Attending a Studio Recital

Thursday night, I went to a Studio Recital in Mathes Hall. The night was dark, the wind was cold, and the performance was marvelous.

I am impressed by ETSU’s vocal students. I have always been impressed, but after last night, I am very impressed. Their manner was very professional, their performances displayed a range of ability, and their repertoire was beautiful.

Several of the songs were in foreign languages, and the translations were not in the programs. I desperately wanted to know what the words were when I was listening to them, but since I didn’t know, I tried to pull the meaning from the expression of the singers and the sound of the music. I hadn’t realized how much fun that could be, or how interesting it was to observe how those two aspects of the performance fit together and communicated meaning.

I took the program home, and looked the songs up. Most of the times, the meanings I’d guessed were far from the actual meanings. I usually don’t rethink individual songs after leaving a recital, but reading the translation prompted me to do that. While trying to interpret meaning, I’d paid more attention to the details of the performance than I might have otherwise, and I was delighted with what I remembered.

The talent in this school is very inspiring, and I hope to get a chance to attend another Studio recital.

The Pinning Ceremony and the Honors Social

Tuesday night, I attended both the Honors College pinning ceremony and the Honors Social.

I was late to the pinning ceremony, just by three minutes. I had left my purse in my bike basket, so after tearing up two flights of stairs to get to the ceremony on time, I had to turn around and tear right back down. To my great delight, I still arrived just before the ceremony started. The pinning ceremony was very formal, and I’d accidentally forgotten to change my light blue tennis shoes. I’m glad I went. I did not learn anything or laugh at anything, but it was valuable. The ceremony celebrated graduating honors college students, and while I watched the students walk up to receive their pins and take a picture, I thought of the vast amount of work that had led up to this moment.

The cake at the reception afterwards was quite pretty, and the fruit was astonishingly (and deliciously) fresh.

I got a ride with one of my friends that night, and we went to the Honors Social at Red Meze, a Mediterranean restaurant. I loved the social. I feel a lot closer and a lot more familiar with my honors friends, but this event gave me even better opportunity to connect with them even more. I think this social came at a great point in the semester; I know these people already, and I’m not as terribly awkward around them as I was at first. Now, I know them even better and love them even more.

There were lots of people there, and so many conversations going on at once. There were not many places to sit once everyone had arrived, but it worked somehow. The food was very interesting. I loved the gyro I ate, and the hummus was fantastic. The only thing, in fact, that I found hard to enjoy was the rice and herbs wrapped in grape leaves. I think it was called dolma. It looked like chocolate and tasted like leaves soaked in vinegar. I put one on my plate before I knew what it tasted like, and ate the whole thing with much effort and unhappiness. I realized, when I was done, that I was no longer in the eat-your-vegetables-before-leaving-the-table stage of life, and it was probably acceptable to have just left it on my plate.

There was a dance afterwards, affectionately nicknamed “nerd prom” (as I learned from several of the sophomores) and from the dance came the true adventures of the night.

I used up all 3 of my dance moves within the first 2 songs, unfortunately. The rest of my dancing was an awkward attempt to copy what someone else was doing and trying to make it seem like I was copying them because they were cool. My favorite songs were the cupid shuffle and cotton eyed Joe. The choreography was a blessing to my useless hands and feet.

All in all, though, I think I’ve enjoyed that dance more than any other dance I’ve been to. After about 10 minutes of dancing, most people had thrown off their goal of not looking ridiculous, which made the atmosphere much more fun and the dancing hilarious. I intend to be at every honors social from now on.

The Most Important Thing in the World

The class I am taking has instructed us to write about our values, hoping to help us connect our values with the actions we choose and the paths we take.

I am no poet, I am no philosopher, and I am bad at imitation, so I must speak plainly. For the sake of the subject at hand, I would like to write well and clearly.

The most important thing in the world is God. The thing I value most is His grace. The goal of my life is to bring glory to Him. This is so important that in comparison, everything else I value is worthless, and all other goals are cheap.

The value I place in God does not come from my own conscious choices and actions, but stems from the things that God Himself has done, the hope of eternal life that He gives, and the work that His Spirit does in my heart.

The world is full of selfishness, of injustice, of greed, of pride. Though the world is full of many other things as well, sin leaves a stain, and splits the world down to its core. Life can be full of beautiful things, but we feel that brokenness, and we all know the face of sorrow.

How could it be solved? We know we cannot ask for justice, because we would all be condemned. Are we all not guilty of contributing to the evil in the world? Do we not shudder at the extents of our self-centeredness? If we do not, have we truly examined ourselves? What we need, somehow, is for peoples’ very nature to be changed. What we need is forgiveness, for the world to be made right without destroying the inhabitants.

And somehow, God knew all of this.

We look at our fellow humans and struggle to find them worthy of love.

Would God find them more righteous than we do?

Yet He came to earth and sacrificed Himself so that we would be forgiven and made new. Jesus took our sins on himself so we could have the righteousness of God. He sent his Spirit of Goodness and Truth to guide us, to change our hearts, to free us from the constraints of our selfishness and give us understanding. 

And this is His promise, that I cling to desperately:

That all sinners who cry out to Him for forgiveness will no longer carry their guilt or their eternal consequences. That our value lies not in what we do or who we are, else we lose our value when we fail or take pride in our superiority when we succeed, but that our value lies in the things that have been done for us, the things that have been given to us. That, through the Spirit, our very nature can be continually changed to one of genuine love.

That in the end, every wrong will be made right. That one day, we will look at the world and all things in it and understand that it has all worked for the glory of God and for the good of those who love Him. That our God is powerful—not just to make good things come from good things, as anyone else can do, but powerful enough to make good things come even from the terrible things we see.

That Love will reign, that the victory has already been won.

That death will turn backwards and pain is an illusion.

That we can find a hope eternal

A peace that passes understanding

Joy that fills to overflowing.

That we can find Grace

Because Grace has come to us.

To know this shapes my entire life. I value this because I have no choice. This Truth encompasses all I was created to value and long for. Could I possibly understand something like this and view it with indifference? No- to know this is to carry a heart bleeding with gratitude and repentance.

If God has done this for me, if He has died on the cross to save me, a sinner, and if His greatest hope is that I rejoice in Him and work for His glory, that must be my greatest hope as well.

Similarly, what lengths shall I, myself, go to for others? Can I scorn a stupid classmate or dismiss an annoying child? The King of Heaven laid down his greatest Treasure for me, a sinner.

And what can I hold against other people? For I have rebelled against the very God who created me, and He died to forgive that.

Can I act with reluctance, can I obey just out of obligation? My debt has already been paid; shouldn’t everything I do be done out of rejoicing, and be done with twice the effort?

Do not misinterpret me: I fall very short very regularly. I do not pretend to have achieved all these things, or to live like I know that I ought to. Nevertheless, I keep trying. I keep working towards a life that properly reflects the things God has done for me, and when I cannot live up to that, I can still rejoice. (For, after all, the story of grace never had much to do with my own abilities.)

Now to Him who is able to do far more than all that we ask or imagine, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.