Projection

From time to time someone is kind enough to compliment me on my singing. On some such occasions it crosses my mind that they haven't actually heard me, but then I'm usually thinking of solo performance whereas they perhaps are more generally referring to, say, congregational or possibly pub singing.

At any rate, just before Christmas I decided that I needed to not just call myself a singer but to do all the things that might support this apparent gift. So far I've not been very good at a daily practice regime, but I have done reasonably well at breathing exercises.

In a book by Gloria Rusch (The Professional Singer's Handbook) I found an exercise based on the work of E. Herbert-Caesari with respect to building lung capacity and breath control. These are foundational to good singing, but now that I'm no longer a brass musician (itself a good way of improving both), they need attention.

Currently, three times a day for 5 minutes at a time I inhale for 8 seconds, hold my breath for 8 seconds, then exhale for 8 seconds then repeat. My target is, by increasing each part of the breath by 2 seconds a week, to reach 20 seconds.

This morning I found myself in mid-exercise thinking how similar to Daily Prayer this whole exercise is. Principally I had in mind the discipline. I haven't managed 3 breathing exercises every day since starting. Indeed some days I haven't done one. As with the exercises, so with my prayer which has been somewhat fitful of late.

To some people a disciplined prayer life might be anathema, but my experience is that more regular I am with my prayer life the more capable I am of extempore prayer as needed through the day.

This morning's New Testament reading was Matthew 21:18-32, including the parable of the 2 sons asked to go and work in their father's vineyard. A commentary I read afterwards somewhat confusingly described the activities of the 2 sons in reverse order (so the first-mentioned in the Bible was referred to secondly, and as the 'second' son, in the commentary).

I found this irksome and to me a sign of an ill-disciplined approach to theology. Then I recalled the suspicion I had the last time I led Evening Prayer that I'd given absolution: an error I'm quick to notice in others, but evidently not in myself. Perhaps like the second son (in the Bible's order of events), I'm quick to espouse but slow to act.

May God grant me the persistence to use all the gifts he bestows on me, and not to just talk about them.