She\u2019s on my mind tonight \u2014 she being the old song \u2014 just notes on a piano, no singing, no need. If there is a more powerful song in the history of all songs, I don\u2019t know of it.<\/p>\n
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\u201cAmazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.\u201d Is it that line? Is it that somewhere in the cycle of ups and downs during any given year, we feel like wretches, and therefore unworthy? Is it that this one line gets the needle in the main vein of Christianity; that we need saving \u2026 that we can\u2019t earn saving \u2026 that only the gift of Amazing Grace saves \u2026 and that every once in a while we\u2019re ripe to feel how vulnerable we really are?<\/p>\n
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If you were writing this you might be picturing a great cathedral of a building, some great choir, stained glass and some maestro on a grand piano, and \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d would still be bigger than the setting.<\/p>\n
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But I\u2019m writing this, and my mind is in a little country church, gravel parking lot. First folks there park under the oak tree. Old pews that were passed down decades ago from a bigger church, and now you\u2019re sitting in grandma\u2019s spot on the family pew. When she passed, nobody dared sit there for a few Sundays, but one day it just felt right for you to hold the place.<\/p>\n
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The lady playing the piano is a second grade teacher. She\u2019s never had formal lessons, just plays by ear, and she misses a note every once in a while. But she\u2019s dependable, and cuts her little getaways short to make sure she\u2019s on duty on Sunday mornings.<\/p>\n
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The congregation is small.\u00a0 Leaning towards the older end of life.\u00a0 Lot of farmers. A loan officer at the little bank. Teachers. Manager at the Western Auto.<\/p>\n
When it\u2019s time for songs, the preacher says \u201cLet\u2019s make a joyful noise unto the Lord,\u201d and it\u2019s part of the inside joke of the congregation, as if that verse was meant for little churches like this, where talent is a little thin on the vocal end.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.\u201d Is it that line?\u00a0 Who among us has not been lost? Lost trust, lost hope, lost clarity, lost confidence, lost our foundation? Or seeing, yet knowing that you\u2019re not seeing it All, or seeing Enough, or seeing it Clear or seeing it Right or seeing Too Many Trees and Not Enough Forest?<\/p>\n
One of my most precious memories of my mother was her singing \u201cAmazing Grace.\u201d Her father died, and off we went to Alabama for the funeral. I was old enough, but not old enough \u2026 death was still a little to the edge of my emotional radar. At that age, I mostly took cues from the adults around me. I knew that this was Big and Sad, but I didn\u2019t feel it, yet.<\/p>\n
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My grandmother\u2019s home was filled with strangers and casseroles. On the day of the funeral I was starting to get It. My mother and her siblings were tense with emotions, making small talk over breakfast, everybody trying to keep the cork pressed tight over the tear spigot.<\/p>\n
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The men went off that morning to wash the cars. Seemed important, I guess. Not long after we were seated in the bereaved section at the funeral home. I hated the layout. They had the family set apart, like a choir sits apart, with their face to the congregation. They had one of those sliding wall partitions. The family was seated and the mourners start filling up the chairs.<\/p>\n
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And then Mom excused herself.\u00a0 She was gone a few minutes and I asked my father where she had gone and he didn\u2019t know either.<\/p>\n
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And then on the other side of that partition I heard the first note of \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d and I knew it was her.\u00a0 Mom was impulsive and oooh the times this trait embarrassed us to no end. It was a strong trait, and as with all traits, when it\u2019s wrong, it\u2019s Very Wrong, but man-o-man, when it\u2019s right, it\u2019s Very Right.<\/p>\n
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She just got up and went to find a piano, like someone would go off looking for help. She\u2019d found it, on the other side of that partition.<\/p>\n
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We couldn\u2019t see her. Was her lower lip trembling? Were tears running? I don\u2019t know. She ran through the intro and didn\u2019t sing a word. Maybe that was a clue. And now here comes the intro again, and POW \u2014 it\u2019s my mother\u2019s voice saying \u201cAmazing Grace,\u201d saying it to her father in the casket and her Father in heaven, not performing, not entertaining, but bleeding out the words of \u201cAmazing Grace.\u201d<\/p>\n
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We\u2019re small and unworthy. We\u2019re dirty and undeserving of the cost of the bath. We offend You and offend You and offend You and then one day we see and in seeing we kneel and in kneeling we open and in opening we ask, ask You for Amazing Grace.<\/p>\n
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Mom had no microphone over there on the other side of the partition. Oh, but we could hear her. She pushed some air through that wall. Part of the power of it was that we \u2014 and so many of the mourners did not know my mother \u2014 we knew that there was a certain-someone singing, but not being able to see her, left it all up to the imagination of each of us. To sing \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d is one thing. To feel \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d is another. To sing and feel \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d at the goodbye moment between daughter and father, her handing off her father to the good hands of her Father and feeling hope, because that\u2019s what Christianity is, it\u2019s hope, man \u2026 even all these decades later, just writing this \u2026 it remains one of the most powerful emotional moments I\u2019ve ever been gifted with knowing.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWhen we\u2019ve been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun, we\u2019ve no less days to sing His praise than when we\u2019ve first begun.\u201d<\/p>\n
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I think about heaven a lot.\u00a0 Sometimes I\u2019m silly and playful about it: like worrying that it\u2019ll only be I Love Lucy and the Andy Griffith Show Up There, and I won\u2019t be able to watch The Godfather, or Pulp Fiction or The Outlaw Josey Wales because they won\u2019t be rated H, for Heaven. And sometimes, I ain\u2019t kidding here, but I wonder if I\u2019ll get bored in heaven.\u00a0 Like: is it like church, church, church, like forever? Are we really gonna sing hymns for eternity?<\/p>\n
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But, there\u2019s this one song that I really, I mean, REALLY, REALLY, want to hear sung in heaven. It\u2019ll just be all of us. No angels \u2014 they\u2019re disqualified from \u201cAmazing Grace.\u201d It\u2019s all of us, forgiven for stealing a pack of Dentyne and forgiven for murders, forgiven squanderers of time, talent and opportunity, we who could\u2019ve been better, nicer, more of more and less of less, and we\u2019ll be up there and He will be up there, the source of grace, the payer of debts, the Always and Evermore, and we\u2019ll raise our voices, all we no-telling-how-many and we\u2019ll make a joyful noise of \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d and it will be loud and pure and true.<\/p>\n
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That; that, folks, will be the Song of Songs, the Performance of all Eternity.<\/p>\n
I bet I\u2019ll be able to pick Mom\u2019s voice out of the crowd.<\/p>\n
This edition of Uncle P\u2019s Bedtime Stories is brought to you by Eighty-one, where we\u2019re especially proud of Uncle P\u2019s line, \u201cMy grandmother\u2019s home was filled with strangers and casseroles.\u201d<\/p>\n
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