Something exciting happened the other day. In one fell swoop, as my spouse notes, I exceeded his expenditures over 20 years on his classic car restoration hobby, though not by much. I’m slightly skeptical of the math on this, but the one fell swoop part is true.

I bought a piano. It’s a rebuilt 1926 Steinway L, from the “golden age” of the Steinway grands. It’s beautiful and so fun to play.

We’re freaking out about it when we’re not rejoicing over it. It was delivered Friday but we forgot to call our home insurance company. Lying awake in bed that night Dale said, “What if we have a fire and lose it?” I said, “I could care less about the piano if we have a fire, as long as we are all safe. Also, I promise we won’t have a fire before Monday when we’ll call the insurance folks.”

We’re feeling some guilt about going big on this, bigger than first intended. To keep things in perspective we remind ourselves of our modest spending elsewhere. We tell the children, “It’s an investment. We got a favorable rate on the loan, and these Steinways appreciate so much that it’s like putting money in savings each month.”

I worry about being judged. I judge myself. This purchase demonstrates our privilege and access. I may need a piano, but this one exceeds my need. There would be much more responsible and just ways to use our money.

I make more excuses. I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while. We’re supporting a local craftsman and business. I want to have several decades to enjoy the last piano I’ll ever buy. It will get played. A lot. We’ll be good stewards of a historic instrument.

These moments of panic, guilt, and justification are deeply rooted in how I think about money. It’s probably healthy to work through this with any large purchase, a process that could lead to positive new commitments and priorities.

No one is asking me to justify, and it may be most elegant to simply say, “I love it and I’m grateful to have it.” I guess I’m not doing the elegant thing with these reflections, but I’ll try in future conversations. I love it and I’m grateful to have it. And now I’ll go play it.

I was intrigued this past week by this article about the Dutch concept of hygge.  The happiness of the Dutch during their long winter months is attributed to hygge, a type of cozy and focused intimacy one can experience alone or with others.  The idea of hygge seems distant from what I experience as the incongruity of the longest nights of the year merging with the pressures of Christmas.  Last night I said out loud what I often feel, especially on weekends: “I am scattered!  All day I rotate between cleaning up the kitchen, working on laundry, wrapping presents, checking email and facebook, and running around town.  I want to focus on something and forget everything else but until the house is in order I can’t seem to do that.”

After my mini-tantrum, I drifted to the piano. As I practiced I experienced some precious moments of focus and bliss, even with the messes and unfinished work in the background.  It was possibly a taste of hygge, as was the moment my husband and child cuddled and giggled on the couch while reading “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth” together, and the late afternoon visit we had today with friends from Pennsylvania over spiced cider and Christmas cookies.

Tomorrow we leave for a trip to south central PA to a cottage we’re renting with my parents, siblings and their families.  Being away from the responsibilities of our own homes may help bring on the hygge.  One of my goals for the New Year will be to find the peace of mind that comes from hygge, this concept I do not fully understand but want to learn to know better through experience.

Reprinted from Timbrel Magazine, Summer 2013

After more than 35 years of playing the piano I still experience moments of amazement at what my hands can do.  I feel the same sense of wonder watching my friend weave an intricate pattern on cloth, my spouse maneuver small parts inside the engine of a classic automobile, or my colleague take the computer mouse and keyboard on an elegant dance to design a gorgeous website.  Our hands, informed by our intellect and trained by experience, can do remarkable things.

My own story with my hands began with piano lessons at the age of seven in southeastern Pennsylvania.  When I was nine, my family moved to Kingston, Jamaica for a two-year term of service with Mennonite Central Committee.  I was ambivalent about my piano studies when we arrived in Jamaica but I soon landed in the studio of the highly regarded and nearly blind Mrs. Foster-Davis.  Once I was past her foreboding gated entrance and two large guard dogs, I settled at one of her two grand pianos and she pulled out a magnifying glass to inspect my hands.  I was assigned new music that seemed far too difficult for me, but also had more time to practice in the slower culture we found in Kingston.  School ended before lunch at home and the afternoons loomed large, pulling me towards the piano to play.  The convergence of time, strong teaching, and parental support took me to a very different level of facility and sight reading ability by the time we returned to Pennsylvania.   I was no longer ambivalent; my hands were good at playing the piano.

