Healing Me Softly...

Just yesterday I wrote about it, and tonight, what I wrote about came true. The evening has started out rough: my son wanted nothing to do with me - he wanted Mommy. However, Mommy had promised our daughter she would stay with her for the children's program at church. Our daughter was pretty sweet with me, and I thought maybe she would be cool with my staying with her and "Mommy" leaving with our son. I found out that was most definitely NOT the case. So we had to make the choice of which child was going to melt down. I had to physically remove my son from the situation, as he cried as though I had beaten him.

Eventually I outlasted his mood and helped him recover from the meltdown. Then we played a bit, and got him ready for bed. He read me a story, using different voices for each character. He even sang some of the dialogue. Then Mommy and Sissy got home, and we found out he had homework - and he immediately went back into meltdown mode. Eventually, I helped him get through it and sent him back to bed just a few minutes after I was supposed to be at rehearsal. By now, I had a raging headache to go with the heartburn I've had all day and the other digestive problems I've had for two days.

In this condition, I left my home and drove to the rehearsal site, only about a mile away. I walked up to the stage feeling tired, stressed, a bit sick, and achy. I listened to the other singers and found my part, sometimes with just a little help from my friends. As we sang together, the harmony did its healing work in my heart, as well as in my head. Perhaps it's more accurate to say the Spirit behind the songs worked in my heart and in my head. This combination of people: a fifty-something male guitarist, a twenty-something female singer mainly singing harmony, a college-age female lead singer, and me, an almost-fifty keyboard player and harmony singer, became the harmony St. Paul wrote about as he encouraged contentious groups of people to "live in harmony with one another."

Now, these folks are friends of mine. I would choose to be with them even if we were not singing. But the act of listening to each other and blending our parts to create something beautiful helped me experience just a touch, just a taste of heaven. The hymn writer called it "a fortaste of glory divine." I don't mind bearing whatever burdens come my way, as long as I also get to regularly experience God's healing grace. For me, harmony of the voice helps to bring harmony of the heart, and that, my friends, is a wonderful channel of grace.

Until tomorrow,

Michael


©2008 J. Michael Bryan. All rights reserved.

No, Hell has not frozen (at least not this part of it!)

Weird title, don't you think? And why would I use it? It's because I haven't posted to my "daily" blog since December of 2007. Crazy! And again, why is that? Because I try to "finish" my blog before posting it. In other words, I think I have to edit and polish everything I write, instead of publishing my reflections on life, in process.

In real life, I'm a very strong introvert. When writing, that carries over as I try to think it through before writing it, as opposed to thinking it through by writing it. Well, it's not really working out for me to work that way, because there are 'way too many things that require my decisions these days, and so I never get to polish and perfect anything. So I'm going to try writing as a part of my thinking through/decision-making process. If you'd like, you can tell me what you think; if not, you, my theoretical reader(s) can just think positive thoughts for me and pray that God shares with me enough wisdom for the day, and that I recognize it when it comes.

I like to help other people. Tell me what you need, and I'll happily try to fulfill it for you. Tell me what decision you have to make and I'll help you think and pray it through. Tell me what you need to find out and I'll jump at the chance to research your options. However, when it comes to me, I'd rather not make a lot of decisions. I'm more comfortable before the decision gets made, when all the options are still open. I like being a loyal team member; I'm very uncomfortable being a team leader or manager. The title "Boss" feels to me like a noose around my neck.

In some respects this feels like hell to me. At least, it feels like what my imagination tells me hell feels like. I must do what I cannot do. My responsibility as a "boss" conflicts with my feelings of loyalty as a friend. I'm required to confront someone about problems I can't fix when I'd prefer to listen to the other singers and sing the missing harmony part. And when I finally do get to simply sing my part, I no longer feel so hopeless.

What is hell? Theologians and philosophers have written volumes about it. One friend of mine even wrote a book with the unlikely title of Hell: the Logic of Damnation. But to me, it boils down to this: hell is a state of the absence of the knowledge and feeling of God's presence. Is God actually gone? I don't think so, but in my life, sometimes I can't feel God's presence. That, to me, is hell. So I have definitely been to hell and back many times.

What is heaven? When I'm singing my part with friends (whether we know each other or not), I again know the presence of the Creator. The Spirit moves in and out of me like my breath. This, to me, is a bit of heaven. And when I get to look at a rainbow with my kids. And when my dreaded voice mail, instead of being a complaint, ends up being from my wife, who says, "I'm sorry we had such a horrible morning. I love you." These things, simple as they are, help me to notice the presence of the God who has promised never to leave or forsake me.

Please understand: I do believe in a hereafter, including a realm in which we experience God's unmediated presence for eternity. I believe this is what most of us call "heaven." We think that's where we go when we die physically. I believe it. But I don't want to die before tasting of heaven. I want it now. If heaven involves the direct, unmediated presence of God, it seems to me that God's "mediated" presence can come through truth or beauty, creation or creativity, a word spoken or sung, and especially through the presence of someone who never turns away, no matter how unacceptable I feel.

So sometimes I feel like I'm in hell. Like a lost child who wants to go home, I want to be in heaven - in the presence of Mommy and Daddy - but I can't get there. I need someone to bring heaven to me, so that I can then take it to someone else. I'm not up to that task. But together, I think we can do it. Our world desperately needs to experience heaven, so that we can recognize hell for what it is - and avoid it like the plague.

Much love to you, dear reader(s). Please come back soon - and I will too. If I don't, please remind me!

Michael


©2008 J. Michael Bryan. All rights reserved.