For the past three days, Christian churches everywhere have been in the season of Lent. Jesus Christ spent forty days in the desert without food or water or anything. So in His honor, we go forty days without soda or candy or something equally superfluous. No one gives up anyhing that is actually central or necessary to their existence. But we still whine about it... And I'm no exception. This year, I'm going without all forms of Musical Theatre.

It doesn't seem that bad, but you don't know how much you get out of those shows until you have to go without them. You don't realize how much they say or how well they say it until you can't quote them all day; all week; all month; for forty days.

Which led me to wonder why we continue to listen to this stuff in the first place. Because it's powerful. the things said by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Stephen Sondheim, Tim Rice, Steven Schwartz, Jonathan Larson, all of them, all make sense. They're profound. They affect people. We listen to them because they somehow have figured out something deeper than what normal people see and hear every day. Where does this inspiration come from? How could Jonathan Larson have found what he did?

Was he just smarter than the rest of us? Did he exist on another plane? Was he inspired, possibly moved by the Divine? How do we define this? Is it because he's verbose? He knew how to put into words all the ambiguous emotions we subconsciously feel but don't understand and can't express? Was he just more intelligent? Did he have an inborn talent? Or was he merely driven? Did he just work harder than the rest of us to achieve something? Did it come through nothing but discipline? Did he just work, just practice every day, honing his skill just like the great Renaissance painters and sculptors of old?

How did he do it? He was able to create stories, characters, themes, music that still reaches people, that outlives its era and its creator, that means something more than what you and I experience each day. His are certain stories you cannot live without. The characters are more real than most people we know, and the emotions ring true in every heart. Even if we shut our minds to it, it finds a way into us and we find our hearts going out to it. We feel every emotion we've blocked or hidden away. We cry, more openly than we have in a long time, truly affected, really moved by these characters and these stoies.

And yet we still wonder how something so powerful, so poignant, could have been created by someone not even in his prime. How could a man barely scraping by in two jobs and a tiny unfurnished apartment understand so much about people and thought and why we do what we do? How can two and a half hours of music and singing be so moving that you can think of nothing else during these forty days? How can these stories affect you so? Larson was just human, but his stories transcend even that. He dedicated his life, even gave his life for these stories. And he never saw the reaction they have recieved. He never knew how many people were affected by his work. He gave his life to change ours.

Thank you Jonathan Larson.

For RENT; for everything you wrote; for the stories that changed our lives; for all the time you spent crying in your apartment about minute details we take for granted; for exposing yourself so openly and recieving crushing defeat after defeat; for never backing down; for knowing your vision and sticking to it through it all; for knowing these characters and through them, knowing each of us, on a deep personal level; for inspiring all of us; for being who you were and writing what you wrote; thank you Jonathan Larson.

May the Force be with you all. Amen.