Piano & Faith: The Frustration (of trying)

Learning the piano as well as the journey in faith (closer to God) is full of frustration. A sense of knowing where you want to be (perfection and excellence) and at the same time struggling with something you deem elementary such as not playing the key you meant to because you do not have coordination in your stubborn fingers or your prayer time does not result in a feeling or inspiration that was expected before the time of prayer began. A lot of this “frustration” is evident and found in our desire to be perfect and to reach perfection in all that we set our mind to.

In no stage is this desire to be perfect and our actual ability more divergent than that of a novice, a mere beginner. For this reason, this is where you see most people give up before they begin. They see the excellent examples of saints and world famous composers and pianist and the beginner begins to doubt if ever they will reach this level of excellence. They see what they assume as innate perfection and begin to get overwhelmed, stop practicing, avoid their teachers/priests, and worst of all lose the desire to want to excel in what at one time they were so passionate about and had some dream of enjoying.

These first steps are where usually people decide to settle with crawling for the rest of their life rather than learn to walk because the suffering endured blinds them not only of the possibility of improving but the benefits and enjoyment that will be actualized through the trials and even their mistakes through practice. What is difficult for me to realize is the reality of difficulty that one goes through to be great. All of the practice, doubt, anger, frustration, joy, progress, and achievement that went on in the life of an “expert” before they became the person we admire now. No, I want to complain continuously about the easiness they had in their growth because they did it when they were younger or they posses some innate quality to be excellent. This complaint does not even consider the fact that these "experts" do make mistakes and they are not as perfect as I have idealized them in my head.

I normally try to quickly master some trick or trade which always results in failure. You can see evidence of this when you see someone become really passionate about a certain activity and they exert all energies to mastering it and then nonchalantly move on to something else in a few weeks if they had not perfectly learned it yet. Unfortunately, for beginners, frustration is a key motivator for quitting. It is the fuel of unfinished dreams and low self esteem because the one who quits does not forget that he gave up on what he put his mind to, but it drives him to find something that he can master with ease: But as we know from experience nothing in life comes easy!

The secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine

Life here in the seminary has become one weekly routine after another. Of course there are many things different about each week but I seem to have gotten use to the sudden changes of my first experience of seminary life. It always amazes me how quickly one can adapt to a totally new and different situation in life only after being thrown into the change some weeks before. I am still very busy and have been stressed out over class assignments, but now it is not overshadowed by an anxiety of trying to adapt to a new place.

My week in general consist of communal Morning Prayer, classes, Mass, lunch, spiritual direction (biweekly) piano lessons (weekly), holy hour, dinner and communal Evening Prayer. For any communal activities, including meals, we are required to wear slacks and collared shirts which took me a while to get accustomed to because I was stubborn but mainly lazy and did not want to spend the time dressing up every day.

Morning Prayer consists of Liturgy of the Hours which is typical anytime we pray in community. Something that is done here that I have not experienced before is they sing the psalms during the prayer. This is very cool, especially when you have 100+ men the psalms in unison. Unfortunately, since I typically get up at 7:53am for 8am prayer I have no time to stretch out my vocal cords which leaves me trying to sing properly but in reality I squawk the Morning Prayer to the best of my ability.

Classes then start at 8:30am every weekday except for Wednesday which is a day set apart for ministry. I am taking 12 hours of classes and the schedule looks like this:

Monday & Thursday –  8:30-9:45 Logical Analysis

                               10:00-11:15 Ancient Philosophy

Tuesday & Friday—    8:30-9:45 Introduction to the Creed

                               10:00-11:15 Ecclesiastical Latin

The classes do not require too much homework, but there is a ton of reading to do and the material is difficult to comprehend. As for Latin, studying Spanish has helped me out with the terminology of the language, but it is difficult to say the least. The reason it is unusually difficult is because I tend to want to bring my knowledge of Spanish to Latin which does not work  and not only do you have to conjugate verbs (change their ending depending on the subject(s)) but I have to learn to decline nouns and adjectives as well which needless to say requires much studying.

After classes, we have Mass at 11:30 which is always a highlight of my day. Most days I am distracted and do not fully participate at Mass, but there is always some point during Mass that gives me a sense that I am in the right place. Mass is followed by lunch and, for me since I have no elective classes, an afternoon free to do homework, play sports, and hang out. I begin my holy hour at 4:30 followed by communal Evening Prayer (which by this time of the day consist of less squawking and more singing), dinner and a free evening.

As I mentioned, I am going to spiritual direction biweekly with Fr. Bede and this has helped me out greatly. Usually during the week, I go into prayer and feel unchanged by the end of my prayer time to help with this Fr. Bede has challenged me to journal. Day to day I do not see much progress in my relationship with God however in my meetings with Fr. Bede I see how significantly God is working in my life and I begin to see a direction God is calling me to follow in order to become a better person. All this is realized mainly because I vocally describe my prayer life to Fr. Bede while he listens and aspects are highlighted that pinpoint important theme in my life of the previous weeks. During the meetings, Fr. Bede usually only says something when he feels it is necessary or if I as a question.

Lastly, I decided to take music lessons from a Franciscan Nun who is in charge of the liturgical music for the seminary. I have always wanted to learn and now is a better time than ever.  I am going to post a reflection about the similarities of learning to play the piano with the faith life. I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying life.

Praying for you daily!

Much love,

William