Glorification and Dedication

There's a funny little trick that Olivia has employed to keep herself from being so nervous at piano recitals and music festivals.

Only, it isn't really a trick. It's an entirely different mindset.

This mindset is founded on such verses as the following:

And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.
Colossians 3:17

And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.
Colossians 3:23-24

 If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God. If anyone ministers, let him do it as with the ability which God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.
1 Peter 4:11

And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’

Matthew 25:40

When one realizes that one is not serving oneself--or even others--but God, in whatever they do in word or deed, one's attitude toward life changes. One is infinitely more motivated, patient, and at peace. One needn't worry about pleasing others or satisfying oneself, because it is the Lord Christ whom one serves. And when one does all in the name of the Lord Jesus, one's efforts are blessed. The outcome may not be as one intended, but that is okay, because one dedicated one's performance to one's God, and in this one can be fully content. And often, the outcome is even better than one dared to hope.

(Olivia is now tired of writing in ones, and will move on to a less proper they henceforth if necessary.)

While Olivia knew this, to some extent, intellectually, it didn't hit her until sometime last year that whatever you do really means whatever you do, and that one can find complete contentedness in the smallest of matters. And her life has been much improved, and her humble endeavors more successful, since then. So she will give you the most tangible and illustrative... illustration... that she can, because points are most effectively driven home with illustrations, even if the illustrations are anecdotal.

Olivia has played piano for a long time. Nine and a half years, in fact. She is not particularly talented and in no way musically gifted, but she is a hard worker and a diligent student (most of the time *cough*), and that can get one pretty far in life, or in a specific pursuit therein. (Not that Olivia's a good example of this, because she isn't especially advanced in piano given how many years she has played, but that is besides the point.)

So in nine and a half years, Olivia has had many, many, piano recitals. Like many people, when Olivia was young and blissfully carefree of others' opinions, she was not nervous at all and performed quite well. But as she got older, she feared making mistakes--because of what others might think, but mostly for her own sake--and, as is inevitable when one fears one's own failure (Olivia isn't very good at abstaining from ones, is she?), she began to make many of them. Nothing huge--she didn't stop cold or break down sobbing--but she was not pleased with herself.

Enter this aforementioned new mindset. Suddenly, everything Olivia did, she did with a different goal in mind. She did not try to please herself, for that did not matter and proved futile. Instead, her sole aim was to please her God. And if she did that with a pure and earnest heart, she could not fail.

Something remarkable occurred. She began to play much better at recitals. Why? There are probably several reasons for this. She wasn't so nervous, for one. She went into it knowing she wouldn't fail, after all. And because she played as for the Lord rather than for men, she could thoroughly enjoy what she did, and therefore focus, and therefore play better. And because she played for the Lord rather than men, or herself, and because she wouldn't fail her objective, she put more effort into it than she ever could have otherwise.

So Saturday, this was her assurance as she went into the church where her music festival was held. Everything, it seemed, was against her. She was already tired and not feeling so great. When she got there she used the restroom, and her hands were afterward as icy as the water she washed them in (and her hands get stiff when they are cold, and it's hard to play well with stiff hands). Before she even had a chance to sit in the waiting room and prepare mentally, she was whisked away to the sanctuary, and climbed the stage and sat at the piano quite out of breath, foggy of mind, and with freezing, stiff fingers.

Then she warmed up. The piano was a baby grand on wheels, and the most unstable one she's ever played on. As she lifted the pedal up and down the whole instrument rocked. The keys were quite different to press than the pianos' she usually plays, but at least she'd been accustomed to a variety of pressabilities. (What's this, spellcheck? "Pressabilities" isn't a word? Bah! She longs for the day when Olivian is a language option.)

Her first piece actually began quite well. She knows it so well she could almost play it with her hands behind her back--assuming the piano was also behind her--and she was also slightly dazed, so she started not really paying attention to what she was doing. And then her memory slipped. She knew where she was in the song and what it was supposed to sound like, but not which notes made that sound. She groped and hit a few wrong notes trying to figure out what to do next.

