The Power of Music

I’ve been blessed in my life to have some meager talents outside of my professional life. While I will never claim to be the greatest, I can sing and have been apart of some great ensembles.

Through music, I have been able to travel the world and touch peoples lives that didn’t know that they were missing something.

Music not only has taken me places physically, its taken me emotionally. I’ve always said, I can go blind and never see the world again. But take away my hearing, I’m a dead man.

And some may find this one a bit out there, but I can only describe it as this, Music has allowed me to touch the face of God. I can’t do it justice, but this is what I experienced. It was 1996, I was a freshman at the University of Northern Iowa singing with the UNI Varsity Men’s Glee Club. We were on our European Tour and we found out at the beginning of the tour that one of the churches that we were singing in Rome was a little out of the way place called St Peter’s Basilica. You know, the Vatican! We were to sing at the high mass for the congregation. It was during Ave Maria, a song that is known to move the soul, that I was taken to a higher place. Here I was, some kid from Iowa, singing in one of the largest, most elaborate churches in the world to a bunch of people that I didn’t know. And as we were singing, we could see more people coming in. We could see tears in the eyes of the audience. We could see and feel our own tears. It was beautiful.

On a tour 8 years later, the Glee Club once again sang in St Peter’s Basilica. After the performance, an elderly lady came up to the guys and told them. “Every day, I go to church and I am poor woman. But today, today I leave a rich woman for what you have given me.”

Its a gift that is given and often taken for granted. Music has the ability to lift up, inspire and make the world a better place.