Making a difference

This is not the usual blog post, but more of an alert to bring something to the reader's attention:

The below article is copied from a news website which you can view by clicking on the title of this post:

Blood bank desperately short of supplies

The nation's blood bank says it's desperately short of blood - especially O-negative blood - with stocks plunging to just two days supply.

The Australian Red Cross Blood Service says it's particularly concerned about reserves in NSW and ACT, where there are less than one day's supply of O-negative.

It's appealing for people come forward, particularly anyone who has not donated for a while, or has not yet to become a donor.

O-negative is the universal blood type, which can be given to anyone in an emergency.

Across the country, stocks of all blood types have dropped 18 per cent in the past month, Kathy Bowlen from the Red Cross Blood Service told AAP.

"Patient demand has stayed the same, but the number of donors coming through our doors has been dropping," she explained.

"In many states, stocks of other blood groups are also lower than two days.

"This is particularly worrying in the lead up to the Melbourne Cup, which is always a difficult time for us," Ms Bowlen said.

"Last year, our blood collections dropped across the country by 1000 in Cup week."

The service says it's not clear why donations always drop in this week.

Donors can visit donateblood.com.au to locate the nearest centre or simply call 13 14 95 to make an appointment.

Anyway, I just thought that in a time of such need, the right thing to do would be to spread the word about it. Unfortunately you must be 16 or older to donate blood, but if you happen to be in such an unfortunate position like I am, you can always just pass the word on in the hopes that your voice will make a difference. If everyone does a little bit, big things will happen.

And that is all I have to say for today. Happy November!

In His hands

*This post is more for my own benefit to help remind me of something I've been struggling with, but if you happen to find it interesting, even better.

Lately I have been getting so stressed out over 'planning' my future. So many things are starting to happen that could have a significant effect on the rest of my life:

Type 1 is a music scholarship course at the School of Music for Year 11 & 12 students. Participants receive free lessons from top teachers, the opportunity to gain experience in ensembles/orchestras under well-educated tutors, as well as 2 hours of composition & music theory lessons a week. Needless to say, I really want to do the course (if only for the free lessons, which I really 'need') and I've been stressing myself out about it constantly. See, at the moment there is no way I would be able to, because even if I passed the audition (and only 10 people will...) I would be left without a means of being transported back to Cooma. No matter how much I worry about it and try to think of a solution, though, nothing changes.

Then there's the Canberra Concerto Orchestra. On Wednesday a local music teacher who used to teach our family rang me up and told me about this orchestra which was having auditions this week. He spoke very highly of it and said he thought I had a fairly good chance of passing the audition (?!?!), so I booked in an audition, thinking, "Well isn't this a good opportunity! If I don't get to do Type 1 next year, at least I might be able to do this instead." 4 days later, and I still hadn't heard back from the audition manager, and consequently still didn't have copies of the pieces I was required to learn for the audition! These pieces got sent out to everybody else some time last week, giving them all a whole week's practice more than me!! I rang the manager several times during those 4 days, only to be informed that the music was still 'on its way'. It finally arrived on Monday, giving me only 6 days to learn it, as opposed to the 2 weeks everyone else had. Again, I only fretted more as time progressed, and the fretting didn't stop when the music arrived. I now had to worry about how I would get to Canberra for the audition and get back home again. And even if I DID manage to work out all that, how would I be able get there and back every week next year for rehearsals?

As most of you should know, MuST (the music program I'm doing at ANU at the moment) is the highlight of my week. This year has been the highlight of my life for the same reason. I know I must sound obsessed with music (and maybe I am...), but I can't even describe how much this course has meant to me. Anyway, we only have 3 weeks to go, and that will be the last I will ever see of MuST. I know I should be thankful that I actually got to do the course - if I wasn't homeschooled, there wouldn't have been a chance of being able to go to Canberra every Tuesday, and if we'd found out about it one day later the applications would have closed and I would never have even made it to the audition. I also know that I should be treasuring these last few weeks and being glad to have had the opportunity to complete the course, but something inside me just keeps flinging my mind towards that fact that in 3 weeks I will never EVER have another MuST lesson to look forward to. This may sound crazy, but just the thought of no more MuST makes me feel... well, don't worry about that. This must have sounded sickeningly ungratefully pessimistic - and perhaps it is - but I assure you that, while I'm tempted to feel that way, I know I shouldn't and I am trying to get to grips with it. Right now I am really struggling to deal with this battle going on inside me.

