Laudaute Dominum

Posted by J on Jun 12, 2013 in J Posts | 1 comment

I once performed Mozart’s “Laudaute Dominum” in Salzburg Cathedral with about a dozen high school classmates.

Mozart wrote that piece of music for the cathedral’s archbishop in the 1780s. It was to be part of evening vesper services. For us, it was a normal day in one of Salzburg’s many must-see destinations — groups of tourists bounded past our a capella performance in the nave on their way to visit the cathedral’s high altar.

I didn’t know it then … but that moment was the culmination of everything I’d learned up to that point about DYNAMICS in art — forte, piano, emphasis, subtlety, crescendo, focus, JOY, matching your voice tone with the voices around you, enunciating the Latin words, feeling the weight of history, feeling the elegant music bounce around the great church ….

Years later, this is the view from Sunset Beach in Oahu. This stretch of coastline is part one of the most revered places on earth among surfers looking for near-perfect breaks day after day after day. We are staying in a rental home a few blocks away — H and E can see the same surf from their loft window.

We are not surfers — but we came to this place to surf. Twice in the last three days, I have ventured out in to the blue with a body board or fins or just to swim … and twice I have turned back after getting caught between waves that were too big, too angry, and too confusing to conquer like we do back home. (Once entering the water with one of my boys, we were the targets of a beach-wide public address announcement from the lifeguard station calling “that man and his son” back out of the water because of too-strong currents.)

There have been better times in tamer waters for all of us … but the failed attempts brought REAL FEAR. Capital F Fear. I felt inadequate. I felt small, dwarfed by something bigger, better, stronger. I had come to touch the beauty and the glory and the power of this special ocean cathedral … but it seemed unreachable.

So today we faced that fear. Add Uncle Bryan’s Surf Academy to our recommendations list – we went out this morning along the same coastline and ALL of us got up on surfboards. Many times. Some of us looked so good, it was as if we were naturals.

We were taught some nuts and bolts about where to position your body on the board, how to stand up, and so on — but today’s surfing pointers were the same dynamic tools I’d enjoyed many years earlier in Salzburg Cathedral: feel it, go with it. Lean in to the power. Ride the strength. PARTICIPATE in the Glory.

Fear was part of both experiences, too. Will I forget a note to sing? Will that oncoming wave keep me under? “This is bigger than me.”

But what happens once the first note is sung or the first wave is crested? Forte. Piano. Lean. Let go. Crescendo. Focus. JOY.