The Voice of God

There are many ways to blow out your hearing....an up close and personal rock concert, a stereo you can't resist cranking up loud enough to shake paintings off the wall. You could play your ipod too loud or too often, or yell your head off at some kind of sporting event.

But it's not often that you get to lose your hearing because God had something to say to you, or through you. That only happens when you're sitting at the console of a pipe organ, with all of the stops pulled out and the crescendo pedals to the floor. Just to let you know, that phase "all the stops pulled out" does refer to something real. Pipe organs have knobs above the keyboard that control each individual pipe, and when you pull them out, it opens the pipes. They take a huge, shuddering breath and sing for all they are worth. The taller and fatter they are, the deeper and more omnipotent they sound, and the more likely it is that your inner organs will be rearranged a little bit by the sheer force of their energy.

Today I was blessed with the chance to play for two hours at a local church with the most magnificent organ in town. The sanctuary of this church has 1960's written all over it, but in a good way - the cross in the front is actual branches of a tree, sunlit by skylights overhead. The entire interior is wood, which is warm and embracing. Abstract stained glass windows spread prisms of light across the walls. It feels like the waiting room to Heaven, exactly where you'd want to be while you wait to find out exactly where your mansion in the sky might be.

I placed tentative hands on the organ, knowing that the instrument is very unforgiving and telegraphs every single mistake to anyone within earshot. I chose the softest of the preset stops and carefully walked through some Bach, hymns and other organ works. Gradually, though, I started moving through the presets, steadily increasing the orchestra of sound until I got to that tipping point where I knew I should have brought my custom ear plugs.

This sound - this immense wall of metal pipes singing their hearts out - must be what God sounds like to all of his friends. Powerful, passionate, direct, transcendant, heart breakingly beautiful, almost frightenly big and all encompassing. When you sit at the organ with everything on full power, all you can do is give yourself over to it and let the Man have his say. Every feeling you might have brought with you will ripped from your heart and translated into music.

Today I had magic fingers. That doesn't always happen. Sometimes my hands refuse to even acknowledge that they know me. But today, they were dancing, running up and down the keyboard. I hardly recognized them. Who are you, you nimble little digits?
At one point I even sang along with some of the hymns, and even my voice was cooperating with me, another rarity. It all felt like God had decided that, for just a few hours, I could go ahead and speak for him, or rather he could speak through me. It was humbling and a rush at the same time. Power. Big power. But only on loan.

So what I learned today is that happiness really can come in a box. A very big box.
And it's been sitting there unwrapped for way too long.