Concert Reflections: Becoming

A reflection by Renovare’s Founder/Cellist Rebecca Shasberger.

Almost nothing in our lives or world is static. Plants grow and bloom, or wither and die. Buildings are constructed, or fall into disrepair. Children grow up, then someday grow old. Towns spring up, but someday may be abandoned. 

The timeline for these changes varies greatly. In some cases, the shifts may be smaller or slower than we hope for, or even than we can perceive. I don’t know about you, but there are things in my life and things about our world that I wish would change more quickly.

In the midst of the waiting and not knowing what will come, am I a person who keeps believing that things could be different? Sometimes I am. Other days it’s hard. And at times, in the midst of a full schedule and long ‘to-do’ lists, I can lose track altogether of the ways God is at work to bring about something new. 

I invite you to pause and consider with me - in a world that is always changing, what are we becoming, whether individually or in our larger communities? Who or what do we hope to become? 

Performing ‘Becoming’ at the Northeast Reintegration Center in Cleveland.

Becoming, the concert we shared throughout Northeast Ohio in March, explored these ideas through music - which is itself ever changing. We experienced the unfolding of musical forms, fragments that are developed into entire pieces, and lyrics that paint inspiring pictures of God’s work. 

After our first performance of Becoming at the women’s prison in downtown Cleveland, one of the women approached us with tears in her eyes and she quoted the lyrics to one of the songs we sang. She said “I can’t wait to be back home making soup for my family, just like you sang about.” The song we sang (Your Work is Happening Here by The Porter’s Gate) referenced the mundane tasks of life (like cooking soup), and how each mundane task is beautiful and is a space that God is slowly working in. It was a humbling reminder that we (those of us who are free people) often see the task of cooking dinner as a mundane, uneventful, uninteresting part of most of our days. And yet, for the woman behind bars, it was one of the things she missed most. 

At another performance of Becoming we were at a shelter for unhoused women. After the concert one of the women came up to say “I really needed to hear those words today. Thank you for saying that.” A phrase like that is always striking because it is a reminder that we never know what the person next to us is going through and what words they might need to hear. 

This concert was meant to gather us together to pause, breathe, and reflect as we let the beauty of music be part of our becoming journeys. Through performing it in four prisons, two shelters, and then again for the general public, we got to experience that even though we are all on our own journeys of becoming and we might not know where we’re headed, we can be on those journeys together as we connect through music.

Our public performance of ‘Becoming’ at the Community of St. Peter in midtown.