The rythm section was powerful, loud, locked in and they brought the funk. My voice went to those places at the edge of its range that it has to stretch and fight for but which somehow are part of ploughing into that place where people forget about themselves, loosen up and focus on something greater. Together with the band and the audience, and in my opinion God -- it created space. Or space opened up.
When I walked off that stage the room felt different. Like people were more themselves. What the preacher said was part of that too. And how the people listened. There was a riskiness and a sense of rest that cohabited both the music and the word.
In the midst of playing the music I alternatingly listening with glee to the bass licks, wholehearted aimed my being towards God, and received from that infinite supply of love that surrounds us all and is offered to us at all times and all places -- and yet which, I think somehow, the receiving or ingesting of often takes an act of will, discipline, courage, focus, abandonment, or surrender.
