Morning Ruach

I am a morning person, which means I already get up pretty early. However, I do not care for this change to Daylight Savings Time. I’d vote in a heartbeat to leave the “daylight” as it is and not try to manipulate our emotions into thinking we have more or less sunlight. But like everyone else, I must make the best of it. 

So this morning my alarm went off at it’s regular time; albeit an hour earlier than yesterday even though the clock numbers still read my normal rising. I made my coffee, turned on some low lit lamps and made my way to the place where I sit each morning: at a trestle table in my sunroom in front of four large windows that look out into my backyard. It is still very dark but this morning I can hear the beautiful semi-low pitched tune coming from my chimes that hang on the deck. Because of their tuning, I can sometimes hear Amazing Grace (okay, and sometimes Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer — according to the particular swing of the gong), but this morning it is just chiming randomly. I always smile to whatever musical melody is playing because I hear it as a personal love song from the Spirit Himself. 

And so I say, “Good morning,” as it would be rude not to do so. After all, in the Hebrew tradition the word for wind, ruach, was also the word used for “God.” 

Sitting down in front of the window, I cannot only hear the wind but I can make out a small contrast in the tall pine tree in the back of the yard swaying against the backdrop of a still darkened sky. Movement. The sign of life. Not wanting to rush beyond this moment of sensory holiness, I sit … and watch … and listen.

Prayer forms.

O Ruach of Creation, in the beginning You hovered above the wildly turbulent waters wooing the earth to rise out of the deep. You beckoned life of every source to be formed out of that earth. 

O Ruach of Life, You breathed into that very first moment, invigorating Your creation with energy. And over time, You breathed life into my body, my soul, my spirit, inviting me to be a part of your purpose and plan.

O Ruach of Whirlwinds, You bear me up in the storms of life, teaching me to trust You in the chaos that roars around me.

O Ruach of Presence, I cannot see You, but I know You are near as I experience Your rhythm and feel Your power; as I hear Your sometimes poignant and haunting music as it plays through Your creation and reaches places of loneliness within me.

O Ruach of Dance, you blow over the places that stifle me and keep me stuck, guiding me in the way You would have me move … a freedom known only by abandonment and by giving in to Your movement.

Blow O Ruach. May my sails billow wide. May I breathe deeply the gift of inspiration. May I be carried to the place of my resurrection. May I be fully free.

Indeed. Let it be.

An ordinary moment.

Avoiding Rejection

The question was a serious one. A deeply thought provoking one. The subject a hard one. But her hand shot up so fast as we sat in that circle in my sunroom that we couldn’t do anything but laugh. 

“Have you ever experienced rejection?”

Of course, we already knew her answer as we had just earlier been sitting around the dining room table discussing her situation. 

The question itself stemmed from a conversation I had had with my niece a number of weeks prior when she said, “I try not to put myself in situations where I will be rejected.”  I flippantly responded, “Me, too,” but as I have thought about that statement and my response, I have come to the conclusion that unless we live alone in a tent in the middle of a desert miles and miles from civilization, it is a total impossibility and practice in futility to avoid rejection. And even then we will most likely be concerning ourselves with why no one is checking up on us. And then feel rejected.

A quick look in the dictionary and you will find this concerning rejection.

To refuse to have, take, recognize, accept, etc.

To discard as useless or unsatisfactory

To cast out or eject; vomit

That’s a pretty harsh list because when we think of rejection, we think in terms of people and relationships. More specifically, people we love. Or did love. People we have allowed into our inner circle. Why else would their rejection carry such a sting? 

One by one the ladies in the circle began to share their stories of being rejected. And there were many, each speaking of disappointment, disillusionment, and pain. Here are just a few.

A mother who tells her daughter, “I don’t love you.”

A teacher who says, “You don’t dress right.” When it was all she had.

An exclusion from a girls’ night out.

A grieving widow thrown out of her home by a hateful and evil stepson.

An employer that says, “You are no longer relevant; your service is no longer needed.”

