Bach gives us a turning point at midlife with variation 16, exactly midway through the Goldberg Variations. He wouldn’t have used this term, but it’s a yin yang moment as well. Work and play. Alone and in community. Sleeping and waking. Two things seemingly contrary, but nevertheless inter-dependent for a fully satisfying life. Wisdom at midlife embraces the “both/and” mindset that finds joy in quiet and chaos. Life’s richness is fed by a maturity which recognizes the need for balance.
Goldberg Variations, 16 (Abandon/Restraint)
Runs and trills and loud chords…all played with a sense of abandon in the first 16 bars. Ah, but discipline wins out and the second 16 bars feel restrained, careful, polite.
No need to choose. There is time for both abandon and restraint in any life well-lived, as we’re reminded in Ecclesiastes: (and take note, my friends, this reading is in my funeral plan, along with a dozen or so of my favorite hymns)
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.
We might recoil at making room for times to hate and to make war, but there is a place for hating those things that work against love – abuse, lies, selfishness, addiction. Not hate for the person, but for the falseness which can take hold of someone’s life. And war…hard to justify a need for war, except the kind of war that troublemakers have to wage before they are recognized as peacemakers.
Peace (and war!),
Sonya
A reminder: This Sunday, May 7 at 4:00: a performance by pianist Sophia Vastek to benefit Bethania Kids, a ministry which supports orphans in India. Learn more and rsvp
Also, save the date Thursday evening, June 22: Sophia and I have put together another program for two-pianos, raising money this time for Samaritan Ministries. More information and a chance to rsvp later.
I’ve lived with Bach’s Goldberg Variations for a long time now. More than half my lifetime in fact. I would pull them out periodically, feeling that I was revisiting an old friend, but a friend who always has something new to share. I began thinking about Bach and mindfulness last year in a way that meant something to me. Each variation became linked in my mind with a word and that word became something like the “intention” that yoga students are sometimes asked to set for their practice. A word to mediate on and to help draw more from within. For the next 32 weeks I will post one of the variations and write about the word I associated with the music. Sometimes a connection will seem obvious, but more often it will be unexplainable. It became apparent as I worked on this project that I thought about things which I wanted to cultivate in myself, ways of being in the world that were positive. All of the recordings are to be made in my living room, playing the 9 foot Steinway that was given to me on January 5, 2016.
Notes for a New Day 