I always wonder when I see a bio that lists Bach and some heavy metal band as favorites. The two clash, unless the cacophony has destroyed their eardrums. One precludes the other.
Although I had precious little musical talent, my mother kept me in instrumental music, fencing me in and encouraging me. Band and orchestra means playing good music. Once we played the Gillette theme song in band, but we usually memorized Sousa and other classics, plus arrangements of classical music.
Flute music included quite a bit of private lessons, funded by my mother, who thought she should have had more training herself. Private lessons from a German expert meant Bach, Mozart, Telemann. The Goldfinch concerto became a favorite, even though people claim Vivaldi wrote 800 pieces that all sound alike.
When my undergraduates were talking up rock music, I did my imitation of rock, which consisted of hitting a chord and screaming. For another class I did a rap about English, unfortunately captured on a smartphone.
My counter to that undergraduate class was playing Pachebel's Canon on a Bose as they entered class. They loved it so much that they copied down the name so they could buy a copy.
Looking for some music, I found The Seekers had a lot of music posted - and a great, long career with long gaps when they were not singing as a group. They sang in harmony and their lead singer Judith Durham always hit the notes perfectly. They sang a lot of Gospel songs in their concerts.
That led to Doo Wop, which I thought was fun to hear again. There are many collections on the Net, since people suddenly realized the era was almost over. Even the healthiest singers are aging out of the picture. The performances on the embedded link are uneven, but they illustrate the norms of harmony and clearly articulated lyrics.
I played the Marcels' version of Blue Moon for our grandson. He said, "Those singers are old!"
Gardening
The principles are gardening are similar to music. And people violate gardening principles all the time - with bad results.
One distant neighbor has two crepe myrtles growing together with a dogwood, with an evergreen bush jammed up close, all trying to stay alive. Across the top is a common vine. The mass is probably heaven for insects and birds, but it looks terrible. Four untrimmed bushes together look like the old fad of stuffing a phone booth. One alone would be beautiful and eye-pleasing.
Gardening has heavy metal, too. One way to kill emergent weeds is to include arsenic in the dose of fertilizer. The arsenic will kill birds that eat the earthworms killed by arsenic.
I noticed that regular mowing does the most to eliminate crab grass, so why put arsenic on the grass.
Clearly our local rabbit has figured out Sassy's outdoor times, but an abundance of planting has meant an abundance of growth.
Chaos intervenes at times, as creatures look for food and nesting material in the mulch and newsprint. Others see the birds feeding well, so they invite themselves in for a salad of fresh greens and sprouts, plus a drink of water from 12 different dishes.
Abundance triumphs over those who take advantage, because the Creation will always assert itself in time. When we tempt the wild creatures, they are going to succumb to the pangs of hunger rather than stick with the dry, dusty food of the open fields.
One of John Wayne's early moves came when the family's five acres of black-eye peas were eaten down to the soil by rabbits, when they went away for a few days. The new biography said the parents gave up after that incident.
I had relatives who moved from Ohio to Iowa because they could not stay alive on the free plot of land in Ohio. That led to my family being Iowa-Illinois instead of Ohioan, Evangelical rather than Seventh Day Adventist. My aunt said the experience was so bitter for them that her parents did not even want to visit the old homestead. But it was home for part of her childhood, and she insisted.
Just as there is an abundance of blessings in Creation, so there is an abundance of grace through the Word and Sacraments, the Instruments of God's Grace.
They are not an opinion, not a tradition, not an option for those in the Lutheran brand, but the Means of Grace established in the Scriptures, ordained by Christ, and taught by the Holy Spirit.
