About 12 or 13 years ago while I was serving at Community UMC in Columbia MO, I heard Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto in concert---Robert McDuffie was the virtuoso violinist. It was unbelievable. I was stunned. Hearing it was a transcendent moment for me---a thin spot between here and There. The next day I went to Streetside Records and purchased a CD of him playing it, and I have had it downloaded on Itunes as long as I have had Itunes.

While I was in Columbia, I developed the habit of going to Lakota Coffeehouse downtown to write the manuscript of my sermon. I would bring my Walkman CD player with me and listen to the same three or four cds each week---one of those was this recording.

Tonight, Susan Vogel and I went to the Kansas City Symphony and heard this same concerto played by the orchestra and Gil Shaham. Again absolutely breath-taking, even though I know the notes very well now since I have listened to it played so many times over these last few years. We were only ten rows back in Lyric Theater. The moment the music began, I could smell the coffee beans and remember what it was like to actually feel as if I was being inspired by God to create the sermon I was working on. I saw the table where I usually sat at Lakota, I even thought of a sermon or two that I had come up with the Spirit's guiding. As God would have it, the people sitting right next to us were Michael Costanzo and his mother who was visiting from out of town. Mike is the associate pastor at Christ UMC in Independence. He "came through" for candidacy in the Heartland Central District when I was the chair of the district committee on ordained ministry. The way that he has handles some serious health challenges over the past few years is a lesson in grace. Anyway, at the intermission, I told Mike about my listening to the Barber concerto while I worked on sermons. He said to me, "Funny, I was just thinking that I would like to preach like that" and I go it. Preach dynamically, and with pathos and with joy, and "all-out" with joy and craziness of faith and love.

Thank you God, for Barber, for Shaham, and for preaching and for music. Not always in that order. Period.