Today I got to meet the man whose family built the big pipe organ at our church: some anonymous benefactor decades ago had wanted the new building to have a fine one, no electronic pretender but a real honest-t0-goodness fine instrument to be proud of for generations. And so we have been.
The man’s company also built the organ in the new conference center in Salt Lake City, designed (we were told a few years ago by one of its organists) to be just shy of the grandeur of the one in the Mormon Tabernacle, not wanting to upstage the grand old lady of them all.
“You built a beautiful organ,” I told him.
“It all depends on who’s playing it,” he answered, motioning towards the one who was; “not everybody’s Jim.” (Jim looked over at us, smiling.)
I explained, “Jim taught my son to play on that organ and he ended up minoring in organ performance; for his final, his professor took him to Salt Lake to play the tabernacle organ.”
The man was smiling broadly now: someone who understood. He had centered his whole life around making the most beautiful music in the world possible–if…
And here it was, valued and worked towards and its possibilities being earned by yet another generation.