Then her brain kicked in and she remembered who and what she was playing for. She didn't recall the forgotten notes, but she did flow swiftly into the next measure. From there on out she was able to enjoy what she was doing, because she didn't have to please the judge or herself. She would get an Excellent, not a Superior, thanks to her error, but that was okay.

The next piece she was also able to enjoy as her fingers flew through Schumann. In a couple places her cold, stiff left hand wasn't quite caught up to her right hand, but that was okay. She would get an Excellent. And that was okay.

She finished and sat just outside the sanctuary awaiting the judge's comment sheet and his score of "Excellent". When the lady who had first ushered her to the sanctuary handed the sheet to her, Olivia knew already her score, so her eyes went first to the commentary. The judge praised her smooth recoveries and offered a few suggestions like not accenting certain notes so much. "Good spirit!" he said in regard to the Schumann, and at the end he wrote, "Bravo!"

What an odd compliment for an Excellent pianist. Olivia went over all the comments again to be sure she read correctly.

"A Superior Plus!" the lady--whom Olivia had forgotten was sitting beside her--said. "Congratulations!"

Olivia stared at her.

"He doesn't give those out to everyone, you know."

Blink, blink.

Olivia turned back to the comment sheet. At the bottom was printed each of the possible scores from best to worst: Superior. Excellent. Good. Fair. Poor.

The judge's pencil did not circle "Excellent". Instead, a bold trail of graphite surrounded "Superior". Two perpendicular strokes were drawn beside it, in a plus mark.

Olivia laughed out loud. "I really wasn't expecting that."

And she wasn't.

And if God thus acknowledges such tiny, tiny details in life, how greatly does He bless a life devoted to Him?

Greatly, you can be assured.


Photo credit dennis.ramos on Flickr 

The Post That Had No Title

Which isn't this one, clearly, because this post does, indeed, have a title.

It's been a long time since Olivia has done a Musical Monday. In order to make up for this, she's going to do something special. Or maybe it isn't so special. You will have to see.

First, imagine it is Monday. You still haven't quite gained full consciousness since your alarm clock jabbered at you at an inhuman hour this morning. You yawn and groan, because you were half hoping as you went to bed last night that the power would go off at 2 am and reset the clock's settings, and conveniently be restored by the time you wake of your own accord. But that didn't happen. And you drag yourself from bed, shivering as your bare feet emerge from the warmth of the covers and face the cold morning air on the way to your fuzzy bunny slippers that your great aunt Matilda gave you for Christmas last year.

You shuffle through your morning routine, perhaps brushing your teeth already if you're awake enough, or brewing a heavily caffeinated warm beverage if you're not, and turn on your computer as you mouth the minty taste lingering on your tongue or inhale the aroma of brewing coffee or steeping tea.

You check email, finding several new junk items that were sent out by computer systems at inhuman hours of the night. (Ever wonder why they call them inhuman hours? It's because that's when the robots send out spam! Or so Olivia has now convinced you, despite the fact the term is much older than the internet, but you're still so groggy and disoriented and irritated that the weekend is over you don't notice or care.) So now you trundle over to Blogger, which Olivia keeps typing as Bloggoer for some unknown reason, but she makes lots of typographical errors so never mind her, and--gasp!--what do you see? It's a new Musical Monday post!

"Um, okay, Olivia," you say, "sorry, but your representation of my Monday mornings isn't quite accurate. For one, my great aunt Matilda didn't give me bunny slippers for Christmas last year. I don't even have a great aunt Matilda! I only have a great aunt Geraldine! And my slippers aren't from any great aunt at all. They're from my second cousin Frances, and they're not bunnies, they're baby seals, and she didn't give them to me for Christmas. They were for my birthday. And why are you making me pretend it's Monday anyway? Just get to the point of the post already, will you?"

Er, yes, that.

