Music & Art

Letters to my Creator (Putting out my book collection one letter at a time)

Father, 

Thank you for this thing we call sound. It's really cool that we can navigate this earth and communicate with each other through sound, color, and other sensory stimuli. 

While humans were cut off from You, the source of beauty, upon their fall, it's like we still have remnants of that beauty we left behind. But I know they're just echoes of the beauty we’re no longer tethered to—and this letter is an ode to music and art, and the hints they provide for real Beauty. 

Sometimes I hear such an echo in a piece of music and am moved so much, I marvel at the power such a short record can hold. One song that has that effect on me is the Josh Garrels record I'm listening to right now.

Recently, I sent him a message asking him to make an animated music video for one of his songs with my sand art to visually ‘translate’ his lyrics and emotions. But he hasn't replied yet, Father. 

Also, I still can’t get over how awesome it is that I can get my hands on a record made by someone so far away, and then be able to reach out to them with such ease. Again, thank You that I’d been born after the internet’s invention. On his Instagram page are pictures of his quiet hometown in the U.S., album art of other artists, and his little children in a train track around where he had grown up.

My head is sandwiched between massive headphones which are blasting his music into my ears. I close my eyes and try to savor each layer that the song is made of. There are theatrical drums playing, a lullaby-like guitar melody, and some other instruments I cannot identify, but thoroughly enjoy. I can probably play the cyclic guitar riff which comes after the choruses. 

For a moment, it was like I moved somewhere else. 

Yet, I can still feel the weight of my sister curled up beside me on the couch, and the cold wind sinking down on us from the open awning above. We sometimes worry that rats would enter through there. 

I’m aware of the dying white light on the messy table in front of us. We’re experiencing a power cut, so it’s extra quiet from the lack of humming machinery. 

Technically, I'm here now. 

But I've read about people who lost their 'hereness' when they were caught up with You. And when I hear a moving song like this one, something which transports me elsewhere, I think about the place which St. Paul said should not be talked about. 

I think about the man who was caught up to the third heaven and heard inexpressible words. I think about my encounter with You that one sunset in the spring of 2017. I remember the joy, and tears and the overwhelming love, and the mess that I turned into in public. 

It was the beginning of my end when I found out that there had been a curtain between us, and that all along, I had a wrong idea of Your nature. 

Now, it's been almost two years since I listened to a stranger's advice and decided to really start talking to You like my Father.

And Father, because of the more frequent power cuts, I’d been reading more books as well. I picked up Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse V again primarily to learn about the Tralfamadorians, aliens who can see through space-time as we can look at a vast expanse of land. 

Nobody really dies to them. Creatures just stop existing at some point. But since they have access to every other moment in the creature's life preceding the unfortunate incident that led to their death, they find crying at funerals stupid. I feel like I can identify with those fictional aliens more than I can identify with most humans lately.

And Vonnegut, who was a professed humanist, had a lot to say about Christ, Someone he'd referred to as his 'wild and loving brother'. I find reading his quotes on Christ entertaining too.

Mom and I had also been reading John's gospel together. It's a crazy book on many levels, Father. And we're loving it.

Thank you for this experience, and that I'm a dirt-being filled with a life that can make even the Tralfamodorians jealous. The horizon is glorious and I'm yet to see Beauty fully revealed, in me, others, and the Source of it all. 

Thank you for that. 

Love, 

-w

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It is doubtless not profitable for me to boast. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord: I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago—whether in the body I do not know, or whether out of the body I do not know, God knows—such a one was caught up to the third heaven. And I know such a man—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows— how he was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter. Of such a one I will boast; yet of myself I will not boast, except in my infirmities.

II Corinthians 12:1 - 5 NKJV