Stradivarius Violins and Diligent Souls: a Spiritual Formation Primer, part 3

Having a father for a pastor during my middle school years, the situation in church life was both privileged and precarious for me. He was the music minister, which implied him as the youth pastor as well (in typical Southern Baptist fashion). In that setting he and my mother both colored the imagination of my formative years more than I would know for a long time. In some ways I continue to discover those hues. All in all, it has been pretty wondrous. I had it much better than most.

One night (whether a Sunday or a Wednesday I can’t remember), Dad was teaching about the “touch of the Master’s hand,” and what that means for all of us as instruments in His usage. His primary illustration was that of the stupendous Stradivarius violin. In spite of all our technology, my father marveled, our ability to duplicate every material and technique, from the wood to the lacquer to the intricate carpentry, we could not reproduce an instrument that sounded like those made by the prodigious luthier from the 17th century. It remained a mystery, what exactly it was that set these delicate masterpieces apart so inimitably.

Like so many things from that season and my parents’ influence, that story lingered in the back until some 15 years later, when I would find myself at a timber-framing and natural-building workshop for a couple of weeks in Maine. Steve Chappell (a big soul himself) took a brief aside during one of his lectures. Come to think of it, his lectures are an unending stream of brief asides. “Stream of wistfulness” might describe his manner of expression. In one such detour, he talked about the natural resonance of wood, and how wood itself is trained to resonate differently over time. And then he said it.

“That’s why Stradivarius violins are the greatest instruments in the world!” What?! I couldn’t believe it. But here he was, this ribald, Yankee woodworker, opening up one of the most elusive mysteries right before me.

Stradivari was renowned as a master craftsman in his own day. Accordingly, his instruments were only played by the very best musicians. It has been that way ever since, passing from one virtuoso to the next throughout the generations. Only the purest notes have ever passed through those vessels. This cumulative cultivation compounded upon consummate construction is the criterion of creation beyond compare.

Your run-of-the-mill garage band front man knows this as a fact even if he is ignorant of all things Stradivari. Guitarists are regularly comparing notes on how to “crack open” a new instrument. It’s common knowledge that the real sound of a guitar won’t come right away, that the player and the played must become companionable to one another. They must reveal each other. And that takes time.

It happens on occasion, albeit rare, that a Stradivarius goes missing, usually by theft. What scandalizes the community most, even more than the theft itself, is that the instrument might be ruined forever, desecrated by inexpert hands that have not earned the privilege to play upon something so immaculate. Only one who has laid their self upon the altar of diligence stands a chance of becoming such a soul.

The very texture of the implement is transformed through the constancy and character of the instrumentalist. To think that within the fibers of the wood, the very molecules themselves are steadily realigned over time, inextricably renewed, inexplicably improved. That every practice session and every performance remake the contraption in imperceptible but nonetheless indelible ways. It carries within its core each chapter of its story and that narrative resounds in every song that runs it through.

Don’t we feel this reality in special edifices of architecture? The covenant keeping people of God have always had the impulse to construct houses of worship. David knew that it was a foolhardy endeavor to contain God in any temple, however ornate or grandiose. Yet he could not resist the urge to set aside a place as something sacrosanct, to give that consecration of meaning to a space. Then Solomon had the wisdom to keep the sound of tooling away from the temple during construction. Even from its seminal days its hollowness would be hallowed with a holy hush. The sacredness of silence and the sounds of worship continue to leave residual traces within the rafters of our sanctuaries.

Irreligious secularists know this to be true as well. Any structure so dedicated is imbued with the life of its inhabitants. Libraries and museums are not merely quiet places. The accrual of intentionality resides there, too. Every student therein has left an imprint of their usage; every successive attendant hears the echo of their spirit. Why else would alumni of institutions be so bound to each other?

Don’t we feel this same phenomenon at work in people? Certain individuals always have the ability to either put us at ease or exhilarate us. Nowadays we rarely encounter souls who have become so fully formed that they convey the entirety of the human experience. However, even at the more common levels, we have a word for people that have this gravity about them – charisma. What we mean is that they don’t have to try, seemingly at all, to influence us, that their character envelops us just by their being themselves, simply by our being in their presence.

Now, imagine for a moment that the violin is conscious, but that the power of its free moral agency is restricted to one choice: who is permitted to play upon it. Its fate is determined by who it entrusts itself to, whose notes will ring through. In essence, this is the nature of the spiritual disciplines, of character formation. We present our bodies to Him as He plays His song upon our lives. In time, the notes ring brighter and clearer as the molecular structure of our souls comes into truer alignment with His Spirit.

God designed each one of us with the same exquisite craftsmanship as Stradivari and his violins. In truth, that undersells it. Every soul is a universe unto itself, fraught with wonder and destined for an eternity of godhood. We have in our own blood the same iron that the God of the universe shouted out into the infernos of starfire. We have bodies that angels envy. In our very spirits is His own breath.

We were created to become kings of Creation and queens of the cosmos. Our lot in life is nothing less than the breadth of all eternity and the height of all the heavens. We have only to present ourselves to Him, impertinent in our persistence, and then let Him have His way with us.

Look inside and you will find that He signed His name there. He knows just what to do with us, whether we have been neglected, lost, stolen, abused, auctioned off or left behind. All that we must do is find our way back and lay ourselves within the touch of the Master’s hands. Here we possess the inestimable privilege of having the master carpenter and the virtuoso violinist in the same Person.

As He made us He knows how to remake us. In time He would have every person become a single individual that could arrest an entire concert hall with the wonder on display in their life. The throatiness of lamentation, the gaiety of praise, the companionable melody of friendship and the pulsating rhythm of humor would compose our parts as the innermost composition of ourselves.

We are fearfully and wonderfully made.