Give Thanks...Music

 It's Sunday...a day I've set aside to try and write something about giving thanks. This week, it's music.

I could write a hundred posts about music.

Music changed my life.

Before the internet, before iPods, CDs, even MTV and Walkmans, we had only a couple of ways to listen to music. You could listen to it live. You could play a record, listen to a tape or 8-track, or hope they played what you wanted to hear on the radio.

That was it.

It sounds so weird considering not being able to just listen to your favorite song or album anytime, anywhere. Hence, the wonders of technology. In my high school years I remember sitting in our font room, RUSH, Styx, REO, ELO, Kansas, or any number of records blasting in my father-built speakers. When I was younger, I listened to Mitch Miller, the Beatles, even the soundtrack to Saturday's Warrior (I listened to that album so many times...). 

My senior year I joined a high school choir and that is when I fell in love with choral singing. I sang for four years in a college choir, three years with Mormon Youth Chorus, and we part of a bell choir for another couple of years. Doing musical theater productions has allowed me to keep singing since I left those choirs. It was because of a choir I met my wife.

Yes...music's been an important part of my life.

Today in church, we were able to sing a couple of Christmas songs. I appreciate them all the more because for several months were were not to sing in our meetings. I love singing Christmas songs, love them most of all.

Today, I give thinks for music. It is the language of deity...how God communicates to us, and there's nothing you can say to convince me otherwise.