Up, Up, and Away - A Measure of Grace 8-10-9

For as long as I have been in the church, I have heard animated and sometimes rather acrimonious discussion about whether God is still in the miracle working business or not. In the late 1960s discussion even splashed onto the covers of national news magazines, wondering out loud if God was actually dead; no longer in any kind of business. Many of the Christian faithful believe today that miraculous signs were confined to a so-called Apostolic Age twenty centuries ago and that God has been essentially resting on His laurels ever since. Profit-driven faith healers operating in the murky realms of late night television and Sunday morning cablevision have not done much to bring the Apostolic Age to the Atomic Age. Uncounted numbers of ‘how-to’ books have been written in past decades telling people how to find the reality of God.

Recently, I had the grand fortune to spend nine days on solo retreat at a sublime Benedictine center in the Appalachian Mountains. When one turns off the cell phone, Internet, TV, radio, IPod, and sets aside the newspaper, the latest formula crime thriller, and open-ended to-do lists, amazing things happen. One sees and hears things once completely lost in the white noise of over-stimulated chaotic lives.

My spiritual directors sent me out one day into the forest to take a mindfulness walk. The objective of the walk was to try and experience a heightened acuity for the still small voice of God which is most often masked by the ambient noise in my head.

At the very beginning of this walk a Painted Lady butterfly flitted about my head. Something seemed a bit odd about this butterfly. It finally landed on a succulent purple flower stalk of a nearby butterfly bush and its peculiarities became easily evident. A large chunk was gone from one wing and the remaining wings were rather torn up as well and quite frayed. The pseudo-engineer in me figured this lady was flying on about 60% lift. I had a camera in my hand at the precise moment it made a touch and go landing and was able to photograph this flight-worn miracle. Later, with a perfect in focus image of this battered painted wonder, I began to wonder about the amazing ways that living things adapt to great losses. Somehow this little worm-turned-aviator was still managing to ply the skies, despite the turbulence of life that had wiped out much of her original equipment.

I was reminded of a legendary incident with the great violinist Itzhak Perlman who had just taken his seat on stage at Carnegie Hall to play a notoriously difficult Rachmaninoff concerto. A very few measures into the piece, what sounded like a shot-gun blast rang out in those august halls of music. One of the four strings on his Stradivarius violin had broken. Everyone expected a replacement violin to be hurriedly brought out and for Perlman to start over. He simply and calmly wrapped the broken string around the pegs, put his instrument and bow in position, and gave the nod to the conductor to continue. As the pre-eminent master of his craft, he proceeded to play one of the most difficult pieces of music in the world, on three strings, transposing, improvising, and doing whatever it took to pull off one of the most brilliant and impassioned of performances. He was asked how it was possible to do this. With grace and humility he simply said that there are times when we lose important things in life and we have to learn how to use what we have left. This profound acceptance of loss at important moments in life did much to endear Perlman to his audiences.

Three days ago I was of sound body and enjoyed an eleven-mile sunrise ride on my newly acquired mountain bike. A few hours later, unable to walk, I was in a wheelchair, scheduled for an MRI, and facing the prospect of surgery the first part of the week. A string had broken for me and I was adjusting to the reality of learning how to play life on three strings, without Perlman’s talent. While pushing a heavy cabinet across the floor, being careful, or so I thought, I ruptured the muscles in my right calf. Suddenly, my foot didn’t work right any more and the abundant pain signals in my leg said an emergency landing might be a really good idea. In the span of perhaps a quarter second, my whole perspective changed. Now I was having to learn to transpose, improvise, and do whatever was needful to perform at life. Instead of doing my heroic good deeds for the world I was sitting in waiting rooms wondering what kind of physical and fiscal turbulence lay ahead.

Two days ago a charismatic Pentecostal holiness minister came to my house in the afternoon and laid hands on my leg and prayed for about thirty seconds. He said I would be able to walk down the aisle at church the next day and take communion. I was almost immediately pain-free with a full range of motion restored and walking on level surfaces and stairs without crutches or wheel chair. That evening I went and worked in the community theater, pain free, knowing that something wondrous had happened. The others in the theater figured out quickly that something dramatic happened. This was no comedy of errors.

One day ago I walked to the altar pain free for communion in the early service and spent the following three hours on my feet in the church kitchen - pain free. God was not resting on His laurels. In the evening I was hauling home treasures people had put out on the road for the trash haulers. The real treasure was found in the wonder-working power of faith - if not mine, then that of an itinerant preacher who knows God never took a laissez faire policy with our lives.

Today, I just cancelled my surgical consult and MRI scheduled for today and my appointments for Wednesday. This isn't about religion; this is about God's healing power. God really is not resting on His laurels. He is the lift beneath my wings.