Well, anyway, Olivia's piano teacher makes all of her students participate in a music festival each February. What is this music festival, you ask? Well, basically Olivia goes into a room with a judge and a piano, and she plays the piano, and then the judge gives her a rating and some comments. This will happen on Saturday. But the weekend before the fateful Saturday, Olivia's piano teacher's students perform in a recital, in order to prepare for the coming festival. Because, as her piano teacher puts, if you can play in front of a roomful of people, surely you can play in front of one person! Olivia actually finds it quite distressing to play in front someone who judges you, but that's besides the point.

So on Sunday, Olivia played at her recital. Olivia's mother recorded it. Olivia reviewed the recording and concluded her playing was just presentable enough to post publicly. So Olivia posted it publicly.

You will have to forgive the shakiness of the footage and the quality of the sound, for Olivia's mother had to film it on Olivia's digital still camera, which probably doesn't have the best audio capabilities, without a tripod. (Also, never mind the coughing and screaming children in the background.)

The first piece is not a classical piece but a contemporary one (which Olivia actually likes, unlike many of the contemporary pieces she plays, though she's getting a bit tired of it after practicing it so long). It is called The Promise of Spring, and is by a composer named Dennis Alexander, in case anyone wants to know. She played it with a few minor errors. The second, however, is Schumann's Knight Rupert, which she played much better, though with a handful of wrong notes.

Well, all of that took long enough. Now enjoy. Or run far away. Your choice. Although it would probably be wisest to just--well, Olivia won't delay you any longer.

Instead, Blogger will. It's giving her grief about embedding that video. She'd rant about it in detail, but she's already taken a lot of your time. So she made lots of strange noises, and decided to just post the link instead.

Here you go.

A Great, Terrible Tragedy

"Oh no!" you say. "Olivia missed Musical Monday! Something must be terribly wrong! Was she kidnapped and held hostage? Did her house burn down? Did she contract the reallyscarysoundingosis?"

No, my dear readers. I am afraid a calamity far greater befell me last night. The most tragic, most dreaded scenario of all did I face:

I was internetless.

GASP!

Okay, so maybe I'm being just a tiny bit dramatic. Just a tiny bit. Yesterday morning, I read a book, so I did not post in the morning. In the afternoon was my piano lesson, and then we went and got me some new glasses (squee! I can see again! Well, not quite yet--they won't be ready for seven to ten days) and some groceries ('cause, you know, I guess eating is kind of important. Who'd have guessed?).

In fact, I did not even open my laptop until 6:03 yesterday evening.

I told my mother, "It is 6:03 and I have not been on the computer today. Are you proud of me, or concerned?"
"I'm concerned," she said.
And she went and got my computer.

But at 6:03, I was wiped out from the activities of the day (piano lessons are tiring!! And add Walmart on top of that... phew...), and I could not breathe very well (my respiratory system goes on strike sometimes), and I could not think of a unique-ish video to post (because I've done a lot of piano lately, and I wanted something orchestral, or at least different). (Are you tired of the parentheses yet?)

So I surfed the web for a little while (*coughafewhourscoughcough*) until I was recovered. And then I had a late-night date with Bach. I was playing one of his Inventions on my digital piano/full-length keyboard thing, setting it to all sorts of instruments (including the ancient percussion instrument, Rain, and the wind instrument, Wind, and other such things). Bach sounds lovely on everything from trumpets to mandolins to castanets! The only things that, erm, don't sound so good are evil laughter and clapping.

By then, it was ten-thirty, and then I remembered the horses still hadn't gotten their dinner. I went and did that. When I came in, I finished the last few voices on my piano/keyboard thing, and then logged onto Blogger.

And then... my internet died.

This happens all the time (several times a day, at least!), and is not-too-difficultly fixed by resetting the modem and unplugging the router. However, it was late, and the modem and router are in the bedroom in which my father was asleep. So I just went to bed.

Now that you have read the explanation of yesterday's events which turned out much longer than anticipated, here is this week's (slightly belated) installment.

This is the first movement (at least, I'm fairly certain it would still be considered a movement... but my limited classical knowledge fails in the subject of... konzertstücks... so maybe it's not a movement?) of Schumann's Konzertstück for Four Horns and Orchestra. I got to see this piece performed live by the symphony orchestra a while ago. Much fun!