During a teenage period in which I questioned my future direction in life there was a critical moment of recognizing piano in my identity.  A community group was preparing a production of the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.  A piano accompanist was unavailable at an early rehearsal and I received a desperate call to fill in at the last minute.  The sight-reading and technical tasks of the evening’s rehearsal were daunting for a sixteen-year old, but to my surprise I was able to meet the demands.  I felt alive with awareness as my hands followed the music and during a break the director approached me with enthusiastic affirmation.  Her kind words led me to a quiet corner in the church building where I could succumb to tears of gratitude.  I thanked God for a gift to call my own and more fully embraced the possibility that the movement of my hands at the keyboard would in some way shape my future.

Over time my naïve ideas of a gift bestowed upon my hands evolved into a mature understanding of what the gift actually was.  In college I learned how to practice more strategically and as I was educated to be a piano teacher my appreciation for the concept of training took hold.  It was tempting to fall into habits of envy and comparison when observing what seemed to be superior hands in a classmate or colleague.  But every practice session brought me back to the role of training in talent development.  It was those hours invested at the piano, all the better if my mind was focused and engaged, that empowered my hands.  God’s gift to me was time and opportunity.  Every child and adult deserves this same gift of time and opportunity for talent to emerge in his or her hands, whatever the craft may be.

My hands have been through dormant stages in recent years and I worry they will lose their abilities at the keyboard.  I am reassured as a slow and steady return to the instrument wakes up my hands to find the sublime in a simple melody and the playfulness of a sprinting scale passage.  Some of the strength and agility of my teenage and young adult years is lost but I have gained more of the same with a technique that better integrates my hands, wrists, arms, shoulders, and whole body.  Some of the brash confidence of my youthful sight-reading and memorization forays is gone, but I now study and investigate the music I am playing with a more informed curiosity.  I am learning that new gifts come with age.

When someone asks, “But how do their hands do that?” about the violin virtuoso or the pottery maestro, I join in their admiration and then say, “It is amazing what training and time enable in our hands.”  Keeping my own hands moving as I grow older will be both a responsibility and a joy.

I am in a frenzy of organizing these days. I have occupied my current office for eleven years now and file cabinets from seven years in my previous office came with me. The inventory of books, music scores, and folders full of paper is massive. I run into my work space for an hour or two at a time and stare at the mess, debating how deep to go at this point. Gradually it is getting better, but not without some chagrin and even shame at how much I accumulate.

My life at home is similar. A number of closets and cupboards are being tackled this summer and here too I feel dismay over all this stuff. I long for a life of less, and yet I search out and eagerly receive more. Small disciplines help, such as removing an item for each new item, but there is an obscenity in this as well. How many trips does one make to Better World Books or Goodwill before realizing the cycle should simply stop, at least for a while?

Recently I visited a friend’s childhood home where she and her siblings spent vast hours digging through their mother’s years of hoarding. Their mother, no longer living, filled several rooms of the house to such an extent that there were only narrow passages to walk through with great care to not let the tall stacks tumble. The house wasn’t always like this; my friend remembers happy childhood years in a comfortably cluttered but orderly home. At some point her mother stopped being able to manage all the stuff.

There are now numerous books and reality shows about the psychological conditions that lead to hoarding, and plenty of resources and consultants available to help those of us with less severe tendencies. I believe good habits and systems do make a difference and with each organizing binge I am sure this time will be different. Even as I doubt what I just wrote, I think I’m actually getting better at this as I get older. Systematically, when I have an adequate space for each item in my life, I learn to not let the trouble start in the first place. Habitually, I’m learning to touch an item, whether a dirty dish or piece of paper, just once as it goes to its ultimate destination. I’m learning to bustle through a mess with more speed and purpose so I have more time to enjoy life without the mental chaos I feel when there is too much clutter. I not only yearn for the beauty of a clear surface, I remind myself that I deserve to enjoy this beauty and the clarity of mind that comes with it. We all deserve this to the extent that it works for us. I do not doubt that some are more at peace and more creative among clutter even as I’m convinced I do my best work when the house or office is pristine.

