Gotta Wrestle this Specter to the Ground

It's late, and I should be in bed, but it is also quiet in my house now, something that seems to never happen these days when I'm awake. So, I'm going to write. Write first, think about it later.

Awhile back I wrote this post about a song I was going to play on guitar with my church choir. The last comment dangling there in my combox was left unanswered, at least publicly: How did it go? That question in my own mind has been eating a hole in me ever since, and I think it is time I wrestle it to the ground. Isn't that what this blog is for, anyway?

Last Saturday evening after Mass my friend who does the cantor scheduling nabbed me and told me what a wonderful job I did with the song the week before. I don't hang on compliments as a rule, but I wanted to take that one and mentally frame it and look at it several times. It didn't really make that much of a difference, but at least it gave someone else's perception of reality to think about.

There was something very deeply strange about this experience of playing my guitar that Sunday. I was shaking, but it wasn't from nervousness. I've played in church, at Masses, in front of people, on stages, at concerts, in all sorts of settings -- for years. Like 30 of them. I started playing guitar when I was 11. No, the strange thing was how I brought that guitar into this context that has been so strangely powerful and meaningful in my life this year. When I showed up for choir practice the Tuesday before that Sunday (the day I wrote the aforementioned blog post) I actually left my guitar in the car at first, until Joe (the director) pointed out that it seemed I'd forgotten something. I joked about how, upon my arrival, I was only able to remember how badly I needed to use the restroom, so I'd left the guitar behind. But I knew that wasn't actually true. I needed the reassurance that he was serious about this proposition, and in fact I had almost left it at home out of disbelief. It was only a conversation, a casual request, after all. There was no, you know, blood pact or anything.

So, after rehearsal I stammered out to Joe something to the effect of "So, I assume I brought this thing here for some reason?" He invited me to let him hear it. The song, that is. Images flash through my mind: me and Gail, me and Marcia, me and Lothair, me and Joe Glatzel.... about 20 years worth of "listen to this song." But this is not "listen to this song," it is "let me hear it." This is not a cowardly demand from me, it is an invitation from him. My mind was fluttering like a butterfly trying to get outside through a solid pane of glass. Joe was fine with my honestly pitiful attempt at the picking of this song. I'm guessing he doesn't play guitar and therefore doesn't realize what it sounds like to me. We spend most of the time debating what key to play it in, all because I'm assuming he plans to play it the way he talked about hearing it -- with piano.

In a day or two I calm down and realize I don't know how to do the introduction, nor do I know exactly how to follow a piano. I realize I need to call Joe and ask him about this, but my strange case of phone phobia overtakes me. I put it off as long as I can, until Saturday morning. At which time I learn he expects me to do it alone, leading the choir and the congregation. I hang up the phone, and the more I think about it, the more I think he is nuts. I had arranged to meet him briefly after the Saturday Mass, and I try to suggest a change of plans. Does not fly. At all.

So Sunday arrives, and I can see my heart beating through my dress. My other choir pals assure me it will be fine. We never run through the introduction, and I'm cringing inside. Joe sits down to his prelude and assures me "you'll be just fine." Generally I believe him, but this time I knew he just had no idea what he was saying. At least, not to me.

The offertory came, and I played what I knew to be the introduction. I was the only one who knew that's what it was, just as I knew would happen. Oh, and I did completely fumble several chords, like fingers on the wrong fret fumble. When the choir was not cued in, I repeated the same chord for a couple of measures while seeing if I could taser Joe with my eyeballs. For some reason he didn't fall to the ground writhing in pain. He cued, we sang the song, and that was it.

But that was just what was visible and audible on the outside. What was going on inside me was screaming so loudly and rumbling so violently, and yet it took me several days to grasp it.

I can use this metaphor for how God has brought about healing and transformation in my life by the vehicle of this choir this year: It is like going through a photo album. I'm going about my business, and then God picks out a snapshot of my past, of my heart and holds it up for me to see. He asks me to look at it, and then to look at the reality around me. Then He asks me "Marie, is the reality you see now anything like this snapshot of the past?" And I eventually have to say, "No, Lord, it isn't." And I come to know and realize more deeply that the Lord is my Redeemer. This whole process doesn't happen in moments. It's more like weeks or months.

But that Sunday, it wasn't just a photo I was being shown. There was a real live artifact right there with me, AND I was singing a song I had learned back when I was a teenager. Double blast-from-the-past whammy. Somehow that experience dredged up not the image of me in music ministry at Franciscan University or at Risen Savior Fellowship, and not the memory of me with my friends, but the memory of a much more difficult reality. For many years, my guitar was my primary escape from emotional misery, sadness, depression, despair, isolation. I poured out my heart in songs that I wrote when I did not know how to speak to people. I wrote prayers when I did not know how to make any connection between Jesus and the Body of Christ, His Church, real people. For far longer than I care to think about I was very much like Simon and Garfunkel's I am a Rock: I've built walls/A fortress deep and mighty/That none may penetrate/I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain/Its laughter and its loving I disdain.

And the truth was, when this "photo" was held before me to examine, it frightened me more than all the others I'd seen combined. That question: "Marie, is the reality you see now anything like this snapshot of the past?" frightened me. I did not see... I almost feel I should say I do not see, or am just seeing, that walls are something I build, or something I render flat. I determine admission to my fortress. Maybe friendship does cause pain, but living like a Rock causes all feeling to cease. It causes numbness. It causes walking death. I have tremendous need of friendship. I have tremendous friends. Like Joe often tells us in choir: you have the notes, you just need to believe that you have them! But at that moment, and in the aftermath of playing that song that Sunday, I could not believe. The question arose before me like the most frightening specter. And all I could see was my former self, holding that guitar, being alone. Like it was the only possibility for my life.

But the only way that specter could be true is if I could simultaneously deny how I came to be standing there that day with that $*#&! guitar in the first place! Sometimes I just cannot process reality that quickly. And sometimes it is simply very hard for me to accept happy things. I'm pretty good at gritting my teeth and weathering the icy wind ripping into me, but to simply feel the sunshine on my face and smile can cause me to get weepy.

So, my friends, do me this little favor. Help this recovering Rock and Island. Laugh with me for the joy of friendship.

But don't laugh at mistakes I make on the guitar or I shall hit you with it.