Perfect – to be or not to be – that is the question

"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." (Matt. 5: 48)

Woah, that is quite a commandment!

So this past Sunday was the Messiah with orchestra at our church, and I had a solo. Of course I wanted it to be perfect. Dress rehearsal was pretty darn close. Sometimes that almost makes the task harder – now there is the added pressure of measuring up to your own good work. At least if the dress rehearsal is mediocre then you know you can shoot higher -- nothing to re-prove, only to gain. I guess the performance went fairly well, but not perfect. I think the dress rehearsal was closer to perfect. Certainly from a technical standpoint the performance had maybe a little prettier, fuller tone.

 

I feel afterwards a bowl of mixed emotions. It's done, phew. The tone was pretty for the most part, but there was that one glitch in the legato, and the last G was not there, not supported. I rushed into it after the pianissimo high note, forgot to take time to reground and get a good breath and the G fell flat and kind of splatted out. Not everyone noticed, but I did.

I received many compliments. One person even said "that was outta the park", which feels nice. But inside I knew it was just not quite. I am sure the other trained singers noticed too. In my head I hear another soprano thinking, “I could have done that better, I should have had the solo!” And so the torment goes. Which brings me to my voice, singing, and the spiritual path for me which accompanies it.

It is a deep can of worms, maybe because it has been my life's passion and work. And life is full of a lot. I started singing because I loved it. From a young girl I remember watching Shirley Temple movies and thinking I want to do that. I remember singing along to Dolly Parton in the back seat of my parents’ car. I remember summer vacations, being coined a mermaid by my uncle when I would sing while sitting on the big rocks in the Mediterranean while he and my cousins fished, or belting at the top of my lungs over the encouraging hum of the Boston Whaler on Lake Huron.

In my teens it was all about Barbara Streisand and music theater, and eventually I came to studying and classical operatic singing. When I was young there was a freedom in singing. It was from the heart and with joy. Then I went to school and studied seriously for a long time. I still study. Suddenly there are so very many requirements, and at times the heart and joy seem far away. A breath that was free and natural is suddenly stilted and nervous, wanting a little too hard to be perfect.

And this is the strange irony of life and breath and singing. In Yoga they say that breath is the key which leads one to Prana, our life force, the creative energy. In singing they say the breath is everything.  Maybe this is why I have always felt a certain connection between singing and spirit. There seems to be this mysterious balance, that when all the variables are lined up just right something magical occurs in the sound and in the feeling one experiences to produce it.  There is a certain control that has been mastered and in that control one experiences total freedom, but it also requires letting go. However, one element not quite right, and there will be a consequence. This can be too much thinking, knowing, not enough letting go, or too much letting go, not enough thought and care.

Maybe the idea of chiaroscuro sums it up. This is what a well-balanced beautiful tone should have: darkness and lightness, so much so you cannot determine if the voice is forward, bright, and shimmery, or warm velvety and comforting. It’s both simultaneously. The perfect sound contains both lightness and darkness...hmmm

This brings me back to perfection, and the fleeting moments when we truly experience perfection, and then all the rest of life. I have encountered this feeling of perfection at times in deep prayer and meditation too when the mind and body are calm and focused. I am completely free from to-do lists and neuroses, I am in communion, I am perfect with Him. I am basked in a shimmery transcendent light.

Then I go to get my six-year-old at the bus stop. “P, wait till the bus passes, stop". He care-freely is weaving in and out of the street as the roar of the bus engine rings in my ears. I repeat frantically as he continues to ignore. When we get home I order him to sit down, he ignores me again to go get the pencil for his homework. I then raise my voice and tell him to "SIT DOWN". He begins to cry. I have hurt his feelings; all he wants to do is get his pencil. I feel bad. "It's not about the pencil", I say, "Do you know what it is about?" 

I feel so far from perfect, just like my botched G. I have been impatient and unkind. I am so far from the Father and his perfection. But maybe even in this "darkness" there is a perfection? Maybe it is like chiaroscuro, that there is a perfection in this moment, a certain beauty in these very real, very human moments, because after all He is sovereign. Maybe it is not only about being truly perfect, but this intertwining that is life, this aiming and missing and sometimes hitting.

I see His perfection in the shimmer of the way fall light reflects in the Autumn tree leaves, or the way the sun sets and sparkles on the water.  I sense and feel that transcendent Perfection that is always available yet sometimes so hard to find.  When we try too hard it will slip through our fingers. If we don't try or seek at all how can we hope? It is like balancing on a fine spider’s web. It is trying your hardest to understand, to know, to learn, and then gently releasing.

Maybe this command is not about always being perfect, but rather recognizing His perfection, both in the light and in the dark -- that we are indeed perfect, even as the Father, because we are right where He would have us be, right now.