archives

The first line of the prayer attributed to St. Francis of the birds and creatures is “Lord, Make me an instrument of Thy Peace.” I stop right at the phrase, “Make me an instrument...” and I wonder, what if, instead of the word “instrument” meaning appliance or tool, it meant literally, Make me into the musical instrument of your choosing?

What if that phrase meant, Make me into an instrument so fine and so fair that I could be practiced and shaped and played into a more beautiful sound on earth the longer I lived?

And what sort of instrument might each of us be? A silver flute? A grenadilla clarinet? A spruce and willow Stradivarius? A dark toned viola? Two hundred-twenty strings inside a case made of rosewood?

What if we were nothing grand, but simply “good enough” ...maybe only a little drum made from a wooden cigar box but carrying a heartbeat somehow greater than our own?

And how would we care for whatever holy sound we’d been granted? How would we tend to the instrument so well that a Master, just suddenly stopping by, could pick us up and play us... and the sound issuing forth would not be muffled, not be muddied or mad, but be odd and ancient, clear in every attack: largo, andante, allegro, bravura....