There’s a scene in the most recent season of The Crown in which Princess Margaret goes riding on the back of a motorbike across London. The scene is beautiful itself, but the music that plays overhead is stirring, practically etherial to me.
To give none of the story away, it’s clear as Margaret rides that she’s made a decision — for better or for worse — to live her way and because of that, she’s alive. Really, truly. You can see it in her eyes — she’s a little scared but she’s certain and she really wants it — this own life of hers. The scene and the music are so stirring that it made me literally sit up and lean forward.
The piece, “Spring” from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, recomposed by Max Richter, is doing something to me these days. It’s stirring something inside and it’s speaking to me about something surprising —spring. I find myself wanting to believe that there’s new life pushing up right here, right now in me.
And I’m wanting, once again, for my life to be something that makes people sit up straight and lean forward — not because I’m special or a spectacle to behold, but because Jesus is a sight, a sound, an everything to behold and that somehow comes spilling out in me.
This music is reminding me that I want to paint a life with bold strokes and tiny delicate details that together tell a grand story. I want to live the way I feel when I hear this music — brave and hopeful and most importantly, alive — ready to run a million miles because life is delicate and beautiful and the greatest gift we’ve been given.
