Just a piece of a bigger song.

"Date night?"

"Of course."

Sunday nights after meeting with some friends for dinner and discussion (aka Bible study), I usually head over with a friend to the theater at Oakridge or sometimes Campbell for coffee and a movie. We joke about it being our date night but it's just two friends hanging out. Although it's not "just" anything. It's become a time I see as sacred. A time to share and process and live and grow. A time that I have learned to be myself. A time I feel safe to be vunerable. And some weeks it's just silliness. But most often I come away with plenty to reflect on from both the movie we chose and/or the converstaion before and after. So it goes with tonight's choice. The Soloist.

My head is still working through all of the movie. It echoes previous conversations. It echoes some life themes. At least my life--if only in the emotions not the context. Although suprisingly even a few pieces of the movie share a context.

One of my favorite bands is the David Crowder Band. They led worship at the church I attended in college. They still do when they're not on tour and I miss that church. At the end of their album "Collision or (3+4=7)", David recorded an interview and was discussing "The Lark Ascending". The song starts with simple chords then keeps growing into this rich song of variations on a theme (their whole album also does this). Like a orchestral piece. A song that keeps growing from many instruments playing variations on a theme. The richness of a piece comes from how it all comes together.

When I got home I realized despite the movie title as "The Soloist", much of the music was still set within the background of an orchestra. Often it was implied in the characters' head or there for the audience's benefit. But the beauty of the music was the individual playing in the context of many others in the same song.

Which brings me back to date night and the discussions that my friend and I have. So many times we have these running themes in our discussions. Sometimes it's obvious because it's based on life situations. Sometimes it may seem more random but themes keep popping up. They run through the context of an evening out, time at a coffee shop, quick emails within a week, or even outside our own conversations. It's these life lessons that are so much richer in the context of living life with others--in community. Living my own story in the midst of other people stories. My "solo" becomes a piece in an orchestra. I gain meaning in the messiness of life by seeing the beauty in other people's stories. Where details may be completly different, the emotions I go through may be far closer to the main theme than I would have previously imagined.

So these movie and coffee nights have become those muscial phrases that repeat and build. In the couple of years since we've been friends, these converstations have become deeper, more fun, more intense, more freeing. Others have been a part of the conversations too. And this has added to the beauty in my life. Even when things get messy. I've learned how valuable that song has become.

And I came out of the movie thinking that I really need to go see a symphony sometime soon.

...And coming out of the movie thinking, I am so thankful of those people in my life that enrich the phrases in my life. That echo the lessons I keep learning.