to perform his solo with only three strings. He adjusted the notes in his head to accommodate the deficient instrument. When he was unable to find a comparable note on another string, he improvised. The piece held together spectacularly.

When the final note rang out, the audience sat in silence for just a moment, astonished at what they had just witnessed. Then, once again, they erupted into wild ovation.

Perlman waited until the noise died away before addressing the eager crowd.

“You know,” he said, “sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much beautiful music you can still make with what you have left.”

Perlman had full awareness of his weaknesses and full mastery of his strengths. He did not ignore the former, nor did he dismiss the latter.

We all have broken strings. We all have others still intact.

Artistic wisdom requires that we be both aware of our weaknesses and then learn to play to our strengths.

Only then can we make beautiful music with what we have left.