Here a flutist rehearses Ashokan Farewell before a wedding at Hidden Lake Gardens on Saturday. My wife performed the ceremony and enlisted me as the sound technician.  I pushed a button, twice.  I also enjoyed Ashokan Farewell twice.  The beauty of the place and the music offset the faint smell of manure in the air — there is a reason these gardens look so beautiful.

A gifted musician draws my attention.  They give themselves to an instrument for years of practice, and on a particular day they devote their talent to a single piece of music.  The beauty of music rises from selectivity as much as skill.  A musician plays one instrument, not many, and from many potential pieces chooses one.

Like a musician, a Quaker practices selectivity.  They envision a “cosmic tenderness” that infuses all created things.  Out of this universal reality, a particular concern will rise in a Friend’s mind — a specific way they are to make Divine Love real in daily life.

The state of having a concern has a foreground and a background.  In the foreground is the special task, uniquely illuminated, toward which we feel a special yearning or care… In the background is the second level, or layer, of universal concern for all the multitude of good things that need doing.  Toward them all we feel kindly, but we are dismissed from active service in most of them.  (Thomas Kelly)

In other words, do not try to do all things.  Devote your time to your concern, the way you need to activate love in the world.  Look with favor on the concerns of others, but if you do not feel an “inbreathing” that tells you to join them, you need not; and if they try to press their concern on you, you are free to say no.  God has not asked you to play that song.