God, Music and Making Sausage

 There's a saying about politics that goes something like this: Most people only see the final results of a political proclamation or passage of a law. Sometimes it is palatable and sometimes it is not, but if we could see how it looked in the making, nobody would bite into it.

I used to watch my father making Polish kielbasa in our kitchen when I was a child. The process fascinated me and the ingredients that he stuffed into the animal intestinal casing did not whet my appetite in the least. It was just the effort that he put into it that I admired and found really interesting. When he served that sausage for friends and family at the dinner table, I kept silent as I watched everyone eat with appreciation because it was good and spicy and very palatable. Most of the time. Every so often he would come up with a bad batch but nobody had the heart to tell him and we were none for the worse because making kielbasa was a labor of love for papa.

And so it seems to be as I dig deeper into the music industry. I speak as a novice so if you're a jaded veteran of the biz, you can probably stop reading right now and go check out some of the great musicians I have featured before on this blog here, here or here. Yet after successfully producing, distributing and promoting my band Patient Chill's debut EP which will be played daily for the next 3 months on a major London, England FM station and a popular FM station in Sweden simultaneously, I feel like I've earned a stripe so keep calm and listen.

Listen to Patient Chill music

Even God began with a mess on his hands before taking it into His studio and polishing creation into perfection:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters--Genesis 1:1-2

So (and I say this with reverence), God, the Executive Producer of the cosmos, had a creative score in mind and had to bring all the diverse elements together into a finished product that satisfied Himself before anything or anyone else was satisfied including humanity. Why there was such a mess in the universe before God went to work on it is a subject of scholarly debate and speculation that is beyond the scope of my post here so I won't even fake an attempt at trying to explain and understand it. But some say Satan ruined things and God went right to work making things perfect again but that can't be proven.

Anyhow, the Lord's got this mess that He's got to somehow repackage like sausage ingredients into a casing that looks, smells and sounds superb--beyond perfection--but He would like some players in the band because that's what music is supposed to be about ultimately--a conversation in tempo, lyric and sound between sentient beings. But that bad actor the devil is still lurking around in the studio hallways, envious and ready to muck up the mix. Why God allows this is another serious question for debate that will only be answered beyond the grave probably for believers and unbelievers also, both having different reactions to the same reason.

So the cosmic Maestro, Yahweh as he was called in the Old Testament, masterfully brings it all together creating perfect harmony out of total dissonance and adding countless elements into the mix that no human sound engineer would ever be capable of handling. But God does it all in just six days and takes a break to probably shuffle and repeat and listen and look to what He's accomplished with the work of His mighty hands through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. And He surely decided, in spite of what He knew would happen with the fall of Adam and Eve, that it was all worth it and redeemable and could be (pardon the human expression) remixed and digitally remastered to sound brighter, clearer and more vibrant that anyone or any angel could imagine. But, in sympathy with the apostle Paul, I speak only as a human and it probably all sounds foolish. (Romans 6:19) However, I will keep watching the sausage and the music made behind the scenes and I will produce and serve what I hope is the best possible musical kielbasa to whoever wants to sit at the feast table of the redeemed saints. Yes. I will sing this new song for however long I am required to do so.