Yeah, that Post article again

I am still amazed by the Washington Post article. So many good and eye popping things straight from the author. As a reminder, Joshua Bell, one of the world's most famous violinists, played in a subway station in our nation's capital for 45 minutes going completely unrecognized save one person.

One biographically intriguing fact about Bell is that he got his first music lessons when he was a 4-year-old in Bloomington, Ind. His parents, both psychologists, decided formal training might be a good idea after they saw that their son had strung rubber bands across his dresser drawers and was replicating classical tunes by ear, moving drawers in and out to vary the pitch.

This I would like to have seen.

For many of us, the explosion in technology has perversely limited, not expanded, our exposure to new experiences. Increasingly, we get our news from sources that think as we already do. And with iPods, we hear what we already know; we program our own playlists.

Hmmm.

After "Chaconne," it is Franz Schubert's "Ave Maria," which surprised some music critics when it debuted in 1825: Schubert seldom showed religious feeling in his compositions, yet "Ave Maria" is a breathtaking work of adoration of the Virgin Mary. What was with the sudden piety? Schubert dryly answered: "I think this is due to the fact that I never forced devotion in myself and never compose hymns or prayers of that kind unless it overcomes me unawares; but then it is usually the right and true devotion."

What does my "devotion" look like? Crossroads every Sunday? And Wednesday when offered?

The poet Billy Collins once laughingly observed that all babies are born with a knowledge of poetry, because the lub-dub of the mother's heart is in iambic meter. Then, Collins said, life slowly starts to choke the poetry out of us. It may be true with music, too.

I've felt that choking but have recently been able to breathe more easily. It takes work though. Or maybe silence. I'm reminded of Isaiah 30:15, This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: "In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it."

"When you play for ticket-holders," Bell explains, "you are already validated. I have no sense that I need to be accepted. I'm already accepted. Here, there was this thought: What if they don't like me? What if they resent my presence . . ."

What if we substitute "ticket-holders" for "God"? But I often feel like I am in the subway station. "What if they don't like me? What if they resent my presence . . ."

I like the idea of this ticket-holder. Freeing.