Blind auditions assist blind ambitions - and overcome blind prejudice - as musicians seek to join the world's top orchestras.
One of Australia's most promising trumpeting talents is a young lady I've known all her life. She invests her days practising; having worked with local and European orchestras, confident that blind auditions - where full-length screens conceal aspiring musicians - will eventually secure her career.


Aspirants once auditioned in full-view of their assessors, but blind auditions now open wider doors. Experts always suspected that women lacked the lungpower needed for brass or woodwind instruments - until 1984, when Julie Landsman climaxed her blind audition by blowing a sustained high C and became New York Metropolitan Opera's first full-time female French horn player.


She happily relives her all-male judges' startled reaction on realising they'd chosen a woman: "I loved it! Without that screen their eyes would have affected their ears!"


Music touches our souls with clarity and subtlety. Much like the faith that Jesus lived and taught: a call to explore his balance of absolute divinity with complete humanity; stretching and securing us as we follow him.


His clarity increases our confidence and, as we tackle the blockages that problems bring, he subtly increases our patience and determination, and our sensitivity towards others. For his plan is to remake us into people who are like blind-audition screens: allowing his music to flow through us until he steps into view and helps those around us realise that he's already there for them!




Freedom - Without Dysfunction.


The Liberty Bell, one of America's most-cherished independence symbols, was cast in 1752 by Whitechapel Bell Foundry, which also made London's world-famous "Big Ben." Always defective, this bell had finally cracked irreparably in 1835.


During the 1976 bicentenary, America's Procrastinators' Club contacted Whitechapel, light-heartedly enquiring about warranty terms. Whitechapel's reply was equally light-hearted: "We regret your inconvenience and will replace the bell free of charge - if you return the damaged one to us in its original packaging."


The Liberty Bell mirrors a common view of freedom: a noble ideal, but with a dysfunctional crack between our dreams and our day-to-day grind; that distorts freedom into escapism instead of the integrating power that God offers.


To illustrate this integrating energy, Jesus' teaching covers examples of dysfunction: debts, self-doubt, lost stock, dodgy businesses, unreliable crops, grief, family hassles and work stress. All unwelcome; all able to fracture our morale.


He invites us into a freedom that grows from standing up to these stressful uglies, as we trust him to lead us into learning how to bring them into balance. This balance feeds our morale and overlays our confidence with credibility to build dreams instead of chasing fantasies.


Jesus transformed his disciples' attitudes, values and perspective, and still today he can also answer our simplest or most dysfunctional quests for freedom - delivering in spades for anyone needing a miracle to get started again.


And the liberating power of his resurrection has permanently dissolved any limitations of death - our ultimate dysfunction.


Blessings on you all,
Noel Mitaxa