Random thoughts on jazz and prayer on a Saturday morning...

Just finished the "new" Robin D.G. Kelley biography - Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of An American Original - which is as informative concerning the origins of bop as it is insightful into the soul of this oft misunderstood artist. Kelley observes that too often Monk has been treated as a weird and mythic genius - an isolated artist - when in reality he was deeply connected to the New York jazz world and participated fully in its social and artistic renewal.

Further, Kelley makes something else clear: Monk was not all about experimentation and extemporaneous sounds, he was a studied and practiced pianist with roots in Chopin, Liszt and Rachmaninoff (with some Beethoven and Bach thrown in for good measure, too) who knew the importance of practice before musical improvisation. To be sure, he was playful and unique, but not without roots.

Back in high school, when rock guitar "gods" like Clapton, Hendrix, Harrison, Beck and Kaukonen ruled, I used to think that some people were just born with the ability to play wild-ass solos while the rest of us mere mortals had to learn to be satisfied with rhythm guitar. Over time I learned how mistaken that notion was - I even had a few musical breakthroughs after playing blues scales over and over while working on my doctorate - and now grasp what should have been obvious: soaring the musical stratosphere requires LOTS of time doing grunt work on the ground. It is like the old joke about the young violinist who is lost in NYC and stops an older soul on the street and asks: "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" To which the old salt replies: "Practice, man, practice!"

St. Paul makes a similar observation about prayer - and living or practicing resurrection - if we treat prayer passively, intimacy with God will always be an external idea rather than a lived experience. Further, if prayer is always done in someone else's language, it will never become truly ours. I can't play guitar solos like Clapton, but I can play like Lumsden - which is never fast and showy but sometimes very soulful - and THAT is the point. I still can't play the bass like McCartney (well, ok sometimes I can) or Ron Carter, but with lots of practice and intentionality I can groove on it as "the Rev" - and that is a sweet, sweet thing, too.

I remember reading once about the pastor in Pittsburgh who said, "Everyone in my congregation ADMIRES Mother Theresa, but then don't know how to BECOME like her!" Henri Nouwen once noted something similar - to which the old saint said: Take one hour every day to be in prayer - mostly listening for God - and you'll get it. Then the Pittsburgh pastor went on to say: So it became my job to teach them - to show them and help them - embody the time-tested practices that over time can move ordinary people into the simultaneously ordinary AND extraordinary experience of living intimately with God. Making your life a prayer rather than just parroting the words.

Now after all these years I've noticed two things: most people don't really want to practice - and - we learn better by doing than merely hearing. Richard Rohr suggests that often pain is the catalyst that moves us beyond our resistance; he calls it the natural process of practicing dying so that we might live just as everything in the created order dies to live. That is part of the wisdom of the cross if we pay attention... but then most of the time it is too easy to be distracted, yes?

So,"scuse me while I kiss the sky" as Jimi used to say: I have some bass riffs to practice because I can't sit back and expect the progress I've made to last if I don't keep reviewing the scales and the grooves.