And what woman does not have some kind of hurtful dating experience to tell? When I told the ladies of a couple of mine, they didn’t know whether to cringe or laugh, so they did both. On one occasion, I had been dating a fellow for a while. There was no exchange of class ring or real verbal commitment except that we had been seeing only each other (or so I thought) for a significant period of time. One afternoon I received a call from a girlfriend who said she felt like she needed to let me know that she and this said boyfriend had been out parking the night before, even giving me the location. How does one respond to that? “Thank you for calling”? And then after another much longer involvement with a guy, yet another life-long girlfriend showed up on my doorsteps saying she wanted me to know that she had been on a date with this said boyfriend the night before. I still haven’t figured out if these girls were my friends or not. Ironically, this last episode was also the day my future husband showed up at my house with his parents for homemade peach ice cream.

After a lengthy discussion concerning rejection, one of the young women in our group boisterously said, “The only way to avoid rejection is to lock yourself up in your house and never go out.”

My point exactly! And even then you’d have to never answer your phone, never check your mail, and never ever get on social media. 

In other words, there really is no way to avoid it. Life just presents it to you. Rejection.

Since that Sunday night with my ladies, I have heard accounts from other sources. Much more serious ones than high school betrayals.

A mother’s last words from her death bed telling her daughter, “I never knew how to love you.”

A grieving daughter suffering the loss of a father who has turned away and become a man she no longer recognizes as the one who raised her.

A daddy telling his young boy before he left him and his mother, “You are not the kind of son I wanted.”

That is some hard stuff right there. 

But if there’s any good news concerning rejection, this might be it: we and they are in really good company.

As we press further into the Lenten season and the Passion story, we are becoming more and more aware of this One who was “rejected by many,” as Isaiah tells us. 

Jesus told His own disciples that He would be rejected by the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law (Luke 9:22). And He was. 

To those in authority, Jesus asked, “Didn’t you ever read this in the Scripture? ‘The stone [Me] that the builders [you] rejected has now become the chief cornerstone’?” (Matthew 21:42).

And speaking again to His disciples concerning the coming age, Jesus once again says, “But first the Son of Man must suffer terribly and be rejected by this generation” (Luke 17:25).

And don’t think for a minute that each of us hasn’t had a voice in the crowd that cried out, “Crucify Him!”

So what do we do with all of that? The Scripture is pretty clear about that one, too.

“Having loved His own who were in the world,” those who were about to scatter and leave Him to suffer alone, “He loved them to the end.”

And from the cross, hovering above those who had just nailed Him there, “Father, forgive them.” 

That’s how we avoid rejection. We don’t play into it. We love and we forgive. 

But there was one more time when Someone turned His back on Jesus. We hear it when He cries out from the cross in a loud voice, “‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (Matthew 27:46.)

His Father … the One with whom He had never ever been separated, turned His face away. It was the ultimate rejection. Yet even here, the turning away held purpose. And it’s what held Him there.

Love and forgiveness … for you and me. 

Again, when it comes to rejection, there’s no way to avoid it. But what we can do is choose to live as Christ lived and love and forgive those who do turn their backs to us.

Just an ordinary moment.

Sometimes You’ve Just Got to Laugh

I always enjoy hearing stories of other’s experiences … and none have been funnier than those at the expense of the dead. Sounds pretty harsh, right? But it happens. Let me explain.

My dear, dear friend and musical cohort David Loudermilk called me this morning on his way to work. My last blog in which I wrote of playing for the Men’s Bible Class had struck a humorous chord in him and he wanted to share. We all have stories … especially David. He can weave them like nobody’s business, and he always, always, always leaves me laughing. This morning David related how he was playing for a funeral at the First Baptist Church in Perry a number of years ago, and as the grieving family began processing in, he quickly turned to the page in the hymnal: “Like a River Glorious.” It’s a wonderful piece for just such a time. In fact, it’s the processional hymn my sister-in-law chose for her husband and my brother’s funeral service. And, yes, David was at the piano for that one, too. 

Anyway, David told me he turned to the hymn, thinking he knew the page number, and began boldly playing only to realize, much too late, he had turned to the wrong page and was now belting out on the organ, “Set My Soul Afire.” (Oh, my. I just laughed out loud again as I typed that.) Now if you don’t see the humor in that, just think about it a minute. Let it sink it. You will get it. Some faster than others.

