The Sacred... And Jazz

First, a disclaimer.  I know next to nothing about jazz.  I am not a musician.  I can't describe with any precision what makes jazz different from other forms of music.  All I can say with any certainty is that, well, I like it.  Miles Davis.  John Coltrane.  Good stuff. 

I'm thinking about jazz today because I just read the responses to the last post and it strikes me that jazz might be a metaphor for the coming together of the sacred and playfulness that each of us was trying to describe.  What is apparent to me, a lay listener, is that good jazz performers are exceedingly serious about their art.  A piece by Lionel Loueke is playing softly in the background as I write (thanks to Pandora) and I cannot help but be aware that years of preparation and practice stand behind this piece. It is carefully crafted.  It's quite clear that every musician knows the score.  And yet, at the very same time, the music darts and moves in ways that compel me to suspect that it is astonishingly impromptu and free.

I want to compose a life-in-community that is like that: serious, in the sense that it really matters, it's important, it's sacred; and playful in the sense that it is creative, free and always open to the gift of the present moment.  And I want to be part of faith community that is like that: serious in that we "know the score" of our Scriptures and we seek to live within the story it tells because it really matters, it's important, it's sacred;  and playful in that we give ourselves to the wind of the Spirit, who blows this way and that and takes us to places that our five-year strategies could not have imagined.  Perhaps there is more of art than precision to the sacred adventure.