Many Easters

It’s early. I wonder whether the other drivers on the freeway are also freelancing musicians.  Every brass player in town has work today, thanking God as they blast out “Holy Holy Holy” for Christians near and far celebrating Easter.

To be a freelance musician is to hustle, always, for gigs that will cover your investments of practice and travel. Whether a gig is worth those investments is often calculated using threefold formula: Is the music good?  Is the pay good? Is the hang (the other musicians on the job) good?  Landing a gig that has all three is ideal; and Easter services are often the triple-crown for brass players in this regard. I am heading toward one that meets all three, especially pleased that I have been asked back to play at this church for successive years of Easter services.

Freelance work offers no guarantees. No retirement or health care plans are offered, nor are jobs secured solely on the basis of playing well. I’ve been iced out of quite a bit of freelance work for not fawning to certain self-appointed deities who hire pros in town, but that story can wait for another time. This morning, I celebrate having secured this steady annual performance opportunity without acceding to their domination.

Sparse traffic and a long drive to my Easter gig lulls me into reflection. Who am I to exist at all in this place and time, enjoying such abundance?  As a college freshman, I did not expect to see age twenty-five.  That prophecy nearly came true when I was twenty-one, and again at twenty-nine, and again at forty.

Yet here I am, past middle age already, dressed in a snazzy white suit with matching snazzy shoes, driving a new car across a city bursting with music. Today I will be paid well to perform for a single Easter service at Trinity Episcopal. Tomorrow, I will stride into my classroom as “Dr. C,” musicologist and tenured professor at a private university of nearly twelve thousand students. My resume boasts four college degrees, publications in peer-reviewed journals, and a creative range of freelance performances.

I marvel at the army of friends, mentors, and colleagues who think well of me. But I feel most humbled at the treasure of Dave, my spouse of over thirty years. My best friend and beloved soulmate, he is by far the greatest blessing of all. As soon as I arrive at the church, I text “made it/xoxoxo” to him. After all these years, this ritual assurance remains a holdover from the uncertainties of more tentative times.

The pastor delivers an Easter sermon quite unlike anything I have ever heard from the pulpit.  She focuses on the experience of Mary Magdalene, veritable apostle to the Apostles and the “patron saint of showing up for life.” Horn across my lap, I consider the pastor’s homily on the Easter Story, suggesting death and resurrection as tropes signifying on a giant wake-up call. “When God wants our attention, He does so with epochal power that utterly changes the course of our lives.” Indeed, like the night an eighteen-wheeler slammed into my car, or the afternoon that five German shepherd attack dogs bounded across the meadow toward me. “Our lives begin when God wakes us up, by removing the boulder that has entombed us in an otherwise certain death.” Ah, like the reprieves from cancer, depression, alcoholism.

So many times, boulders before me have been miraculously removed, my life force resuscitated.  I have experienced many more Easters than my chronological  years.

Little is known about Mary Magdalene’s life beyond the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Leeke, and John in the New Testament. The pastor, confirming that Mary went forthwith to evangelize about Christ’s resurrection, described her life afterward as that of a glorious soul finally released in full to the world, blossoming through the telling.

And there, the point rings true within my soul. I, too, have been called to step away from the husks of my life’s tombs – to blossom in the telling of times when the stone was rolled away.  Theologian Guy Finley teaches that the soul’s journey is one that must die from the seed of its origin in order to “prosper and reveal its latent potential.” He describes the constant cycle: “In that instant it is reborn into a new form; it enters into the next level of its being, and the journey begins anew.”

Here’s to necessary deaths, then, and to embracing life anew each time boulders blocking my path threatened to end my life. I lift my horn, draw in a full breath, and sound my music in a joyful noise of being. During measures of rest, I gaze through the big windows of the sanctuary and watch the trees outside swaying. If I listen closely within, I can hear the voice of a little girl humming along delightedly with both trees and hymn.

We’re still here. We made it.

Alleluia

ee Cummings, “who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birthday of life and love and wings.”