Out of the Shadows
“I think, therefore I am” may be a good enough starting point for some people. But not for me. I need other people at the beginning, the middle, and the end. Yet even as I write this, my conscience rises up to testify against me. I like being alone. I need to be alone. That’s how I store up energy to be with people. I’m even more at peace when I’m alone. All true. But I also know that everything creative or important that I try to do withers on the vine if I try to do it alone.
The seeds of this conundrum go back at least as far as that dark day in my freshman dorm room. As I lay there in the shadows, surveying the brokenness of my life scattered around me, I saw the J. Geil’s album that had helped me through the lonely times in high school. The lyrics of the title song, “Love Stinks,” certainly had new meaning for me.
You love her
But she loves him
And he loves somebody else You just can't win
And so it goes
'Til the day you die
This thing they call love
It's gonna make you cry
“Love Stinks” was repeated ten times at the end of the song. I could have joined in a full-throated agreement every single time. I was completely alone and the J. Geil’s Band seemed to have written the theme song for my life.
I was miserable on my own. But I also wanted to be alone. That was the only way to be safe. The darkness had accosted me twice in life and I had learned its hard lesson: people aren’t trustworthy. Human beings are a tangled web of constantly changing needs, whims and desires. We make sincere commitments to each other with our whole hearts in one moment only to justify breaking those promises in the next with some technicality. It’s our habitual promise-breaking that invites darkness into our lives and I just couldn’t go through that experience again.
But I also knew that I couldn’t be alone for the rest of my life. That darkness was no place to make my home. Outside my dorm window, the clouds continued to sail across the deep blue Texas sky. They spoke to me of a brighter story, somewhere out in that wide world, that was still being written. I wanted to join the clouds on their journey. But the walls between my dorm room and those clouds might as well have been 100 feet thick. There was no way I could break through on my own. Someone else would have to do it for me.
There was another album on my dorm room floor. It was a more recent purchase. On the surface, it didn’t look like much. The cover was basic. It was just a picture of the artist with his guitar against a rather boring brown background. Over the top of the cover was the title, a single word, written in an uninteresting font. But the word itself jumped out at me as if it was written in neon lights: “Beginnings,” it said. That is what I needed. I needed a new beginning.
I managed to slide across the floor to the turntable, ignoring the minor carpet burn it gave me on my elbows. I picked up the album, got up on my knees, and placed the record itself on the turntable. When I turned the record player on I felt something. The sparse instrumentation of the artist's guitar spoke possibility into my room. He began to sing, but in a way that took nothing away from the minimalist style of the entire song. The music was encouraging me to focus on the lyrics themselves.
Cast your cares upon Him
Lay your life upon Him
For only He is worthy to stand
In tribulation trial or sorrow
When you can't see through tomorrow
He'll reveal to you the frailty of a man
His message came alive inside of me. The lyrics invited me to step beyond my past experiences and consider the possibility that there might be a new experience waiting for me just over the horizon. Even more, the song suggested that there was a spectre in the room, right then, right there in the shadows. Someone had been watching everything that had happened to me, someone had heard the cry of my heart, and that same someone was inviting me to get up off of the carpet and begin again. As the music continued, the spectre stepped out of the shadows. He was making himself known through the music and wooing me into the possibility of relationship.
I knew the spectre that the artist was describing. I had grown up listening to his stories. On many Sundays I had sung songs to him in church. He lived a long time ago when people wore robes, and sandals and cared for sheep and worked in agriculture. But on that day in my dorm room, the historical figure was coming to and interacting with me. One song ended and another began. I continued to listen.
I gazed into the stars
I followed where
The eastern light does show
I tried to find the Light
To fill my achin' soul
I looked into the oceans
I walked upon the mountaintop
I trusted in my garden
Tryin' to set my spirit free
And then the Son of Man
He beckoned to me
The Spirit of the Light came in true love
And like a gentle summer breeze
So comfortin', so free
He gave the Light of Freedom within Me
John Michael Talbot had been a guitarist for the folk rock band, Mason Profitt. He had also experienced the darkness. In response he went on a spiritual journey, trying different religions and hallucinogenic substances. By the time he went solo, he had found his way forward. Could this same “beckoning” he described in his song be my way forward as well?
The turntable needle began scratching round and round and round at the end of the LP seeking another song to play. I saved it from its fruitless journey by lifting it off the record, placing it back in its holder, and turning off the stereo. It was then that I realized I had stood up off the floor.
The room was silent. But I wasn’t alone with my thoughts. The spectre was there in the shadows, waiting. I had a decision to make. Would I rebuild my life, on my own, as best I could? Or would I accept the invitation of the One who was courting me?
