Video from PBS
From the PBS Special "An Evening With Lucia Micarelli" (March 2018) Featuring: Randy Kerber Ian Walker Shot at Hahn Hall, Music Academy of the West - Santa Barbara, CA
"Born in Queens, New York, Lucia was immersed in the arts by the age of three, diligently practicing dance, piano, and violin. It didn’t take long for Lucia to discover her passion and greatest talent was the violin, which quickly became her main focus. After moving to Hawaii at the age of five, she continued to refine her skills on the violin with teachers Kathryn Lucktenberg and Sheryl Shohet, and just a year later at the age of six, Lucia made her debut as a soloist with the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra. Soon after, she began frequently appearing on local television shows and concertizing throughout the Islands...." From her website: luciamacarelli.com (link)
Lucia Micarelli has the gift of music. This clip from PBS is very touching as she recounts the families struggles with her father Frank and his Parkinsons. Frank died in 2013, here is a link to his obituary: Frank Micarelli (link).
Known as the barefoot violinist as she performs barefoot on stage she has also been acting for several years now in the TV series Treme and has done a Hallmark movie. Lucia speaks poignantly about her father and the sadness of Parkinson's Disease. Having been in healthcare for a decade I have seen its debility firsthand and have one friend with it now.
This is a progressive neurological disorder for which there is no known cure, but there are medicines that alleviate the symptoms and often slow the progress of the disease. The symptoms and the rate of progression of the disease vary widely from patient to patient and are impossible to predict. Sometimes the progression is slow, as with Billy Graham who had Parkinson’s for 26 years. The actor Michael J. Fox also has Parkinson’s and has continued to function well and act. In other people the disease progresses more quickly.
If we get cancer, or dementia or Parkinson's whatever we must be at peace.
Psalm 139: 16
16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
There is a kind of maturity that can be attained only through the discipline of suffering in this life.
When Jesus’s was on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death. Christ learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.
Jesus was disobedient before he suffered, but in his incarnate state he too had to learn lessons of obedience, levels of obedience, that could only be attained through suffering. In this way, he grew to “perfection”: not that he was morally imperfect before his sufferings, but that the fullness, the perfection of his identity with the human race and of his human, temporal obedience to his heavenly Father, could be attained only through the refining fires of suffering.
This “perfection” he achieved with the result that “he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him,” but also with the result that he is able “to empathize with our weaknesses” since he “has been tempted in every way, just as we are yet he did not sin” Hebrews 4:15
Enjoy this video and the many others by Lucia Macarelli.