Know-Love-Obey God

High Calling Blogs Book Club:
The Wisdom of Wilderness, by Gerald G. May
Chapter Four: “Cicada Song”

This chapter touched my spirit in so many places, both widely and deeply. May’s thoughts on “contemplation” particularly resonated, especially this on page 64: “To put it simply, in concentrating on one thing at a time, we miss everything else.” But that one went so deep that to write about it would take me way past Book Club Monday! So, I chose two other aspects of this chapter.

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1. The Rhythm of Body Life

I want to learn drums.

This resolve engraved itself in me, permanent and irreversible as a tattoo. I searched music stores, The Thrifty Nickel, eBay, Craig’s List, Goodwill and the ARC thrift store. Finally, after a two-week eternity, I found them. Meeker Music had a beat-up rental drum set for sale. I gazed at it longingly, drove six miles home, agonized over it, drove six miles back, and took the precious, dented, dirty thing home like someone would do with an abused puppy from the pound.

I opened my new book, Alfred’s Beginning Drumset Method, complete with instructional CD. I systematically practiced each drill in order, reading the book to know exactly what each hand and foot should do, and when.

I practiced (when the neighbors weren’t home) every day for a month until I could keep up with the CD with minimal errors.

Then, the audition.

The music director did not come with “play” and “stop” buttons. He lived and moved and had his being. He sat at the piano, I at the drums sweating like rain, and played a song. (I was supposed to play along.) I left the audition with a “qualified yes” (practice another month and try again). I did, and got in.

Then, the first rehearsal.

Not just one other person on piano, but another on sax, and trumpet, and bass, and two more on guitar, and another percussionist on congas, and four vocalists—each with a different pulse rate, blood type, personal history, top-ten book list, and unique relationship with God. Playing in a live band required a living approach; the technical, metronome-precise, inorganic method I used playing solo in my basement did not work.

I begin to beat the drum with them. I try to pick out a cadence and follow it, but it feels too complex; I cannot tell one pulsation from another for more than a few moments. Then, in the way I have learned to receive gifts, I quit trying. Relaxing, I just beat the drum, allowing my own rhythm to emerge and find its place in the overall sound.

- May, page 56

What May did with the cidadas, I needed. If I first relax into the rhythm of the whole, my own individual rhythm will emerge; I allow it to emerge rather than force it in. This reminds me of Body life. I am a useful member only as part of the Body of Christ. Apart from the body I am, well, dismembered. It’s bloody and gruesome. Not pretty.

May’s cicada story powerfully reminded me:
Shed self-consciousness. Shed selfishness. Die to self. Have the humility of Christ. No longer drumming solo in my basement but a member of the Body, I need to be aware of and consider others.

Then I can jam with the band.

Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

- Philippians 2:4

2. The Rhythm of Grace

This line:

Then, in the way I have learned to receive gifts, I quit trying. Relaxing, I just beat the drum…

- May, page 56

It reminds me of surrender, humility, laboring but not on my own strength. Grace.

Take, say, motherhood. I feel unfit to be a mother, but I look outside at the boys with their cardboard shields and telescoping paper swords…

. . . and I wonder again at the amazing, flesh-and-sweat truth: I am a mother. What God has made me, I am unfit to be. It floors me every time I think of it. Again, grace.

So, I receive the gift. “Relaxing, I just beat the drum…”

For I…am not fit to be called an apostle… But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me.

- 1 Corinthians 15:9-10