The Future is Ours

I had to skip piano practice on Friday because I was busy working on Haiti stuff for my church, but last night, I got back to work. I took out my book of Bach sinfonias and inventions and worked on sight-reading. It was remarkable. I went maybe an hour and a half, and it was not particularly tedious, and it got easier and easier as time passed. I did not make music by any stretch of the imagination, but I felt like something had broken loose and I was finally on my way.

This happens when you try to develop skills. I remember reaching a point in my physics studies where things started to flow. The variables seemed to move around on their own, instead of requiring me to push them. And when I used to play the guitar, I got to a point where my hands sometimes took off by themselves.

The only other skill in which I have this feeling is writing, and the breakthrough has become permanent, because I stuck with it. I write effortlessly now. I don’t think about it. It just appears on the screen. If I could get to the point where I could compose like that, it would be as great a gift as I could ask for. Writing is great, but it’s an extremely difficult skill to market, and unless you hit it big, you don’t touch many people or accomplish anything worthwhile. I’d get more satisfaction out of creating music. I can get words out of my head just fine. The music is still stuck in there.

I screwed up when I was studying physics, even though I had reached the point where I was working pretty fluently. I got burned out after several years of accelerated study, and I couldn’t catch myself no matter what I did. The people at the University of Texas could not have cared less. They didn’t want a troubled student inconveniencing them, so they gave me no help, and they waited for me to give up. I’m sure they were relieved when I quit.

I think I would have been fine had I listened to my own mind. I had found that the way to solve problems was to stop thinking and wait for the solutions to appear through creativity, not analysis. That was the most reliable thing I had going for me. Stop thinking, and wait. But I couldn’t make myself rely on it. It was too weird.

I’m wrong; that wasn’t the real answer. Ultimately, the problem was that I was away from God, so I had plenty of enemies but no help. I prayed, but I didn’t try to change my life fundamentally. So nothing happened. It was as though the ceiling were made of brass and the prayers bounced off of it.

What an idiot. I was in Texas; there were probably great churches all around me. But it didn’t occur to me that I needed to go in and recommit myself to God and get the help I needed.

God will let you flounder and suffer. Under some circumstances, he will let you die while you wander in confusion. You can’t always expect him to wipe your nose for you. I was in a mess because I had done something stupid. I knew better. I had no right to expect to be rescued.

People let me down, too. I’m sure there were people who were supposed to pray for me and reach out to me, but they blew it off. Fixing the world is our responsibility, even though God gives us the power to do it. Bad things happen because there aren’t enough of us on the job.

When I left my church in Miami before taking up physics, I didn’t get persistent calls, asking if I was okay. People didn’t come to see about me. The friends I had made didn’t bang on my door and ask to pray for me. Now that church doesn’t exist. No surprise. Church isn’t primarily about getting miracles and prosperity and growing a giant congregation and getting on TV. I think those are things too many charismatic churches focus on, and that was definitely the case when I was involved twenty years ago. Church is about seeking God’s face and doing what is right. My church wasn’t there for people who needed help, and God wasn’t there for my church. He let it dry up and vanish.

I blew it. My pastor blew it. The other members of the church blew it. I ended up wasting about eighteen years, and during that time, my mother got lung cancer, and my sister continued the smoking habit that eventually gave her lung cancer, and things went badly for my family.

I don’t condemn anyone. It seems like the body of Christ has been burdened with ignorance for about 1900 years–blinded like Samson–and things are still being restored. I know the people in my old church would have done the right things, had they been better informed. I sure would have. I can’t condemn them, when my own performance has been so bad.

Unity is important. Predators usually won’t plunge into cohesive herds. They look for animals that wander off on their own. It’s stupid to think the mission of a church is to build a big facility and get lots of video coverage for a fast-talking pastor who hawks dubious DVDs with his leering, comb-overed photo on the boxes. You look after the members first, and you try to do God’s will. A church is made of members, not bricks. Let Satan get at the members, and the church will fall.

The church I go to now does a better job of binding its members together. There are lots of prayer groups. There are activities and outreaches that get people together. It could be better (and I know it will be), but it beats what I’ve seen in the past.

Piano practice is going well. Lots of things are going well. I think things that have been taken from me in the past will be restored as time goes by. Maybe not everything, but many things. Then when my life is over, I’ll be free from the struggle forever. The vicious, parasitic spirits that torment us like horseflies seem powerful now, but they will be like ticks and worms compared to us, and they won’t be able to follow us where we’re going.

It’s a good deal. Freedom from persecution, and public execution for our enemies. You can’t beat that. We’ll be like Mordecai and Esther, living in safety and peace while Haman and his dead sons were publicly impaled on high poles.