I have certainly had my foibles at the keyboard. It wasn’t too long ago that I began the final congregational hymn during a funeral service and realized as I played the introduction that I didn’t have the last page of the song. As one who doesn’t play by ear, I knew that without Divine intervention I was the one sunk. I must admit that I prayed like never before while playing that first page, that I might miraculously develop the “gifting of ear,” but the Lord just didn’t see fit to do that for me that day. So at the end of the first verse and chorus, which I completely and devastatingly and humiliatingly bombed, I held up my “give me just a second” finger to the presiding pastor so I could retrieve the music from the hymnal sitting on the floor to my left. He obviously didn’t know sign language, and as I was bending over, he panicked and quickly said, “Let us pray.” All he knew is that I slumped off the bench. My brother who was in the sound booth in the balcony also thought I had had a stroke and was on his way down before I could raise back up. Yes, I was embarrassed, but when all was said and done, all I could do was laugh about it with my brother and the pastor. However I did gain some wisdom. You can bet I check to make sure I have ALL of my music before I sit down to play.

Every musician has his or her stories. I reminded David this morning of how a husband asked me to play “Send in the Clowns” as his wife was being wheeled out of the church to her final resting place. And I did. Ironically, I played for that husband’s funeral, too, but he had asked me for “How Great Thou Art” for himself. He had always told me that if he didn’t sit up and say, “Amen!” when I concluded that I would know he was for sure dead. I was a little nervous about that one as I just wasn’t real sure as to what to expect when I hit that last note.

But the best story and surely the funniest I have ever heard was from a friend and worship leader named Guy Priest who was to sing for a funeral for a man in his congregation. When he asked the grieving wife what she wanted him to sing, she responded, “Jingle Bells.” 

“Jingle Bells?” he asked.

“Yes, Jingle Bells.”

One more time. “Jingle Bells.”

“Yes, Jingle Bells. It was his favorite song.”

And so Guy prepared “Jingle Bells.” The morning of the funeral he stood before those who had gathered in the sanctuary and in the most funeral-like way, sang a stirring and emotional rendition of “Jingle Bells.”

“Dashing through the snow…

In a once horse opened sleigh…

O’er the fields we go…

Laughing all the way…”

Well by the time he got to the chorus and was crooning, “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way…” he noticed that the widow was just weeping. And he thought, “Wow, this is really getting to her.” And so he continued in his soft, soothing voice, “Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse opened sleigh.”

And he quietly sat down.

After the funeral, Guy approached the widow, and with great tears in her eyes, she said, “I didn’t mean ‘Jingle Bells.’ I meant ‘When They Ring Those Golden Bells.’”

Of course, we all laughed hysterically at the story. It just doesn’t get any better … nor worse … than that. Guy proceeded to share that several years later he was telling that story in a church in another state, and a woman came up to him and said, “I just want you to know that I was at that funeral and it was NOT funny.” 

Oh, ma’am. I so disagree. That was hilarious.

Dear readers, there are times when only serious behavior and a respect for the grieving or dying is the only appropriate response or action. But when my brother and later my daddy got toward the end of their lives and things really were hard, my other brothers and I said we were going to laugh when we could. And we did. And we did not and do not apologize for it. Seeing the humor in hard and difficult situations often became our salvation. And we are so grateful.

I believe the gift of laughter, not at the expense of another, but because of the joy that really does abide in us, though so deep and buried at times, is a true gift from our Heavenly Father. There really are funny things that happen at times that the only appropriate response should be to laugh about it. He is a God Who laughs. Why else would He tell us laughter really does a spirit, soul and body good if He didn’t want us to laugh in the places that need medicine? (See Proverbs 17:22.) So when it’s the right thing to do, let’s laugh. Let’s find healing.

If I have been irreverent, then please forgive me. But if I have given you some freedom to laugh, then do it from the belly. And remember to give thanks.

Just an ordinary, grace-filled moment.

Oh, and thanks, David, for the call this morning. You and your antics are always medicine to my soul. Bless you, sweet friend.

To Mr. Francis Nunn: Thank You

As I sit here in front of my screen and keypad, it is an early Sunday morning. Shortly, I will be packing my blue and white bag with music and heading to church where I will find my place sitting on the bench at a beautiful Steinway grand piano that at one time belonged to my mother’s childhood friend, Billie Davis Sexton, and the one on which she practiced as a child. It’s where you will find me most any Sunday morning. And I am grateful. But my story doesn’t begin here.

