Monday, March 5, 2018

Music Heals (most Sundays)

I didn't want to do Church last week.

It's not the same as going to Church because that means I'd simply show up and either enjoy, or not, whatever happens.

When I go it's a shitload of work.

Arriving, I turn off the alarm in the Bar, cut on the Beer lights, unload the equipment, move tables and Bar stools, hang a sign out front, set up the sound system, test it out, make sure my guitars in tune and ... wait on the musicians to arrive so I can tell them how great they are for coming.

Musicians are funny people ... most have talent.

They arrive ... plug in ... and start playing.

If more than one arrives at the same time it obviously means I'm hearing more than one song at the same time.

Musicians prefer to play whatever they believe to be their best song of the moment ... usually something they've just written or learned ... and they need the positive feedback they've already given themselves for (a) writing a really great song, or (b) doing the greatest cover of a really great song ever!

My job is to give them thanks.

It's a non-paying job ... though in fairness the musicians aren't being paid either ... rather coming to have an audience  ... or in rare cases ... give glory to God for the music in them.

Sometimes it's just crap.

Sitting there listening, on a Bar Stool because I mostly function as the the "Master of Ceremonies" ... not the minister ... or a fellow musician ... but as the one who delivers a weekly audience for musicians in need ... I listen and put things in some sort of order and, after throwing in a prayer, some words and a story of two ... a worship service is born.

Most Sunday's it's great!

And sometimes I get to play rock star too though I know ... somewhere deep inside anyway ... that's not what it's about ... but I also know ... deep inside somewhere ... music heals ... and God knows the world needs more healing ... which is why a choir of Angels announced the birth of Jesus ... and not political kingmakers.

So these egocentric musicians show up demanding a sound system to plug into, a ready made audience ... er, I mean congregation ... and share their music believing with everything in them they put choirs of Angels to shame.

But ... there's this miracle that occurs every Sunday ... the music heals ... someone.

Even the shitty stuff seems to touch.

The musicians don't know.

The performance ... er, I mean the worship ... is over and they're rushing home to write the next song, conceive the next cover, rest up for the next performance or tell choirs of Angels they can open the next show.

But I hang around, unplugging the sound system, taking down the sign out front, putting the speakers away, moving tables and chairs back in place and turning off the beer lights.

As I do these things, people come up to tell me ... not them ... how much the music meant ... and they found some healing to hold onto ... and they hope it happens again next Sunday.

Who knows?

Maybe it will.

More often than not, it does.

In spite of who the musicians are.

But because of the music somehow.

It's powerful stuff.

Likely the most powerful way God could conceive to announce the birth of a Savior.

How to Open the Door

Maddie our sixteen year old who knows everything ... if you don't know something, it can be anything, and need to know, just come by and ask our daughter ... she knows ... is taking the SAT to get in College.

Let me just say Maddie made 1200 the first time she took her College Entrance Test and when I was her age I had to take it twice to make that ... 600 both times.

I didn't do all that great in High School ... having too much fun enjoying everything about it ... and was completely unprepared for anything when I graduated.

When the time comes, all my friends received "Letters of Acceptance" and are greatly excited about leaving home for school.

Not a single College writes me.

I was sad at being left behind ... missing out on what my friends were enjoying ... at my Mother's disappointment ... and my Father's sneering words, "You're not going to amount to anything without an education."

So I got in the car and drove to a College an hour away, knocked on a Dean's door, was invited in and talked myself into getting admitted.

All sorts of contingencies were applied but I still remember the satisfaction of throwing my acceptance letter on the kitchen table that night and telling my Dad, "Guess I'm going to amount to something after all!"

"Ask and it shall be given to you ... seek and you will find ... knock and the door will be opened for you" Jesus explains in a rambling discourse in Matthew's Gospel which is mostly about not listening to idiots while remaining focused on what you want most in life.

"May I help you?" the young, pretty Intern asks as I enter the tiny waiting room cluttered with two massive oak desks, several occupied chairs and three walls full of photographs, plaques and mementos.

"Yes, I have an appointment to see the Congressman," I reply giving my name.

Pretty brown eyes dart through a calendar and then darken. Immediately her face tilts to a computer screen and grows even darker.

"I'm sorry Mr. Elliott ..."

"Rev," I interrupt. "It's Rev. Elliott."

"Oh," she exclaims. "I am so sorry. Rev. Elliott but I can't seem to locate you on the schedule. Who did you make the appointment with?"

On the either side of the small room are two doors ... one is the Senator's office and the other is a Conference Room. The Senator's office door is closed but the conference room door is open and in front of a table sat another desk with a name plate with a name on it.

"Steve Green," I say. "He told me I'd be squeezed in according to my availability."

"Oh," she exclaims again. "Yes, sir Rev. One moment please," and she picks up the phone to announce me.

A few minutes later I sit in front of Congressman Lindsay Thomas.

Later I learn Steve Green is Lindsay's Chief of Staff ... and months after that I finally meet the man and he he laughs and says, "Oh I know who you are Micheal. You pulled a fast one to get inside the Congressman's door."

