A Renewed Subscription, A Renewed Spirit

I recently renewed my Blumenthal Performing Arts Broadway Lights subscription, a tradition I’ve held for over 25 years. Sitting in my seat (Orchestra Center, Row AA, seat 311) as the curtain rises never fails to stir something deep within me – a blend of awe, anticipation, and even reverence. It’s a place where music, storytelling, and movement converge to awaken my spirit. As I clicked “renew,” I realized this wasn’t just a commitment to the theater season – it is a reflection of the ways I also renew my spiritual life. In the same way I look forward to each new touring show, I find myself anticipating what new thing God might be doing within me.

Music has been the thread that has run through every season of my life. I started playing piano at five, began teaching piano at eighteen, and was a vocal performance major in college. Music taught me discipline and creativity, but more than that, it taught me how to listen deeply – something that continues to shape my spiritual life. In moments of doubt, weariness, or joy, I often turn not first to words, but to melody. There is something sacred about sound, something God-breathed in a well-placed chord or a resonant silence. Certain chord progressions never fail to bring a tear to my eye – like the joy in “La Vie Bohème” from “Rent,” or the final 2 minutes and 40 seconds of Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring,” where simplicity and transcendence seem to hold hands. Over time, I’ve come to believe that sacred spaces are not only marked by stained glass; they can also be lit by footlights and filled with overtures.

I’ve grown to hold tightly to a faith that moves – one that evolves, includes, and makes room for mystery. I no longer see questions as threats to belief but as invitations into deeper relationship. The faith of my childhood has stretched into something more spacious, more alive – less about certainty and more about trust. Like live theater, faith requires participation. It asks us to show up, to stay present, to let ourselves be changed by what we encounter. God, for me, is not distant or rigid, but dynamic, loving, and always speaking – often in unexpected ways. Sometimes through scripture, sometimes through song, and sometimes in the hush right before the curtain rises.

I also hold this long-standing subscription with humility, knowing it represents a kind of privilege. To sit front row for decades is no small thing. I recognize that access – whether to the arts or to theological spaces of growth – is not evenly distributed. Not everyone is given a seat at the table or in the theater. So I carry a quiet responsibility: to share beauty where I can, to teach and mentor generously, and to stand alongside those whose voices have too often been silenced or sidelined. God’s kingdom, after all, is always about widening the circle.

In the end, renewing my subscription is more than buying tickets. It’s a reminder of what it means to return – to the art I love, to the Spirit who calls me, to the sacred work of becoming. It is a rhythm of grace and growth, of being reawakened again and again. And in that rhythm, I find the God who is still composing new music in me.