During my four years In college, I was in a choral practice every day, Monday through Friday. I think I loved every day — at least I do now, as I look back on it. I learned a lot about much more than music, but it is the music that keeps rising up to bless me.
On Friday, the music was there to meet me as soon as I woke up. I was startled awake because of a dream. I won’t tell you all of it, but the part that woke me up was about being on a straight road going very fast and then realizing I had fallen asleep. When I jolted awake, I did not know where I was. I eventually found out I had gone to Maryland in my dreams!
I know how this actually feels because I did fall asleep once when we were driving to San Francisco for the weekend from So Cal – back in the day when all-night things were pretty normal. I fell asleep at the wheel and woke up just as I was about to enter an overpass curving over a railroad track. I still remember the feeling of shock and terror, then relief.
I definitely felt protected by God in my dream and in my experience.
Does God protect us?
In my dream, though, I felt a bit ambivalent. Was I protected? Honestly, my unconscious was having an ongoing intellectual discussion just before I woke up.
But even before I opened my eyes, a song came to mind. It was a solo I sang in college. We performed Honegger’s King David, which is a rather difficult, not-too-melodic drama. I did not really get it. But my director often gave his ignorant protégé solos which were over his head and labored to help me perfect them. He had one good reason to deploy me: I actually felt what was behind the sacred music. We were in a secular setting and he was surrounded by music majors who cared more about Honegger’s technique than his motivation. I never got the technique that well — my mentor had to mark my scores with endless instructions. But I did get the faith.
I realized years later that the little solo he gave me in King David was really half a solo. A new, older tenor had joined the choir who read music like I read the newspaper, and he wanted a solo in the piece. My director did not want to disappoint him, so he gave him the first half, which was more like an intro to my second half, which might be the most melodic measures in the whole work.
My one line was a soaring moment of assurance God gave David in his old age. Essentially, it was, “You’ll be OK even though Absalom has upended your kingdom.” Whether Psalm 121 is really about that, who knows? I didn’t even think about it. I just sang,
He will not suffer thy foot to be mov-ed,
for he is on high, watching above.
The Lord who is thy keeper neither slumbers nor sleeps.
That one line of music has stuck with me my entire adulthood. It pops up at just the right time, over and over.
To hear the pro sing it, you’ll have to scroll to section #21 “Psaume” at about 54:00
I’m not sure I can promise what you want
Again, and again in my life, especially when I feel threatened, that one line of Psalm 121 comes to me in a song. I’m thinking about it today, but I normally don’t. It just happens.
In my dream, God protected me. He kept me. God is my keeper, even in Maryland.
Intellectually, I would not defend that God can be relied on to keep me from flying off an overpass and into Bakersfield. But in my dream, I definitely felt God had protected me when I woke up in Maryland. I told God as we pondered together, “I don’t believe you constantly protect me,” because my experience tells me otherwise, and I cannot justify why God would not protect everyone who is abused by more than I have been. But I also said, “I do believe you watch over me and suffer with me,” since inexplicable grace happens and I feel God suffering with me and comforting me, heart, soul, mind and strength.
Practically, the fact is, I risk and imagine further risks almost every day under the assumption I am protected, that my future is in God’s hands. I prayed, “Your lack of slumber is the eternity in which I wake and sleep and defy death.” God being with me and me being with God is what is safe, not being kept unharmed. Escaping harm is exciting and comforting, too, but it is kind of the surface of things. One day I will, in fact, die. I will then only defy death because I am with God and God is with me. God will not keep me from the “harm” of dying. When I finally die, Jesus will take my hand and lead me into the fullness of eternity.
Feeling the confidence to live the risky life we all live is better than avoiding the troubles I fear. I think the world has so much trouble right now there will never be enough avoidance to deal with it!
But I can promise grace will happen
I have had the blessing of faith my whole life which has allowed me not to worry too much about my safety. But I have many clients, especially those who have been traumatized, who struggle every day with how God did not save them and how they can’t save themselves. They’ve flown off the bridge from which I was saved.
I can’t make a promise God will keep them, like the psalm appears to promise. (But let’s be clear, Absalom had already raped his father’s concubines in public, so David’s foot was mov-ed a lot!). Even so, I do have evidence that gives me hope that even the more damaged, distressed people can find security.
Grace happens all the time. It is as hard to explain as waking up just before you were going to fly over a guard rail. For instance, once a client had a vision in which a significant spiritual figure met them while they were meditating. The person saw themselves crouching in the dark, and the spiritual figure put a hand on their shoulder and said, “You are not a loser,” among other things. When I heard that, I did not reply with a therapeutic “That’s interesting.” I yelped with glee. I welcomed that extraordinary experience and was shocked at the same time. I saw it coming about as much as I expected to fall asleep at the wheel.
God comes to meet us all the time. Jesus knows we need the immediacy. We need the ongoing incarnation of his truth and love. He said, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” As sure as the angels instructed the shepherds, God watches over us.
Having trouble believing angels talk to shepherds? Look up in the air, more. Look beyond the limits you have imposed on the sky’s boundary. Help is on the way. If you don’t see it, it may already be here. At least I know God is here.
Just as excessive, was the newly refurbished doll museum at the shrine, which the cashier said we should not miss. She was right. It might be in the top ten of the weirdest museums I’ve ever visited. Dolls and mannequins of all sizes were dressed in the habits of traditional monks and nuns, mainly pre-1970, the Boomer childhood. I doubt any order was missed. I marveled at the absurd, excessive dedication to minutia and irrelevance in documenting this recently-bygone era. It was a bit like Henry Ford immortalizing his childhood.
I went to two commencement ceremonies (loved them!) and heard 8th graders singing Boomer anthems to Boomers. But most of their parents were born in the 70’s and 80’s, weren’t they? In the first ceremony the kids actually sang “Graduation Day” which was a 
But in many ways, O’Donohue is even more relevant now than he was in the 90’s. Then, he was just wading in the rivulets of what is now drowning us. When the publishers released the 25th anniversary edition of O’Donohue’s classic, new readers saw how prophetic his thinking was.
