By Frances George

Pachelbel’s Canon in D

…and at Baylor

While cleaning the breakfast dishes and listening to the classical station on the radio just now, Pachelbel’s Canon in D began playing its familiar strains. You know the piece. It’s the one that begins with a cello and one violin, playing a simple and repeated musical phrase – a repeated short harmonic variation. With each repetition of the phrase, more strings are added. The composition becomes complex yet retaining an elegant simplicity but all the while the steady repetition and rhythm of the main musical phrase prevails. As the piece moves towards its highest point of complexity, the music incorporates chord progressions and measures that round out the piece to a full concert of strings creating an exquisite canon. Finally, the piece, softens and all the strings converge upon one final chord resolution.

If Mary Scott’s four years at Baylor were a musical piece, Pachelbel’s Canon in D would be her signature concert piece.

As I listened, I thought of the decision to go far from home to a place where she was a “single string” knowing no one. Move- in day arrived, and a few more strings were added.  Freshman year, walking to class added more strings to a now quite pleasant piece. Spring, summer, fall repeating the beautiful familiar strains of “That Good Old Baylor Line”… Fall brought football season and even more joy and winter ushered in Recruitment, the full complement of a beautiful string section created such amazing music. Friends, friends and more friends! Chord progressions occurred as they settled on their major, fell in and out of love, wept together over the too-soon death of a mother, laughed together, opened care packages from home together, traveled the world together, all the while creating a musical piece that would become a high mark of their life. The one constant: their love for Jesus that remained their steady rhythm, undergirding four years of growing from gifted young girls to dignified young women. It was the steady beat that you hear in Pachelbel’s Canon and you see in their life. It does not change and yet it changes them as the music rises and falls to its conclusion. The strings display their beauty and demonstrate their potential as the piece progresses. So too, with our daughters and sons at Baylor.

And then, as fast as it climaxed to one of the most beautiful and recognizable and pleasant pieces of life, it must have its musical denouement.

Last night I received a text from Mary Scott following the house’s final Senior Meeting: “Getting sad about graduation. It went too fast.”

Following was a picture from Mary Scott of the six best friends, six individual “strings” who determined that as a group they would be stronger together than as individuals – pledging the same house and leaving a legacy. And they were. And they are. And they have.  A canon is a “device in which several voices play the same music, entering in sequence.” That aptly describes our young women (and men) at Baylor. Many voices springing from the same beautiful music, entering on cue with the same lovely theme throughout. Individuals who realize together they are stronger and will make a difference on their campus and in their culture, continuing long after their days at Baylor are over.

Suddenly, in just two weeks, our Pachelbel’s Canon in “B” (Baylor) will strike its final chord and resolve with one lovely last note for the Class of 2016. Too fast. Too wonderful. Too many memories to count.

But just like Pachelbel’s Canon, Baylor will always be a most pleasant chapter of life and whenever you “hear” it in your mind, you will want to turn it up and listen over and over again to its familiar and comforting strains. Thank you, Mary Scott, for bringing this mom joy.  Thank you for choosing Baylor. 1200 miles from home, yet right around the corner. Not only have you made a difference at the university our family loves and calls our own now, but you’ve made a difference in me.

And that is, as always, the Baylor difference.