I could go on, but you get the idea. I've been trying to work everything by my own power (or lack thereof) and fretting when it doesn't work. Why? To tell the truth, I really don't know. Like most people, deep down I know that the only right way is to let God pull the strings and just be the 'puppet' that he uses to work his plan. What ever He wants to happen WILL HAPPEN!! If He's planned for me to play in an orchestra next year, He will make a way for it to happen without my worrying about it! If he wants me to forget music and do something completely different next year, then none of my 'plans' will work, no matter how hard I try. I should stop and wonder - what is even the point in making my own plans? If they're not His plans, they won't happen.

I heard a quote only this week, "If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans." So how do we find His plans for us?

"Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not." - Jeremiah 33:3

One of my all-time favourite songs...

... is a new piece of music we have called "Bow The Knee." It's a Christian worship song that we are learning to sing in 4-part harmony. At the moment I love it so much I just thought I'd share it with the world. Hopefully when you hear it you'll understand why. (To gain maximum appreciation of it, try to close your eyes, block out distractions, and just focus on the message of the music. Like a lot of songs, this one won't sound amazing unless you allow it to; e.g. don't just have it playing in the background while you do something else, or it won't sound that good.)

Below is an audio track of a professional choir performing it with an orchestra as well as the lyrics, in case you don't catch all the words the first time.

Bow The Knee


There are moments on our journey following the Lord
Where God illumines every step we take.
There are times when circumstances make perfect sense to us,
As we try to understand each move He makes.
When the path grow dim
And our questions have no answers, turn to Him.

Bow the knee; trust the heart of your Father when the answer goes beyond what you can see.
Bow the knee; lift your eyes toward heaven and believe the One who holds eternity.
And when you don't understand the purpose of His plan,
In the presence of the King, bow the knee.

There are days when clouds surround us, and the rain begins to fall,
The cold and lonely winds won't cease to blow.
And there seems to be no reason for the suffering we feel;
We are tempted to believe God does not know.
When the storms arise,
Don't forget we live by faith and not by sight.

Bow the knee; trust the heart of your Father when the answer goes beyond what you can see.

Bow the knee; lift your eyes toward heaven and believe the One who holds eternity.
And when you don't understand the purpose of His plan,
In the presence of the King,

Bow the knee; trust the heart of your Father when the answer goes beyond what you can see.
Bow the knee; lift your eyes toward heaven and blieve the One who holds eternity.
And when you don't understand the purpose of His plan,
In the presence of the King,
Bow the knee.

Music

So I thought I'd do a post about the thing that takes up so much of my time these days - music. This is the time of year when everything starts happening in Cooma, and the music-scene is no exception. In 3 weeks is the annual Cooma Music Competition which is the highlight of my year. We're not doing much this year, except a piece in the small vocal ensemble section. Our family (namely Mum, Bradley, Emma, Caitlyn, Sarah, and myself) has been getting into singing in 4-part harmony lately, so we thought it might be fun to do a piece in the competition.

The Snowy Mountains Ensemble is also expected to perform in the final concert as guests, so we have been polishing our best piece in preparation. On top of that, the Ensemble has been asked to put on a concert for some U3A Music Appreciation program thing the day before, which has kept us busy. Being a new ensemble with new music, there are only a couple of pieces we can play well, so our family ensemble will be playing some pieces to supplement. Unfortunately Joshua won't be back from Newcastle then, so Emma will be doing her first performance in this ensemble on viola (her main instrument is the violin, but she has taught herself how to play viola so that she can play the much-needed parts in ensemble pieces).