At the beginning of my third year in grade school, Mom and Dad sent me to Mrs. Jean Gossett out on Lake Joy Road. [I had already taken a year of piano from Mrs. Bedingfield who taught lessons in a little room/closet next to the stage in the Tucker Elementary lunchroom. I would forego recess twice a week and go to her instead.] Mrs. Gossett was a public school teacher who taught lessons in her home in the afternoons. She was also the organist at the Perry Methodist Church, AND she raised German Shepherds of which I was terribly afraid. Beth Davis Roper also took lessons, and because most families only had one car, our mothers would take turns driving us each week. Beth and I would alternately wait while the other took her lesson. Of course, the “waiting” was in the den with multiple German Shepherds staring at me through the sliding glass doors. (Did I mention my fear?) But as far as I knew, my musical abilities really progressed. I was playing Beethoven in no time. 

Mr. Francis Nunn was the beloved music director at the Methodist Church for decades. I still attribute the singing congregation at PUMC to his abilities and leadership so many decades ago. He not only led, he taught us how to love singing and to sing joyfully. I vividly recall how he would stand before the congregation beating the open hymn book with the back of his hand keeping rhythm while we sang. Oh, how that man loved to sing. Mr. Francis was also the song leader for the Men’s Bible Class which was made up of all the elderly men in the congregation. For decades, the class was broadcast live on WPGA, the local radio station. Yes, LIVE. Every Sunday morning at 10:00.

On one of those mornings when I was in the FOURTH grade, Mr. Francis came up to my Sunday School class and said he needed me; they had no pianist that morning. It never dawned on me to tell him no, so off I went to the basement under the sanctuary where the Men’s Bible Class met. However, before making his way to me, Mr. Francis did stop at my daddy’s class to make sure it was okay with him if he asked me. Daddy said yes then ran down to the kitchen in the church fellowship hall and called Mom who was staying home with the twins and told her to turn on the radio because, “Nancy is playing for the Men’s Bible Class!” Then Daddy raced out to his car and turned on his radio so he could listen, while Mom listened from home, to hear his daughter play.

When I got down to the Men’s Bible Class, Mr. Francis asked me to choose the hymns. After all, I was only ten years old. I picked out The Star-Spangled Banner and The Awakening Chorus, the two most difficult songs to sing, and probably play, in the Cokesbury hymnal. Who knew? All I knew is that I loved playing them. He said the National Anthem was a no-go and suggested I select something else, which I did, though we did attempt The Awakening Chorus to everyone’s horror and embarrassment, I’m sure. I was told that Mr. Wendell Whipple who was leading the class on the radio was so disturbed by the whole scenario, he completely ruined the Lord’s Prayer, leaving out entire phrases. And my great-uncle Bernie (Vernon Tuggle), president of the Bank of Perry, who bought me my first piano and who had already suffered one heart attack, was so upset and nervous, he had to pop two nitroglycerin pills.

Me? I was as happy as a lark in a tree on a Spring morning. I had found my niche. My love. Even my calling, so to speak. Mr. Francis began having me accompany the sanctuary choir and even play for church services when needed. And here I am 55 years later, continuing that first call to “come play.” 

I really do love what I get to do, but I still get stunned by it. I tell people all the time I am convinced that somehow God purifies the air waves and changes the notes to something holy. As Johann Sebastian Bach said, “I play the notes as they are written, but it is God who makes the music.” I couldn’t agree more. But I am also so very grateful to be a part of the equation.

But so was Mr. Francis. His life still sings each morning as I play for he is the one who saw me, believed in me, gave me opportunity. So thank you, Mr. Francis. God used you mightily in my life to shape me, to direct me, to stir a passion in me, and to fulfill God’s purpose in me. I will be eternally grateful. And one day, on that Awakening Chorus day, I will tell you so.

Until then, I will keep this before me on the piano each week:

I play my piano with the love of God.

God, be with me now as I call notes into being.

May they make real my work of love.

May they join the work of creation,

Called from nothing,

Uttered over chaos,

Bringing order.

Esther De Waal  (adapted)

Let it be.