I'm walking with my friends and one of them comments on the fact that it's such a beautiful day. Suddenly we start singing "Beautiful, beautiful..." and then sing the song complete with harmony. It brings back an inside joke from the first time we started this.
One of the youth leaders finishes praying at youth group and I start humming "Amin, Amin, Amin" to myself since that's what we sing in church after we pray and now it just seems natural to add that to the end of prayers nowadays. But I hear someone else humming it too and look up to see that one of the other youth was thinking the exact same thing. We laugh over the moment.
I'm with some of the choir members after practice and we still have the songs we've been rehearsing on our minds. This leads to a medley of pieces well after we've left church.
These are only a few of the musical moments in my day. It's probably fair to say that the whole day is filled with one song or another. My site supervisor is not only a pastor, but a piano teacher and choir director. Anytime I'm at her house during the day, there are students in and out practicing on one of the many pianos in her house. There's always music to arrange for choir or pieces to practice for church on Sunday. Her daughters are also very musically talented and if they aren't playing music themselves, there's always music playing. There's a common tie, a common understanding since we're all musicians. We've heard or performed many of the same pieces and we enjoy sharing pieces that are new to someone.
In choir, I found the rehearsal routine familiar and comforting when I was just getting acquainted with Tenom. Despite the fact that I was in a choir on the other side of the world or the fact that all the instructions are in Chinese, there was still something comforting that I understood. Even though I don't know Chinese (there are some wonderful people who translate and many of the choir members understand English) I can still share and join in with music. There's still ways to demonstrate and help with pieces that don't require knowing Chinese (although my friends think I should add that to learning Malay). There's also ways to join in with the choir and meet them in singing along with them and being with them during all the work it takes to perfect a song. It's in that hard work that we all become one choir. In the end, we end up mutually helping each other in the midst of working to be a better choir.
Even in everyday interaction with friends around church, I look back and realize that I most strongly connected with them first through music. Whether it was in becoming familiar with hymns at church, singing at youth group, or just bursting out in the latest pop song, there were many connections made. I think it's because in music, everyone can join in to some degree or another. Some people clap along, others hum to the melody (some get fancy and go for the harmony), eventually the "new kid" learns the words, and at some point they learn what those words mean to them. But there's something for everyone in that music because there's a way for everyone to join in praising God together. Those times were when I felt the strongest connection to the people around me. Eventually, those songs made a collection of memories and many times my friends and I can refer back to them just by humming a song. It's become a language of our own. So as I reflect on my time so far, I'm thankful for the music. It's been a way for me to share with others. I'm thankful for the music in my community. It's been something that I can grab a hold of and understand.
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