Thursday, January 8, 2009

Fine Tuning

It's been an potpouri of a vacation so far. We've been up to small-town Prescott and back, over to the Desert Botanical Garden and done some moderate antique-shopping. Plus, I met a blog-friend who lives in a nearby town (I will say more about this later). Husband has been listening to Alan Hovhaness' Mysterious Mountain; he says it's perfect for driving around here. I've been reading Clyde Edgerton's novel The Bible Salesman.

On the way over to the Botanical Gardens today my husband gave me a mini-overview of 20th century music. This was in response to my question regarding Hovhaness, about whom I knew very little, except that I love his piece, And God Created Great Whales. (Our dog, Scout, seems to like this piece, too.) It seems that 20th Century composers felt that they had a dilemma; what could they do that was new and different? After Wagner, everyone felt that "you couldn't get any bigger." Wagner had taken the genre about as far as it could go. So the 20th century "new thing" was to be atonal, and "not pretty", at least in the way music had been "pretty" before. Composers like Hovhaness and Vaughn Williams are considered less serious composers by some because they composed pleasing music. (I realize that many music scholars may disagree with this.)


On the way to the Desert Botanical Gardens, then, we were listening to Mysterious Mountain, and I was reading The Bible Salesman, a wonderful little novel about a young man who in the early 1950s South who is an unwitting accomplice to a criminal. He also is selling Bibles, and, coincidentally, really reading them, as if for the first time. This Bible-reading theme is a background, a curious counterpoint to the story of the naive and earnest young man and how he grows up. He's asking questions about the Bible that he has never asked before, and wondering about whether it is true, and how it can be true. In the end, he finds comfort in different truths that he discovers in the Bible, and in his life.


I thought about how our ears need fine tuning so that, in each age, we can hear God's word -- in the strange words of the Testaments, Old and New, in our words to one another, in the soft or loud voices of those on the mountains or on the margins, speaking a counterpoint to the big and brash news of the day. I thought about how my eyes need fine tuning so that I can see the beauty in the desert, where, the land is big and barren, and it takes a sharp eye to capture a quail walking through the brush, or fairy dusters, small bright red spots among muted browns and greens. Some beauty is loud and brash, and takes my breath away; some beauty skirts along the edges, or even hides; I need to fine-tune my eyes to see it, just as I need to fine-tune my ears to really hear the truth.

In a few days we'll leave the warm and barren land to come back to the frozen north where we live. I hope I can fine tune my eyes and ears again to see the beauty, and to hear the truth of the strange and familiar place where I live.

10 comments:

Lori said...

Safe travels to you!

Fran said...

You always write in a way that makes me feel like I am transported to experience this with you.

That book sounds good.

I so love the desert.

Barbara B. said...

Yes, wonderful writing...
And now I'm going to have to give Hovhaness a listen!

Jennifer said...

I love Clyde Edgerton's writing...and yours, too!

Terri said...

I'm glad you continue to enjoy your vacation and this warmish weather....I think I have acclimated too quickly, it feels chilly here to me...

Rev SS said...

fine tuning eyes and ears ... we all will do well to pay attention to doing that

Law+Gospel said...

"fine tuning" - a wonderful phrase to contemplate indeed. Thanks for stopping by recently- I too have been neglectful in the blog thing, but I am glad I read this today- prayers for safe travels.

Elaine (aka...Purple) said...

Good post to read and reread to remind me of what you so beautifully stated. Thanks.

Ruth Hull Chatlien said...

I'm late to this, but so glad I didn't just click "read." The analogy of modern music and finding new ways to hear the Bible is just so elegant.

Lindy said...

The beauty of the desert is that it exists for God alone. Before we found ways to live there, it was a place where nobody went; and, if they did, God help them because God is the only one who could.

The Hebrews were supposed to remember their time in the desert as a time of sweetness because it was God alone who cared for them, they were helpless to survive on their own.

Something about that kind of... well, I don't know. I go to the desert whenever I can because it reminds me that I can't fugure things out on my own. I might think more articulately on that later...

Blessings and all good to you Diane. I can't wait for your first book!