Cast Thy Bread Upon the Waters

This piece is very special to me, although—and because—it was composed at a very difficult time, in the weeks following the painful loss of a pregnancy that my wife and I suffered early in our marriage. Thumbing through the Bible, I came upon this passage from Ecclesiastes. It spoke to me powerfully about the virtue of accepting loss as a natural and even beautiful part of life. Clouds empty, trees fall; only God knows why. The experience taught me something important: to feel something deeply—I mean all the way down, deep enough to make every cell in your body thrum and cry—this is a rare thing. And when I finally yielded wholly and truly to that sadness, there was a strange kind of joy in it. It happened during the two weeks I wrote the piece. Maybe you can hear it.