"It was important," I tell him.

"It always is," he laughs.

At the time, getting in front of the Congressman was one of the most important things in my life!

It had something to do with my work but for the life of me I have no idea what it was.

It's funny that years later, Lindsay and I became friends, hung out on the beach together, drank some beers and swapped stories.

Steve became a member of my Board of Directors.

"For everyone who asks receives ... the ones who seek find ... those who knock get in," Jesus goes on to say.

Truth be told, I've never had much of a problem asking for things or getting inside of closed doors.

Others have a difficult time asking for anything ... they're too proud, arrogant or embarrassed ... so they never ask ... don't go looking for something other than what they've got or who they are ... and haven't knocked on a door ... much less been let inside.

Ask ... Seek ... and knock is the advice Jesus gives.

"And it's true," George Harrison said, "if you want to know anything in this life, you just have to knock on the door, whether that be physically on somebody else's door and ask them a question or, which I was lucky to find, is the meditation {that} ... it's all within."

I know ... I know what you're asking yourself ... "He seriously quoted George Harrison after Jesus?"

Well, yeah. I did.

The former Beatle was a man who never stopped asking ... seeking ... or knocking on doors to find better answers ... enlightenment ... and satisfaction.

After knocking on and gaining entry to every door that interested him, he actually looked forward to dying ... so he could hurry and get on to the answers of life's bigger questions.

If you think about it, it's why we bother to come to Church.

We're asking questions about our lives ... seeking answers we don't have ... and knocking on Heaven's Door by gathering for some safety-in-numbers security that ... it okay to ask ... to seek ... and to knock.

Most people don't.

They accept the status quo ... opting to meet the expectations of others ... work hard to fit in ... follow the rules, laws and Commandments of the land ... dress according to societal norms ... and live pretty much like everyone else.

It's why the world doesn't like those of us who ask questions without easy answers.

It's why those seeking new things, ways, answers or lifestyles are shunned.

Worst of all are those knocking on doors to enter and implement new answers, living new ways and expecting so much more than what we've got.

I stood knocking on the door of an abandoned building in the part of town dubbed "The OK Corral" because that's where everyone went to get what's need to shoot themselves up.

It was late in the day so buildings blocked the sun and shadows fell on the building that was built as a Doctor's Office when those who could pay still lived in the neighborhood ... then it became home for a group of Nuns who started a Catholic Worker House to love the people left behind.

They ran the Nuns off and the house sits empty.

No one answers my knock so I push the door and it opens.

It's black dark inside but I am determined, stepping in and begin groping my way towards light emulating from the other end of a long narrow hall.

I have to tell you I was scared silly but ... this was important ... so I made slowly made my way ... until I got to the room where the light was coming from and step inside ... to find two men crouched in a corner cooking crack!

I scare the daylights out of them.

They scare the daylights out of me!

Everyone takes off running in opposite directions.

When I got away though it was with the conviction it was the right place.

The next day I called the owner living in Miami Beach and ask him to allow a year's lease rent free if we renovate the building and purchase the property within three years.

"Why should I?" he fires.

"It's a crack house now but we want to turn it into a place for healing ... targeting people who have AIDS."

He said lots of things in response but he never said "No."

Seven months later ribbons were cut opening "Phoenix Place", the state's first residential healing home for people, at the time, dying from AIDS.

Here's the thing though.

If you're brave enough to ask then you have to be crazy enough to seek answers you're probably unprepared to get.

If you're willing to seek new ways of living with answers you've found then you have to embrace the fact they're your answers and nobody else's.

If you're going to knock on a door, you damn sure better be prepared that it might open and you'll be invited inside.

So if it's money you want, ask for it. Seek it with everything inside of you. Knock down the doors keeping you from it. You'll get it if you do these things.

If it's sex or romance or companionship ... ask, seek and knock ... you'll find yourself with someone.

If it's fame and acceptance ... ask for it ... chase it ... knock down the doors and people in your way of obtaining it.

Understand though it never ends.

Once you ask, seek and knock on the door to get what's most important to you ... then what do you do?

You start over asking, seeking and knocking on the door of something bigger and better.

It's a life time of upward spiral asking ... seeking ... knocking on bigger doors.

It's not about God giving you what you want.

It is your need to ask, seek and knock down whatever's in your way to be at the place you need to be.

It's not pleading with God to give you all the answers.

It is all about your need to ask ... seek ... knock ... because this is what faith ... and life ... is all about and if you're not questioning ... searching ... or entering unknown places then you're not really living and it's in the living where God is found.

I think this is one of the things Jesus is saying as his bounces all over the place to make a point ... if it's God you're asking for ... seeking ... knocking ... block out the distractions and keep knocking ... even when your hand  hurts from the repeated pounding ... even when you stop believing anyone's there to answer ... even though you you're so damn tied of knocking ... and people are making fun of you ... because if you do ... that door's going to open one day ... and it could be today.