What if....

As mentioned in earlier blogs, the end stage of life, after retirement and one’s work is mostly done, leaves room for reflecting on the life lived, including the unsavory as well as the wholesome and the in-between events.  Out of the deepest recesses of wherever memory resides (medical science has not yet been able to locate memory storage banks in the brain) surface long-forgotten episodes.  Perhaps, the concluding life is trying to make sense of all that has been in a way that can find acceptance and move on toward whatever destiny awaits us all.

As is inscribed on a tombstone in a very old cemetery on the east side of Wheeling, West Virginia:

      “Stop stranger as you pass by here,

       As you are now, so once was I,

       As I am now, so you shall be,

       So prepare for Death, and follow me.”

Despite our attempts to avoid the inevitable, our minds one way or another will prepare for dying, even if we kick and scream in rebellion against it, and the reemergence of repressed memories is one of the ways it happens.

It happened again last night with a carry-over to this morning.  I attended a brilliant concert featuring the Petar Jankovic Ensemble.  The careful precision and flawless harmonic dynamics of two violins, a viola, and a cello led by a guitar blended with the acoustics of St. Peter’s sanctuary to produce an evening of authentic musical reflection.  This amazing ensemble, comprised of musicians from Indiana University, simply must rank among the top musical geniuses in the world.  So captivating and articulate was their performance that I felt again an indescribable stirring that comes when the soul is touched, a rare occurrence.

There was a flip side to the experience, however, and that resurfaced this morning.  Ah, memory, you are a bedeviling beast!  I know without the slightest doubt that I was meant for music, and was progressing at an early age in the pursuit of singing and playing the piano.  But then what proved to be a determinative event around age of eleven helped to stymy further development in musical directions.

Succinctly, an older teenager in the neighborhood, named Dirk (the third letter in his name should have been “c”), cleverly through seemingly innocent games like “Truth or Consequences,” introduced me to certain “carnal” ways that proved powerfully irresistible.  This was back in the days of barbarism when certain matters were never discussed, especially with parents for fear of reprisals, leaving most children at the mercy of their perpetrators.  Fortunately, today’s children are carefully instructed about how to handle would-be abusers, and the advent of instantaneous communications increases public awareness in a way that deters some of the behavior.  (So much for the idealized 50s.)

Those who study such realities as abuse have known for a long time that among its consequences on youngsters are confusion and obstruction of normal development.  Had such occurrences not happened, instead of quitting piano lessons because “only sissies played the piano” (at least in the culture where I grew up), my identity as male might not have been threatened by such things as music endeavors.  The positive affirmation about my musical accomplishments were not enough to dissuade the confusing factors of abuse, probably because most of those came from women, which inadvertently compounded the problem.  Male authority figures in those days seem to value only “he-man” activities, and the guiding role models for boys then were the John Waynes and Charles Atlases of the world.

Our life choices are never clear-cut.  My decision to enter Christian Ministry was a natural outgrowth of my being raised in The United Methodist Church.  In many significant ways during my childhood and adolescence, the church was my second home, and some of its adults were my adoptive parents.  While the road to music turned out to be the road not taken, it may well be that the church provided a way that promised safe protection from the onslaught of a testosterone-crazed domination system, however unrealistic that promise became.  If some elements of my decision to enter the ministry were influenced by that unrealistic promise, then it is no wonder that disappointments and frustrations prevailed.  The church can be just as abusive as any other segment of society.

The ministry, however, did provide many enriching opportunities to guard others against abuse and to be with still others as they worked their way out of abusive patterns, and such memories are gratifying.  Instead of doing unto others as I had been done unto, somehow I did muster up something of the Christian vision that I hope contributed to the constructive development of others.  And who knows, maybe that’s what destiny had in mind in the first place.

 

I again picked up the practice of piano and organ playing after marriage, and in spite of having only three years of formal instruction as a child, I did master on my own many of the hymns of the church (the ones I liked, which did not include “How Great Thou Art” UGH!), some of the Bach Little Preludes and Fugues, other baroque period pieces, some choral anthem arrangements, etc.  Much of that fluency and dexterity has declined in recent years because of aging and failure to practice.  But the love of music continues to make me wonder, what if….