A few weeks ago, we sang an anthem by Parry, and this morning we are once again treated to another fine work of his, “My Soul There is a Country.” This piece comes from a larger cycle called Songs of Farewell, which were composed between 1916 and 1918 and were among his last compositions before his death.

One of the most intriguing features of this piece is how varied it is. It seems to be constantly changing. It goes haywire, seemingly flitting from one key to the next, wiggling from one dynamic to the next, and the sections come and go in a head-spinning frenzy that’s hard to keep up with. When we get to the last verse, the section about the “one who never changes,” it’s filled with musical change! The vocal lines spew a radiant complexity of polyphony, each doing its own thing. You can’t keep up. The multiplicity meanders into an uncapturable, kaleidoscopic wonder of sound. This makes me wonder – what’s all this about “the one who never changes,” the underlying message of the text?

In our choir room, on the bulletin board, is a photograph of a skeleton conducting an empty group of chairs in a choir room. The caption above the photo reads, “The conductor waiting for the choir to watch.” When a choir director sees eyelids, she knows that the choir is “buried in the score.” Choristers secretly love dead, wooden music-making. That’s because the sheet music contains no wrong notes. God forbid if we make a mistake, so we must keep our eyes down – where it’s “safe.” When the choir director sees eyelids, he withers away like a skeleton, and the music itself becomes a boring dirge fit for a somber funeral.

The sheet music is a skeleton of what the real music is, which lives unpredictably in real time and in real space. At any moment, when you’re performing, something could go wrong, and it won’t be fixed by the sheet music. But your average chorister is not brave enough to trust themselves to memorize a few notes at a time and to watch the conductor, to allow the music to breathe and live where it really exists – “off book.”

The real world is unscripted. The scripted world, which is mental chatter in the head, is dead. It’s easy to control, that’s why we do it. The real world is unpredictable, but too many of us try to live an “uninterrupted” life. Nothing can go wrong in a grave! But the best musicians trust the magic of the moment, their own abilities, and their own bodies to perform effortlessly. The rest is left to so-called chance. But if you think God isn’t involved in what we see as chance, you’re missing a chance to really live.

The real world is like improv comedy – it could go either way. We argue that something in our situation “isn’t supposed to be,” because it wasn’t in the bulletin, in a manner of speaking. If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans! Change dances in divine unity with what is unchanging. Trusting in the inseparability of change and changelessness is key. When you trust all and get your eyes out of the score, you’ll begin to live like a child with no responsibilities. It’s fun living on a wing and a prayer, as I remind our choir weekly – “Look up!” What if it flops? Remember, death is OK too. But if you’re not brave enough to look up, you’ll keep making dull music while “living” in a casket. You’re not letting it live, so-called, dangerously. So, it must be that trust is the foundation upon which the universe hinges. Either way it goes, priority in learning to trust is what seems to never change. Soli Deo Gloria!