'Now Is The Time'

Matt Maher was really great at Mater Dei High School on April 29. I hear his concert there was outstanding, too.

I didn’t hear him play that night; I heard him talk to Mater Dei’s student body that Friday afternoon, just before they started their weekend.

He talked about his faith, his music, his life, his family. And he validated a few things I have believed about the music I’ve played since the 1970s – and about the dreams and aspirations we all have.

“All the people who make a difference in the world don’t care what others say,” Maher said. “Now is the time to ‘waste’ in anonymity.”

I added the extra quotations around the word waste. I know what Maher was getting at; I just don’t believe (and I doubt he truly believes) that what he suggested amounts to a waste” of time.

2016 MEO Tri-State IDOL winner Stasia Reisinger heard former IDOL finalist Taylor Goebel ask Maher wHAT advice he had to offer the aspiring musicians in the stands during this special assembly. They – all of us in the gym – heard Maher say that they needed to spend “10,000 hours-plus in total obscurity just working are being good.”

That definitely helps explain why Maher has earned five GRAMMY® nominations.

For longer than I care to admit, I (apparently like Maher) would spend lots of time in the basement with my bass guitar, amp and CD player. For hours, I would spend more time actually listening – really listening – to the bass lines in songs I liked before I would start trying to learn them.

“(Music) is my way of expressing my love for God,” Maher told the mater Dei assembly. “When I do this, it gives glory to God.”

I suspect it’s also one way that Maher gives thanks to God for the blessings he has received. He blessed me with the ability to play music by ear – and He blessed me with just enough patience to get an introduction to music theory through five years of piano lessons (third through eighth grades, when I was too young to truly appreciate it!) from the Sisters of St. Joseph of Baden, Pa.

Someone I met in college once expressed shock that I had learned the bassline from a Top 40 song by Henry Lee Summer – from Brazil, Ind. – just by listening to the record a few times. OK … a few dozen times; but still. That person was a music major, and could sight read any piece of music – but couldn’t play a lick by ear.

I consider the thousands of hours I spent “in total obscurity just working at being good” to be a collective prayer of thanks to God for blessing me with the ability to play what I heard – albeit after some practice.

“It’s just part of who you are,” Maher told those musicians in the assembly audience at Mater Dei. “It’s how you express your identity as a child of God.”

All of you reading this have something … some talent … God has blessed you with like music. Maybe it’s writing; maybe it’s cooking; maybe it’s serving God as a priest, deacon, or religious man or woman.

Don’t take it for granted. Use it to give glory to God. Work in obscurity at being good.

Now is the time.