This Lent is turning out to be unusual. The common practice is to give up something one likes in order to reflect upon all that Jesus gave up in coming to earth, as well as the agony He went through on the cross.
For me, this Lent is one where I need to push through, and start doing some things, or more accurately, resume doing a couple things. The tie to Lent comes with Jesus having to set His mind toward the cross. We see something of the agony He went through in the Gospel accounts of what took place in the Garden of Gethsemane.
The areas I need to push through on are musical, and there are two: music composition—where I still have not succeeded in doing so—and recovering my solo double-bass performance techniques. Since moving to where I now live, I don’t have an accompanist, and I stopped playing. At my best, I could hit true concert level, but have never been able to sustain it. Some recitals were very good, others were more of the “he’s having fun” variety.
One of my goals for this Lent will be to play Bloch’s “Prayer,” originally for solo cello, but it works very well on double-bass. Without the accompaniment, it becomes even more stark, and an excellent vehicle for reflecting about what Jesus went through on the cross.
By God’s grace, while I’ve got a long way to go in terms of technique recovery, so far, things are going better than expected. One challenge will be that if I need to see one, the nearest luthier (a shop that specializes in the care of violins, violas, cellos, and basses) is about a hundred miles away.
We will see what happens.
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