Speaking of ensembles, at MuST last week we had a masterclass with a touring ensemble from Chicago. It was really great to be able to talk to them about life as an ensemble musician and hear them play. They were doing a concert at the Wesley Music Centre that evening, but they played most of the program for us, so we essentially got a free concert!

Finally - and before you get too bored to read the rest of this post - I will announce the Snowy Mountains Ensemble's Christmas Carols. This coming Thursday and every Thursday from November 11 to the end of this school term we will be rehearsing simple, fun arrangements of Christmas carols - the idea is that we will invite as many people to join us for those rehearsals as possible, giving local musicians the opportunity to experience ensemble playing in a relaxed atmosphere, and hopefully, if they enjoy the experience, some of them will stay on as permanent members. Easy arrangements and an open strings violin part mean that musicians of any skill level are welcome, and we now have clarinet parts. After all the work we've put into organizing all this (and trust me, it has been hours upon hours of hard work), it would be very nice to see some people participating in and benefiting from this opportunity. So if you know of anyone around that plays an orchestral string or woodwind instrument, tell them to come! :-)

Apart from that there is not much to report, except that I am preparing for an audition next month and I've started learning the coolest piece ever written for flute (well... maybe not quite) - The Great Train Race by Ian Clarke, which is subtitled "The Flute as you don't usually hear it." Quite aptly so, too, as it employs several extended techniques such as residual fast tonguing, singing while playing (!!), lip bending, explosive harmonics, use of quarter-tones, multiphonics and optional circular breathing! It's very fascinating, but the bit that interests me most is the multiphonic section. Until last week I never knew that it was possible for a flute to play more than 1 note at a time - it turns out that flutes can play 2, or even 3 notes at once (multiphonics). Obviously I am very excited to learn this fascinating new piece...

 

Wonderfully Orchestrated

What follows this brief introduction is not written by me. It is copied with permission from a blog post by Terry Ferguson from Head-lines. While I prefer to only publish my own work on this blog, I found an exception in this post. The content is something which I can really relate to, and I hope you find you will all enjoy it as much as I did. So here we go; Wonderfully Orchestrated:

Tuesday at work I attended a performance by two of the members of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra during lunchtime.  The music was quite beautiful, a duet between a violin and a bassoon. 


What I found most interesting was the demonstration given by the bassoonist.  He took apart his instrument, and showed how each piece was an individual, integral part of the whole.  If one piece were broken or omitted, the instrument would not function properly...or at all. The science behind the creation of that instrument was fascinating.

That started me thinking... Think of a symphony producing the works of Mozart or Beethoven. It all begins with the individual playing his part. This is much like how our body operates with its 11 systems working in concert. Each part carefully "orchestrated" to work with the other, each having its own unique and integral purpose. If just one part is injured or missing, then the body does not function properly, or at all (death). Example: Hypothalamus gland



It is only the size of the tip of your thumb and weights 4 grams, yet it regulates equilibrium as well as thirst, body temperature, water balance, hunger, and blood pressure. It links the endocrine system with the nervous system. One little part, so vital to the body as a whole.

King David also thought about the intricacies of the human body, and how each part of us is precisely created...he wrote about this in Psalm 139:


"13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
16 your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."

Another fascinating aspect of our created being are "laminins." They are a family of proteins that are an integral part of the structural scaffolding of basement membranes in almost every animal tissue. Laminins are what hold us together...LITERALLY. They are cell adhesion molecules. They are what holds one cell of our bodies to the next cell. Without them, we would literally fall apart.

Here is what the structure of laminin looks like...AND THIS IS NOT a 'Christian portrayal' of it....if you look up laminin in any scientific/medical piece of literature, this is what you will see... (or Google images). Now tell me that our God is not the coolest!!!

The glue that holds us together....ALL of us.

'He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created; things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things HOLD TOGETHER.'

Colossians 1:15-17

Thousands of years before the world knew anything about laminin, Paul penned those words. And now we see that from a very LITERAL standpoint, we are held together ...one cell to another....by the cross.
And that's my thought for the day!

Now You think about it...