Pearls & Perfection Pending

I found this tender song a few weeks ago, which I have become obsessed with.  I love the melody line in the chorus, but more, I love the message that we all need each other to make any sense of the world around us.  What would an orchestra of only tubas or cellos be like?  Life is difficult and chaotic most of the time, like (at least in my experience) many musical ensemble rehersals are.  Growing up, I always participated in piano and choirs, and dabbled a little bit with flute and violin.  Most of my choir directors were fabulous.  Mr. Wenz, one of my favorite choir directors led us win the state choir competition every year I sang in his choir, Symphonic, and we knew he meant business.   He demanded excellence, and we gave it to him...most of the time. I still think of the quote he had posted on the door often: But, we were still high school students, and getting the dozens of us to get and remain on the same page was no small task, I a...

I headed out to the car, late as usual, but hot chocolates in hand as always, hoping to make up for my perpetual tardiness to everyone in the carpool.  I don't remember anything about seminary that early morning, but I remember the snippets from the radio talking about some trade center building, whatever that was. Meagan and I headed to our locker to pick up our IB European beast of a book.  We met Ross Barnes  on our way to class and walked into what we thought would be another morning full of Nazis and Fascists.  As we entered the room, everyone was watching something on the television screen.  A plane zoomed into a skyscraper and Ross shouted, "Cool!  What movie is this?"  Mr. Chamberlain with his perfectly groomed goatee and squarely knotted tie said nothing.  It was then that we realized the gravity of the situation.   We spent the rest of the day watching the news in every single class.  We watched the se...