Babies and choirs

I’ve been thinking lots about babies lately… One of my friends is struggling with having lost a baby and all the grief that means, another of my friends is newly pregnant, another of my friends is very much wanting a baby but being able to have one seems unlikely. And there is a cute little kiddo that’s part of the community here…

I’ve also been thinking lots about choirs lately… I lead about three or four different choirs a week, now, most of them full of people I’ve never met before…

And I have to say that there are some uncanny similarities between the two. (Didn’t see that one coming, did you?) =)

I’ll let you make most of the connections, but the biggest one I was learning last night was how much of a mirror babies and choirs are. I was directing a choir and realizing that they sounded very proper and were hitting all the right notes and making good sounds, but that they were very rigid and horizontal in their singing. As I tried to think of why, I realized that this is something that I, myself, struggle with, and I further realized that I had been teaching in a very horizontal manner. They were simply imitating something I was unconsciously demonstrating. It was amazing the way my choir mirrored to me something to improve in my own self and way of being.

Kids do that too, don’t they? They have such a knack at making us notice things in ourselves, simply by their imitation of us. It is indeed a frightfully wonderful thing to be a part of a child’s learning.

And choirs… perhaps a bit less frightful, but still quite wonderful. =)