COMPOSER-IN-RESIDENCE
Composer-in-Residence
From the composer
Our Creator often has plans for us that we neither understand nor even desire yet His will works out quite well when we choose to follow it. I learned a great lesson from an early retirement: seek just enough to be able to fulfill whatever the current plan might be. For me, the "just enough" mentality has replaced the socially constructed mindset to acquire more and more and more .... financial resources, material objects, etc. Carol Dwyer, RN, DNP, (a friend and former colleague) once shared this poem with me:
I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright.
I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more.
I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive.
I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger.
I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.
I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess
I wish you enough 'Hello's' to get you through the final ‘Goodbye.’
Lisa Goycochea
Sometimes we simply do not recognize what we have but, almost always, we have just enough (and more likely much more) - just enough of whatever we need to follow God’s plan. So far His plan for me has been to follow highly varying paths from completing a undergraduate music degree to a career in healthcare to completing a master's degree in health administration to rehabilitating my small inherited farm to composing and arranging music to raising goats and chickens. There were many steps along the way but the important lesson is that as we fulfill one part of our plan, we must journey through the next, and the next, and so on, until we are transformed into whatever we are to become and to form whatever legacy we are to leave behind. All of this prepares our soul for the greatest journey into eternal communion with our Creator.
The plan, at the moment, continues to entail many things that include composing and arranging sacred music in order to offer refreshing and newly appropriate music for our worship and adoration of God such that we might “pray without words.” I do not yet know exactly what is to be accomplished but I am eagerly pursuing what I am led to do. With that being said, I wish you always “just enough” to fulfill God’s plan for you. I hope you find my contributions to the sacred music world relevant and inviting. More importantly, I wish you many blessings and much peace, always,
Kent