A capricious idea for... a group of people who share my passion.

I imagined this episode this morning...


I had a few people with me... All of us shared the same passion. We were all drummers. Almost all of us were musicology students - I was the only law student among them. I had to be trained thoroughly by the people in the group, given my inexperience. I slowly grew in talent, in love, in compassion for the people in the group. We became close.

Then one day, it was time to name our group. Several names were put forward. When the leader mentioned my name, I blurted out three words :

Les Tambourinaires Joyeux.

Meaning "the happy (joyous ? I think I'll go with the latter) drummers".

Everyone paused to stare at me. I got cold stares from one of the members. But I simply put it this way : I want to bring joy to everyone's heart. I want each beat to be done in love. His love. It's only through that great love that we can have fullness of life, that we can experience great joy, to its fullest.

After much hesitation, and much consideration, Les Tambourinaires Joyeux won by a narrow margin.

We were the kind of group to do stage opening performances. The first stage opening with me was coming soon, and we had to divide parts : snares and tenor drums. Since there were six of us, we had to divide the parts in threes. I gladly settled for the tenor drum... firstly, because it's just not right for me to be in the spotlight because I've only just begun. Secondly, the lower the tone, the more it makes my heart race. I reckoned that the audience would be able to see the joy spilling forth from the back row. So the snares went to one side and trained, and selected a leader among them, and the rest of us went to another side. I was practically excited the whole time the training took place. I was smiling throughout my training, encouraging people to smile, even encouraging them to hope and pray. The person who was against me was on the side of the snares, and he often used to stare at us when we trained. When we were ready with our routines, we'd gather together and perform the opening piece.

And it was during one of these training sessions that one of the drummers on my side asked me how I could be so cheerful all the time, despite knowing the stuff that happens around me - university politics, people dissenting against me, seniors ragging the juniors, lots of other stuff.

I simply told them that no one else can give us joy but the Man Upstairs.

The day of our first performance came. There we were, in the auditorium, getting ready for the opening "ceremony", so to speak - and for the first time ever, people were clapping and cheering along to the beat. It used to be solemn ; now I just knew the people were happy.

The leader of our six-man team went to the rostrum, turned on the mic and spoke, "I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome our newest member." So they say he did that several times for new members, but I truly felt honoured and grateful. I wanted Les Tambourinaires Joyeux to be a family of sorts, bound by the Lord's love, bound by our passion for rhythm, bound with cords that can never be broken.

Now that you've read this episode, I believe you might understand what's going on in my mind right now : if I ever have the opportunity to set up such a group, yes, I will.