#7. One Thing I Asked

If you could have one request granted – any request, but just one – what would it be? My guess is that few of us would ask to be able to “contemplate”. But, then again, none of us is David. 

In Psalm 27, David appears to distill all that he seeks into just one thing. (You can see the line I’m referring to in the picture below.) And at the core of it is something he wants to envision (“behold”) that is tied to a transcendent, yet tranquil, delight (no-am in Hebrew) that is manifest when he visits the sanctuary of a God’s inner sanctum, His private chamber. Perhaps, in this most rarified of places, the only aspect of humanness that can make it that far is our power of contemplation, the aspect of deep reflection/meditation by which we can go beyond our physical limitations. 

Seen this way, it makes perfect sense to me that this would be David's highest aspiration. For to me, it refers to a reality that resides in the realm of pure contemplation because it is beyond the domain of words, defying (at least at this point in our history) all attempts at concretization. It can be contemplated, meditated upon, but not rationalized. It is the perfect music, the harmony of harmonies, the universal music, the music of the spheres. 

This is precisely the place at which my music is aimed, sometimes through peace, sometimes through exuberance. In this way, I ask for the same thing, to have the music (and any part of me that can come along for the ride) reach that place of "transcendent tranquil delight". Because it would mean that my music reached its intended destination, even if much of me remains back here within my rationalizations/limitations.

So David's compositions have done again in this case what they are known to do generally - follow and describe archetypal journeys of the heart, blazing a trail which we can later follow.

For now, it may be that this place of perfection is only reachable within our inner sanctum (or His). But it will not always be so. Maybe we will be the generation to bring it out into the open.

 

 

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