Thoughts from a Musician's Heart

TWO POEMS by Joyce Anne Wilder

What I Know

I know about being a mama-

the joyous and gut-stabbing task

that taught me how to pray.

But I’ll never get over how You 

keep knocking

without scorn or impatience

on iron doors that are bolted tight-

as You wait to show Your scars.

I know how to play the flute

how to spin the air just so.

I can make a pretty sound

but Your Ruach Spirit 

blows a song through a petrified heart 

that can thaw it enough

to forgive a child’s murderer.

I taught our children to read.

Why aspire to more.

Yet Your Living Word reads us

while we read it

and teaches lessons bespoke.

Lessons we won’t 

forget after the quiz

since the teacher inhabits us.

Spiritual Discipline

As my husband opens a practice session

he prays, then kisses his clarinet.

He honors it as a tool of worship

in an intimate time with God-

to use his sound in praise

and to make that praise glorious.

He offers each phrase as a prayer

and finds it possible since all music

is human expression.

He marvels at the way God teaches him

how to play and how to pray.

He stills his mind 

and knows that God is

that God is present

that God is listening.

He stops to listen in return

to acknowledge conversation.

What does his Abba want to show him today?

Each intake of air is a prototype 

of God’s breath of life entering Adam.

Each release of air into the instrument 

returns it as a sacrifice 

though we have nothing to give Him

that He hasn’t already given us -

yet another reason to praise Him.