It’s been another exhausting retreat, my 6th as musician- in -residence, and my 7th overall. It would be a lie to not say that some parts of it now bore the pants off me, but some things are always new and always strike me in different ways, as if to show that the human race has a nearly inexhaustible range of emotions. This time, though, the varieties of the religious life reached extremes that I would not have thought possible in your average hometown church production. There is the trite expression, “It made me laugh, it made me cry – it did it all!” that could almost be used here, but that would be not only trite but inaccurate. I cannot think of anything in the retreat that made me laugh more than normal, but I can think of something that was so terrible that it went beyond tears, and so wonderful that is caused tears of joy. First let me relate the story of that one soul-searing testimonial.
Testimonials: they bring up visions of Elmer Gantry on the sawdust trail hollering from a wooden platform in a circus tent, but these are usually accounts from normal people sharing the experience of their hardest of times and how Jesus or the Lord or whoever they want to say saved their butts from the deepest pit of despair or desperation. People love these stories because these people often speak of something in their lives worse than what we have ever experienced, and yet, through the grace of God, were able to not only overcome but excel in some higher spiritual way. I, too, usually love testimonials. That is why I was surprised by the one I am about to present. I did not love it. In fact, it scared the wits out of me.
She had come from a highly dysfunctional family in Chicago, whose only saving grace was the love of a grandmother. To escape the chaos and callousness, at the age of fifteen she moved in with a boyfriend who was much older than she was. Her parents, or whoever were her guardians or guardian, didn’t give two damns and let her go. After three years, at the age of eighteen, she married the guy. This is supposed to be the point at which she gained some order in her life, but as she put it, this was when the husband’s true nature came out and things got very, very bad. He beat her, starved her, threatened her with death daily, and sold her out as a prostitute. After two years of this, she got pregnant, but when she was beginning to give birth her husband took her to the cemetery to kill and bury the child. She lay on the ground unable to deliver due to a breach birth as she begged her husband to bring her to the hospital to save the child, promising that she would tell nothing of his illegal activities. Finally he relented for some reason, but the baby was DOA.
Up to this point, she had stayed with this man not only for fear for herself, but because he had threatened to kill her grandmother if she did not comply with his demands. After the death of the baby, however, she ran off and lived for half a year in the streets, fearing for her life all the while. Finally, someone brought her in to do some work for food and shelter, and it was there she met the man who would become her “real” husband. He was a religious man who brought her to be saved by Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Although the scars are deep and she has sustained permanent damage to her health, she continues to heal and even thrive to this day.
The story horrified me because, as I relate in my book Dream Weaver, I had rubbed shoulders with the type of evil that she had initially married. I had done it out of ignorant rebellion, thinking that I could be some cool space cowboy dealing pot and living the high life. This was when I had gone to college in Philadelphia, and I simply had no idea that anything like true evil existed outside of the history books. In Philly, however, it took little time before I met the real drug dealers who had such side-hobbies as luring underage girls into drug-dependency and prostitution. They thoroughly enjoyed the power that threats and violence gave them, and seemed beyond any form of natural compassion. They terrified me to the core, not so much because of my own physical safety but because they turned my relatively gentle life upside down. I left the situation and began the journey that became the rest of the book, but it was overall an incredibly stupid thing that I had done. Because of youthful vanity, I had come within an inch of being pulled one way or another into hellish disaster.
I hate even re-thinking the experience, but the darkness helps to contrast the incredible light that I also received at the retreat. It occurred on day three, when we were given to re-live our baptismal experience and promise. There before the altar a crystal bowl filled with clear water was placed on a lace-covered table and then blessed by the priest. It took place near noon when the sun had already begun to illuminate the stained glass behind the altar, bathing us all in a soft effusion of colorful light. We were to walk up and re-commit ourselves silently before the water, then walk back to sit quietly in the pews, which I did near the beginning of the event. Then, after several minutes of fairly mindless meditation, something strange happened. An interior vision was given to me of bright water rushing beneath a shelf of rock, water which took on a life of its own as I was made to understand that this represented the huge and continuous flow of God’s love and forgiveness. I am aware that these words are used in spiritual talk so much that they have become almost meaningless, so let me add that no words new or old could explain the depth and extent of that love. It was, as they say, infinite and non-conditional, so deep and absolutely pure that it took my mental breath away, an experience so intense that it seemed I could not stand it for long, wonderful as it was. With it came an unmistakable message, clear as day: “You are loved totally and absolutely and are forgiven for any fault or failing.” With this was added the idea that I – we – could not go to Hell, or be away from God, by any other means than by our own personal refusal and denial. That is, that we can only lose this eternal love by consciously turning away from it.
This is not exactly identical with much of traditional Christian religious teaching. Rather, it seems more like a New Age thing, where we can do what we wish but then, what the heck, still fly on back to Dad when the time comes. To tell the truth, I don’t know whether we need a penance or expurgation before we return to God, but the vision was clear: if we want him, we will eventually be united with him.
Darkness and light, and it is almost impossible to believe that anyone would choose darkness. When I think of the people who love evil, I am brought first to think how this attitude would come about in the first place. Was it because these people, too, were manipulated by evil and chose to become the devil rather than to run from him? I know this is not usually done even by those who have lived very harsh lives. Many of the people in that ghetto area of Philly where I lived had gone through hell, and yet remained decent and honest men, however damaged that they were. The woman who presented her testimonial is another example. So why do some people go the way of evil? It hardly seems rational that anyone would choose this route when they know that heaven is at hand, regardless of their foibles and imperfections, if only they wanted it.
That might be it right there. While some might be born evil - which is hard to conceive if there is divine justice in the world – it might just be that most never knew that God was waiting for them, ready to take them back. It might be that, after death, questions will be asked or a period of repentance will be required, but we are all welcome to the club, regardless - or so it came to me - of race, national origin, creed or everything else, as long as we know enough to embrace the all-good. While those who choose evil might do it for power, would they pursue it if they knew that permanent paradise was the alternative?
In the end, I cannot say. Instead, I only relate here what I was told, told by a force of absolute good. That force, it said, is there for you. Whatever you think you need or want, it lets you know that the satisfaction of those needs or wants cannot compare with what is there, for free, without the need for violence or any other reaction against deep-seated insecurities and fear.
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