Scales & Modes: Communion With God
I grew up playing upright bass in orchestra and jazz band. I started out in orchestra in elementary school and as I moved up into middle school I got involved in the jazz band. I always felt more comfortable and confident in orchestra because all I had to do was play the notes on the page. There was no room for improvisation and there was very little room for interpretation. Between the conductor and the notes on the page, I was told how to play the piece. That fit my personality well. Here are the directions. Do this and you will get the desired outcome. I always struggled in jazz band because my own interpretation and improvisation were excepted.
To the untrained ear, jazz can sound very chaotic. It seems like the musicians are doing whatever they want whenever they want. But the reality is that true jazz musicians know exactly what they are doing. They know all the scales. They know all the modes. They know all the musical rules so well that they are free to blur the lines in ways that allow them to express themselves and in a way that draws in other people.
My high school’s music program had a very good reputation for producing amazing young musicians who were gladly accepted into some of the top music programs around the country. But just because you were part of the program, like I was, didn’t mean you would magically become a great jazz musician. The students who went on to get into those amazing programs all had one thing in common.
They practiced. A lot.
They spent hours mastering the basics. They had teachers that told them what to do and they did it. And after years of doing the work, they were able to begin blurring the lines of scales and modes and styles to express themselves in their craft.
I on the other hand didn’t practice much. I had enough nature gifting that allowed me to get by, but I never nurtured that natural gifting like some of my peers did. I had a teacher, but I didn’t do what he asked me to do. I could tell that he was getting more and more frustrated with me because I didn’t do what he asked me to do the week before. I was wasting his time and I was squandering the initial natural gift I had been given. I eventually stalled out.
Sometimes in our walk with Jesus, we will feel like we have stalled out. I am coming out of one of those seasons. As I have been reading more about the early church fathers and mothers, especially those in the monastic and contemplative traditions, I am always drawn to the freedom they seem to have found in their communion with God. Their life with God mirrored a piece of jazz music. They seemed to be riffing off scripture and the presence of the Spirit. Their communion with God seemed so natural and effortless. I have yet to experience this communion with Christ that they all write about.
The more I read their writings and learn about their lives I am learning that they didn’t have some extra special supernatural connection with the Spirit. Just like jazz musicians, they had put in years of diligent and attentive practice. They had mastered the spiritual scales and modes. They spent a lifetime masting the basics. Practices such as silence and solitude, scripture reading, fasting, sabbath, and community.
As modern western Christians, we have a really short memory and a really bad habit of calling things that the ancient saints taught and practiced as legalistic dogma.
“Don’t tell me to read my bible every day!”
“How dare you tell me to come to church!”
“Don’t tell me to spend quiet time with God!”
“Aren’t I saved by grace?”
“How dare you tell me what I should do to grow closer to God!”
As I have been growing in my communion with God, I am learning that God is inviting me to practice. He is inviting me to continue practicing the basics. Day after day. Week after week. Year after year. I’m learning to humble myself as I learn from the ones who went before me. I’m trying to find older saints in my life who look more like Jesus than I do and ask them to teach me and guide me in the way of Jesus.
I’m learning that if I want to find true freedom in my relationship with God, having some kind of structure and pattern is helpful and good. As we grow in the basics, we will begin to learn how to go off script and riff off the notes on the page. But the only way we can do that in a way that makes any sense is if we actually know what we are riffing off of. The freest people that I have met have never graduated beyond the basics. They come back to them day in and day out.
So, if you feel like you have stalled out in your communion with God, or you have no idea where to start, begin practicing the basics. Go find an older saint in your church community and ask them to teach you how to read the Bible. Ask them to teach you how to pray. Begin reading the early church fathers and mothers. A great resource for this is a collection of writings called, Devotional Classics: Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups edited by Richard Foster and James Bryan Smith. If you have other resources that have helped you over the years, please share them with me so I can pass them on to others. May we spur each other on. May we inspire one another to grow in our communion with God. So, in closing, I invite you to start practicing communion with God while trusting that the Spirit is slowly conforming you and me more into the image of Christ.
Grace and peace till we rise in glory.