And yet, as these systems and habits become more refined as I mature, the fragility of the situation hovers in my consciousness, knowing how easily my organized stuff can spiral into an unruly jumble when systems and habits fail. Moreover, the underlying impulse to make another folder, buy another piece of clothing, or stock more food than the freezer can hold is still there. This impulse is what I hope to keep recognizing and shaping towards something more positive.

At times I wonder if my musical obsession with Bach’s WTC Book One is a coping mechanism. This is highly organized and deeply spiritual music that in my experience clarifies the mind and feeds the soul. Perhaps playing Bach right now is a way to defy the hundreds of repertoire choices sitting on my shelves, a way to empty out the chaos and breathe in the focus of a clear surface.

As my last post alluded I have a new assignment at work.  I will shift from mostly teaching with a little administrative work to mostly administrative work with a little teaching. I’ll continue to chair the music department and will teach a few piano students and about one class one semester each year. For the other half of my time I will direct the Goshen Core Curriculum, our new general education program that was implemented last year. I’m looking forward to being in more focused administrative mode around two passions — a music department in a liberal arts setting and the liberal arts education of all our undergraduates — while still being able to teach some.

Before this came about I wondered what my practicing would be like if I didn’t teach as much. I am very aware of the ways in which practicing helps me integrate what I’m teaching. I have moments in practice when I notice I’m not doing what I encourage my students to do and the desire to end that hypocrisy helps me be more productive. Or a discovery, often about piano technique, is made in my own practice that becomes a useful theme in a future lesson with a student. It’s important to me that I still do some teaching so this integration continues.

I think piano practice could also be critical to my work as an administrator. Problem-solving happens as I play the piano. The other night as I practiced I found my mind wandering into messy work territory and within 20 minutes I arrived at a possible solution that helped me sleep better that night. I wish for a practice ritual each morning in which I play through several preludes and fugues to clarify my mind and set the day’s course. I hope an afternoon practice interlude, no matter how short, will energize and lead me into a few more productive hours. A benediction at the piano in the evening may help me process some lingering issues and feel some peace as I play the confident “amen” that ends each fugue.

My theory, then, in short, is that I will need to turn to the piano even more as an administrator. This new opportunity to broaden my work across campus and among the disciplines will test that theory.

(The attached image is from this NPR article)

What if one year turns into two? Or even three? Is that so bad?

These were questions I asked myself a few weeks ago when futility was setting in about learning all 24 preludes and fugues from WTC Book One by August 2013, the one-year anniversary of the project’s beginning. The idea of the project stretching over more time shifted into firmer position when I realized that I didn’t want to be finished, even if I could be. I’m still really enjoying practicing these pieces and have no interest in moving on yet. So, A Well-Tempered Year becomes Some Well-Tempered Years and the goal moves from “I will do this by such a time” to “I will do this and I’ll know when I’m done.”

New thoughts about what it means to really know this music are emerging, and these are necessary realities to face. I can play about two-thirds of the collection, but some of this involves my fingers faking their way through some passages. The material I really know — the stuff so secure my fingers sink deeply into it with utter certainty — this sets the standard I want for all of it.

How do I maintain what I have learned when I am also learning new material? Some of that “stuff so secure” loses its edge when I leave it for a while to focus on a new piece in the collection. I’m thinking about systematic routines for maintenance, knowing that review over time is what brings new meaning to this rich repertoire. The idea of getting to the point where I have it all in my fingers to maintain is both motivating and mysterious. What will be like to have two full solid hours of this intricate music in my fingers at the same time? Is that possible? And if it is, what is the point? I want to find out.

In the midst of revitalized energy for this project and some happy times at the piano lately, other life adventures continue. A new role at work, increased social interactions that seem to come with summer, better systems in home life, clarified commitments to practicing yoga — these take time and energy. And yet, the hopefulness that I can continue with my goal of learning this full collection remains, perhaps all the more so because of how good it feels to say, “Some Well-Tempered Years.”