I have always been very passionate about guitars!  My parents say that no matter how many toys I was given, I always ended up playing with my father’s guitar.

I’ve always loved music and I learnt to play the instrument at a young age.  Gradually I started noticing that every guitar sounds different.  My father’s guitar, his pride and joy, sounded much better than mine.  My guitar was a beginner grade guitar – a nylon stringed guitar given to me for my Holy Communion, partly to stop me from playing around with my father’s!  The notes rang longer, the sound was warmer and the notes were clearer.

What makes a guitar sound great?!  A guitar is a piece of wood that has forgotten that it was once a tree.  But what does that mean?!  A good sounding guitar is born out of a balance between flexibility and rigidity – its wood needs to be tough enough to withstand the tension of the strings, yet it needs to be flexible enough to vibrate with the strings and convert the movement to sound.  The best guitars are often the most fragile.  They are crafted on the verge of self-destruction!

Life is not very different from a guitar.  Life demands of us to live between the anxieties we carry and the courage that surprises us; the knowledge and wisdom we acquire, and the questions that keep reminding us that we still have a lot to learn; the gift of faith that arises in prayer, and the fearful meaningless moments we all go through.  We all live between who we truly are and who we really desire to be.

Life comes through when I stay in tension.  That is from where good music wells forth.