I’m on a mission. It’s never-ending and I’ll not be able to complete it; but rather than feeling frustrated, I feel invigorated. It’s a mission to share God’s love through the creative arts. Of course, teaching music doesn’t have to include God. After all, music is orderly and based on the physics of our natural world. For me, however, we imitate God’s creative character when we make music.
I didn’t make the connection during my first years of teaching in college. Grades, syllabi, attendance records, and lesson plans took precedence in my mind. And how do I share God’s love with a student when I might also give them a failing grade?
I love the fact that God created us as aesthetic beings. When my wife complains about what I’m wearing, I blame Him for my mismatched choices in clothing as well as my eclectic taste in music. We respond to the world with our five senses aesthetically in the choice of paint color on our walls, the pictures we hang, the fabric we choose for our furniture, among many other things.
We evolve highly refined sensibilities for art, but we also respond to art naturally. My granddaughter just turned one year of age. With no apparent external examples, she responds to music by bobbing up and down and waving her arms. She may be secretly copying some of my dance moves, but I see it as a God-given aesthetic response to music.
As a teacher, I enjoy creating music with my students. It’s a basic and common way to bond with and start a relationship with them. As we interact in the studio, learning the building blocks of ‘do, re, mi’, I also share how those building blocks have a commonality with God’s creative nature and how that nature echoes within us. God created from nothing. Music only exists as a progression of time, essentially born from nothing.
“If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: ‘The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.'” Kurt Vonnegut
My students come from across many university departments. Many of them are not music majors, but students who desire to pursue their creative side through the act of playing the piano. I’ve learned to ask questions during our time together. Questions are better than statements because it draws students out and invites their opinion. How does this music make you feel? What does it mean to create something from nothing? Our discussions can go in any direction because I’m privileged to be teaching one-on-one in a studio.
As students become more at ease, they will also ask questions. As the conversation flows, I am building a trusting relationship, respecting their viewpoints, and being able to present mine. It’s amazing how big this small gesture can be. I have been blessed with students who reveal the stresses and the triumphs in their lives. I am most honored if they ask me to remember them in my prayers.
By sharing music with intent and purpose, we recognize within each other the Imago Dei, the wonderful way we can imitate the creative character of God and together connect to something greater than ourselves.
Tom Jenkins
Mississippi State University